NBA’s Load Mismanagement & Reactive Strength Problem
The NBA’s Reactive Strength Problem is finally put on pause thanks to the season being over.
NBA’s Load Mismanagement & Reactive Strength Problem
The NBA doesn’t have a load management strategy—it has a load mismanagement strategy and a reactive strength problem. A problem that overshadowed game seven of the NBA Finals. A problem that now not just us at Absolute are stating but is being covered through the entire sports new cycle. Will anything change? We hope that the definition of reactive strength gets changed and ours gets adopted. We hope for player safety.
Load Mismanagement & League Wide Programming Failure for NBA Player Safety
At Absolute, we define what’s happening in the NBA not as a load management strategy—but as load mismanagement. And from a Training Science perspective, this mismanagement has led to a league-wide programming failure. Let us be very specific about what that means.
Treatment vs. Training: Two Settings, One Common Blindspot—Connective Tissue
Treatment occurs in the clinical setting by a practitioner. This often includes isometric and eccentric exercises—critical stimuli for developing connective tissue. Treatment also includes manual directional inputs (performed by the practitioners’s hands), which are the primary interventions for restoring and normalizing connective tissue architecture.1
The Achilles tendon is connective tissue.
Training occurs in the weight room by a coach. This setting primarily scales up the nervous system’s capacity to generate forces. While some tissue development occurs here, most of that work stimulates the muscle tissue, not connective tissue.
Here’s the NBA’s Reactive Strength Problem in a nutshell:
The Achilles tendon is not being specifically developed or prepared in either setting.
This means the one biological structure most vulnerable on the NBA athletes in the reactive strength paradigm—the Achilles tendon—is also the one least directly stimulated across both training and treatment domains. This is a programming error by both practitioners and coaches.
Incorrect Definition of Reactive Strength
This entire load mismanaged system is built on an incomplete and inaccurate definition of reactive strength.
So what is reactive strength?
Reactive strength is a special strength.
Special means it has a bottom-up biological element: the connective tissue network self organizing to react and absorb so that normal force transmission can occur.
Strength means it has a top-down neurological element: the nervous system must be able to hold position via force output through the muscle.
In simple terms:
Reactive Strength = A connective tissue network that can react to absorb, plus a neural network of strength that can hold via force output—resulting in normal force transmission (see visual below).
Rupture Not Reversal Strength
But watch the video of Tyrese Haliburton—or any of the six other Achilles ruptures this season—and you’ll see what happens is not normal force transmission but rupture.
The white connective tissue—the Achilles tendon—goes to length and keeps lengthening until it ruptures from the force transmitting through it. This is mechanical failure of the connective tissue of the Achilles tendon. And it’s predictable.
Three ruptures happened during just the NBA Playoffs. The highest-stakes games in the league—with Achilles tendons that were not developed via treatment concurrently with training to handle the output and generate reactive strength at those stakes from the NBA athletes.
Here is why Pat
Pat McAfee and others are asking why. Here’s why:
Because undeveloped connective tissue cannot exhibit reactive strength.
And it hasn’t been developed—because NBA training and treatment environments aren’t accounting for it in their definition of reactive strength in their load management strategy. That’s the real load mismanagement. That’s the real programming failure.
Until reactive strength is accurately defined and programmed for, we at Absolute this pattern will repeat. The season’s end merely halted the runaway train; it didn’t fix the tracks. Unless programming changes this offseason, the next tip-off will restart the cycle—just with fresh tendons.
Point B: The Physical State Where High Performance Emerges
At Absolute, Point B is the optimal physical state of the athlete at the level of competition. It consists of four trainable and treatable elements:
For high performance to emerge in real time—on the NBA court—all four must be present via specific and ongoing development via treatment and training. The problem? NBA athletes are stepping onto the court without being at Point B reactive strength. This is the element of Point B being systematically mismanaged via their failed load management strategy and inability to get the NBA athletes Achilles tendon to Point B.
