The NBA has a rest problem.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was furious after watching two of the league’s marquee teams, the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers, sit all of their star players in back-to-back weekends.
First, the Warriors sat Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala in a nationally televised matchup with the San Antonio Spurs. Kevin Durant was already expected to miss the game due to his knee injury. The Spurs’ Kawhi Leonard, Tony Parker and LaMarcus Aldridge also missed the game due to injuries. What was expected to be a highly dramatic game between the two best teams in the Western Conference ended up being a nationally televised JV scrimmage.
The following weekend, the Cleveland Cavaliers got into the action by sitting LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love in a nationally televised matchup against the Los Angeles Clippers. To be fair, Irving suffered a minor knee injury in the previous game and Love had just returned from arthroscopic knee surgery and is not expected to play in back-to-back games for a while. James however was a healthy scratch.
Silver penned a memo to NBA teams, threatening “significant penalties” if teams do not give the league adequate notice when deciding to rest star players. After all, this season marks the first year of the league’s nine-year, $24 billion television contracts with ABC/ESPN and Turner Broadcasting. The head honchos at Disney (parent company of ESPN and ABC) aren’t interested in hearing how resting James on the second-night of a back-to-back will help keep him fresh for the playoffs. They want marquee players suited up for marquee matchups.
Fans aren’t interested in excuses either. The average cost of a NBA ticket is more than $56 per seat. It’s not surprising that fans want assurances that the best players will be on the court (if healthy) before they shell out the big bucks. TV analyst and former NBA coach Jeff Van Gundy called it a “bait-and-switch” when teams take the court without healthy star players.
On the other hand, the goal for the league’s elite teams is to win NBA championships. If a coach believes that resting players will help to achieve that goal, they won’t hesitate to do so. The Spurs’ Gregg Popovich popularized the strategy by routinely sitting Parker, Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili as the Spurs racked up five championships in 16 seasons.
Rick Carlisle, coach of the Dallas Mavericks, acknowledged that resting Jason Kidd during his later years, helped the Mavericks win a championship in 2011. Also, there’s no doubt that the 2015-16 Warriors’ push for 73 victories played a part in the team’s epic 3-1 collapse to the Cavaliers in the Finals.
What’s the solution?
The best idea comes from Mike Vaccaro of the NY Post. Vaccaro suggested that the NBA adopt similar rules as the MLB’s 10-day disabled list. Under the proposal, teams would be allowed to rest one healthy player without penalty. Want to rest two or more in a single game? Teams would then be forced to place the players on a four-game injured-reserve stint. In other words, the players would have to sit an entire week. Ingenious.
The Warriors might be willing to cede one game to the Spurs by resting Curry, Thompson, Green and Iguodala all at once. Would they be willing to risk four games by grounding the team’s stars, all in the name of keeping the team healthy for the playoffs? Nah.
It seems like a perfect compromise. Teams can give star players a spot rest, here and there. However, networks and fans run less of a risk of dud matchups if a team can only rest one player at a time. ESPN would likely be content to feature a primetime matchup without James as long as Irving and Love are on the court.
A team sitting all its stars at once is a slap in the face to the fans, advertisers and networks that pony up the big bucks that allow players to earn millions and owners to run franchises worth billions.
The league could try to enforce a rule that healthy scratches would only be allowed at home games. In the current environment, NBA teams often schedule rest for its stars during long road trips. That way, teams don’t disappoint their own fans with DNPs. If coaches were only allowed to sit healthy players at home, we would likely see less players getting vacation days. Empty seats, lower concession stands and lower season ticket sales could affect the franchise’s bottom lines. That means owners would make coaches think long and hard before letting the franchise player(s) have a night off ‘just because.’
Going back to the MLB, few people care about healthy scratches in baseball because the season is 162 games long. It’s expected that players will miss games now and then. The NBA season lasts 82 games. It seems very unlikely that players and owners will ever come to an agreement for a shorter season with less games and less money.
What could work though, is for them to make the season longer. No, I’m not suggesting they add more games, but rest-gate could go away by stretching out the season’s 82 games over an extra month. Currently the NBA regular season runs from late-October until mid-April. The NHL, which also features an 82-game season for its teams, runs from late-September until mid-April. If the NBA starts a month earlier, it could keep the back-to-back games to a minimum and maybe eliminate them altogether.
Players probably wouldn’t be happy giving up an entire month of their off time, but they’ll have to choose whether they want more rest in-season or during the offseason.
One thing that will never happen, and shouldn’t happen, is docking players pay. Healthy scratches are usually decisions of the coaches, not the players. If you tie money to games, it’s only a matter of time before shady coaches and GMs begin sitting players and withholding money as leverage in contract negotiations, disputes or when they feel buyer’s remorse for players performing below expectations. That’s not a slippery slope, it’s a stupid one that the NBA would be wise to avoid at all costs.
Follow Ishmael and In the Clutch on Twitter @IshmaelSistrunk
