Ric Flair has had it with the current crop NBA athletes.
The former professional wrestler, and one of the greatest to ever do it, said that today’s generation of players are too soft, and that they often complain about unnecessary things for no good reason.
"These basketball players that whine and b---h, it's taken a lot of the sport away from me," Flair said in an interview with Fox News while promoting his “Wooooo! Energy” sports drink.
Flair specifically despises the trend of many NBA players taking absurd amounts of time off during the season in the name of “load management.” He compared the weak mentality of NBA players to that of himself and his wrestling contemporaries during their careers, saying that wrestlers would perform through terrible injuries.
“They go to work hurt,” Flair said of wrestlers. “That’s what pisses me off today about these basketball players that stub their toe. No s–t. How do you think I feel about that, knowing I wrestled six months after I broke my back in a f—ing airplane crash? ‘I got a torn thumbnail. Whoa, whoa, whoa.’”
While players don’t necessarily have to play through injury to be considered tough, and what Flair and other wrestlers did was a bit extreme, he does make the correct assessment that pro basketball players go too far to the other extreme by sitting out for extended periods of time over far less severe injuries. It's a big reason why the NBA’s product has become unwatchable. How often is a star player going to sit out multiple games because his calf muscles are sore?
Maybe there’s a balance to be struck somewhere down the line. However, the NBA does seem to agree with Flair that load management is a problem and needs to be curbed. In the league’s new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), players who want to be considered for major individual awards must play at least 65 games in the regular season.