Point A → Point B Feedback Loop: Information Flow NBA athletes not at Point B
When we apply the Point B framework and analyze this season through the Point A lens of performance history, the conclusion is not up for debate:
NBA athletes are stepping onto the court without being at Point B reactive strength.
And when reactive strength isn’t present—ruptures emerge instead. Ruptures in routine, relative strength change-of-direction force transmission scenarios where connective tissue is supposed to react and reverse2 but instead the tissue continues to lengthen past the yield point and then we are forced to watch the tissue explode instead of basketball.
This amplifying feedback is telling us: These injuries are not random. They are a predictable result of incomplete programming from the NBA’s failed load management strategy when we apply our definition of reactive strength into the Point A → Point B feedback loop.
Case Studies of NBA Athletes Not at Point B: The Feedback Loop of Achilles Ruptures
Let’s walk through the some of the objective data from the 2025 NBA season.
Game 1: James Wiseman ruptured his Achilles tendon on a routine jump shot—non-contact, bodyweight scenario.
Game 7 of the NBA Finals: Tyrese Haliburton suffered an Achilles rupture a routine change of direction bodyweight scenario.
The season started and ended with Achilles ruptures. There were three Achilles ruptures just in the playoffs alone. To emphasize, these are not isolated injuries. They are part of a predictable pattern. They are systematic in the NBA.
Days before Haliburton’s injury, we noted in our subscriber chat that he was being managing for a calf strain—a leading indicator that the bottom up element of reactive strength was compromised and not at Point B. Sadly, that calf strain management clearly failed Haliburton. This is what mismanagement of reactive strength looks like in 2025.
Haliburton: "Feels Good" ≠ Point B Reactive Strength
Let’s walk through how Haliburton was managed to have a rupture—he was in a reactive strength doom loop. He suffered a calf strain in Game 5. From there, he underwent around-the-clock “treatment”: hyperbaric chambers, massage, dry needling, e-stim, taping, wrapping—every passive modality available.
Can you see how none of those passive modalities stimulate change in the bottom-up element of reactive strength—the connective tissue of the Achilles tendon. That is why treatment is in quotation marks, because these modalities help the athlete feel good—but feeling good isn’t the same as being ready to generate reactive strength in the Achilles tendon. Haliburton may have felt good in Game 7. But he wasn’t at Point B reactive strength. He felt good enough to step onto the court and blow up his Achilles tendon in the first quarter.
Just ask Christian McCaffrey. When reactive strength is missing, injury shows up instead of performance. Instead of reactive strength emerging from Haliburton’s Achilles tendon, the NBA added another name to its record breaking Achilles rupture count this season.
You Cannot Unsee it Now
Incomplete programming from the performance staffs puts NBA athletes on the court with Achilles tendons that can’t react to transmit force effectively. And when that happens, ruptures emerge instead of reactive strength.
We saw it in the first game on a jump shot. We saw it in the last game on a change of direction. The NBA has a real reactive strength problem that is only on pause because it is finally the offseason.
Once you see this as incomplete programming problem—you cannot unsee it.
So next time someone says why is this happening, share this article.
The Web of Load Mismanagement: Core Determinants
The NBA’s reactive strength systematic problem has three core determinants, as identified through our Point A → Point B programming framework:
1. RSI Misinterpretation. Teams rely on Reactive Strength Index (RSI) to monitor fatigue, but RSI measures neurological output, not connective tissue architecture. Resting players based on RSI creates an illusion of recovery—because it’s only the top half the of the special strength. Under our definition, reactive strength must include both top-down and bottom-up readiness.
2. Neurological–Biological Asymmetry Amplified Over the Season. The CNS recovers in 24–72 hours. Connective tissue starts to detrain without mechanical loading during this inactivity. Resting deloads both—but only neurology recovers. Biology degrades. When this imbalance is repeated systematically over a season, athletes step onto the court neurologically ready to output but biologically compromised to transmit. They are nowhere near Point B reactive strength.
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