'Too Soft!' Knicks Ex Enes Freedom Rips NBA Load Management
Former New York Knicks starter Enes Freedom is the latest departed Association representative to comment on the increasingly prevalent load management debate.
Speaking with Pete Hegseth on the weekend edition of "Fox & Friends," Freedom, now a political activist, tore into the idea, which began to pick momentum in the early stages of the prior decade.
"Fans are paying thousands of dollars to come and watch their favorite player. Fans are literally traveling across the country to watch their idol. But this new generation of players (is) becoming, I think, too soft every day," Freedom, formerly known as Enes Kanter, said. "Back in the day we had never seen or heard of load management. But now, almost every star player (is) taking days, and sometimes weeks, off."
"I don't think they have a winning mentality if they are taking load management. They get a splinter on their finger and they take weeks off. It's interesting."
Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports
Freedom, whose last NBA minutes came with the Boston Celtics in 2022, has often been critical of the modern Association, namely their continued business relationship with China in the wake of human rights abuse accusations.
While the concept of load management was more or less introduced in the early stages of Freedom's career (when he entered the Association with the Utah Jazz as the third overall pick of the 2011 NBA Draft), Freedom didn't seem to embrace the concept if it was offered to him: Freedom played in every regular season game on three occasions, including two shortened campaigns (2011-12 with Utah, 2020-21 with Portland). He played all 82 games during the 2015-16 season with Oklahoma City, two years before he'd play 71 in the first of two seasons with the Knicks.
It's safe to say that Freedom would likely approve of the NBA's newly-introduced Player Participation Policy, which monitors and regulates the resting of healthy designated "star" players, which consist of recent All-Star and All-NBA nominees. As it stands, Julius Randle would be the only Knick affected by this policy upon the 2023-24 season's tip-off.
