Surprise, surprise: Players not ready to give up game checks for shortened season so they can get their rest. Silver: Resting players is NBA's biggest issue When it comes to resting players, Silver said, “There emerged from the meeting a shared view that teams should avoid resting multiple players for national TV games, and to the extent rest is possible, there should be a strong preference for resting players at home.” _____________ On Friday, Silver said owners discussed issuing guidelines for sitting players, but “not necessarily at the point of enforceable rules.” “I only say this is a complex issue because many of our coaches have pointed out that as disappointing as it is for any individual fan on a night where a player is rested, if we all came to the point where we accepted the science (and) the medical data supports genuine resting as improving performance and prolonging careers and reducing injuries, I think we'd all have to agree that it does make sense at certain points in the season to rest players,” Silver said. “Now, I'm hopeful we can accomplish much of our goals by better scheduling. The additional week I mentioned will make a huge difference in avoiding the four games out of five nights and reducing back-to-backs significantly.” Silver acknowledged the league can do a better job of scheduling when it comes to marquee TV games, and don’t be surprised if a team doesn’t have a back-to-back when playing on the Saturday ABC game or one of the big-time TNT Thursday games. _____________ Shortening the season is not an option now, and it’s accepted that players and owners will make less money with fewer games. “It was not discussed, reducing the number of regular-season games,” Silver said. “I'd say because there is no support right now, hard support, for a belief that simply reducing the number of games will reduce the number of injuries. As best we understand the issue right now, it's a function of spacing games. It's not the totality of games. Silver also said, “The question comes up all the time: would this problem be solved by shortening the season? Putting aside the obvious economic implications of shortening the season, it's not clear at all that it would be."
This is called, "Having the cake and eat it." Science says that players should not play so much. But they want to make money. So sorry, fans, you--not they--are the ones who should pay for resting them. "I can't play that many games. But I want the money. So you pay for the games that I don't play."
Adam Silver was on Mike & Mike this morning: Last week, you called the issue of resting the most critical one facing the league right now. What role will the players play in trying to pursue remedies for that? How will they be involved? On resting, one thing that frustrates me, I appreciate people saying that I'm focused on the players well-being & great relationships between owners & players. Resting is not a player issue. I keep pointing out to people that players don't rest themselves. These are organizational decisions, decisions made by coaches & GM. Many players I run into don't even want to be rested. They don't necessarily challenge the science in which smart GMs & sophisticated trainers are telling coaches that they'll improve in performance & health of their players if they rest them at certain points. This is where I am defensive of players because sometimes when I hear commentary, even from the great legends from our league, that when I played, "Men where men & we just played." The guys want to play. This league is a partnership with players. There is a problem now. I've identified the problem. I not only sent a memo out to all teams but discussed it at owners meetings last week. It's one where I don't think there's as easy a solution as some might think. If there was, we would have implemented it. If it was just a question of here's the new rule: you can't rest healthy players because determining who is really healthy, getting into competing doctor notes between league office & teams doesn't make sense. One thing we can focus on & I've talked to teams about this is to the extent rest is necessary & the science proves it out, you should err towards resting at home. In our league, you have situations where star players will only travel to the other conference once. There's anticipation from fans in that market that they'll get an opportunity to see that player & to the extent the player is healthy & needs to be rested, don't do it in those games. And number two, why it became such a bigger issue this season, resting multiple starters on the same night. That's something for the most part, other than end of season games, hadn't seen in past years. My concern is that I worry there becomes gamesmanship there instead of sports science. This is one of these issues where...and I hear people say I've taken too light of touch...one thing I wasn't gonna do & never tried to do is change competitive rules mid-season. For me to start badgering owners, GMs or coaches while the season is in progress & the league office says you must not rest in these games is unfair from a competitive standpoint. It's never been an issue during the playoffs & don't expect it to be in the next 2 months or so. We'll look at it with the competition committee with owners to see if there's a better way to deal with multiple starters resting, whether it's prime-time on TV or for any game. It doesn't seem like that should be necessary. We keep saying sports science. Have you seen that information? Does the league buy into sports scientists? It's a great question. As it's become a bigger issue, I've started looking at the sports science. It's not as clear or precise as some people might think. Some of our GMs have started modeling what they do after European soccer. For example, the great soccer clubs strategic resting has been part of their program for years now. Part of it has been sharing of information from trainers in Europe with the trainers in the U.S. & GMs. The view has been that it's been effective when done in soccer. There's been additional resting that's going on in baseball for years now, when you see everyday players resting more than they ever did, certainly when we were kids. When you look at the science, it's tough to do the apples-to-apples comparison. Our GMs/Coaches who have been around a long time will say the game on the floor today looks very different than it did 30 years ago. It's a much more physical game, there's much more scrutiny on every game. I was talking to Magic Johnson about this, I was in a meeting with him. People said "In your day, no one ever rested." He said "That's not quite true. Riley did rest me at certain points." But also there wasn't the same scrutiny. We could circle the national games on NBC. Of course we wouldn't rest in those games. If we had a Wednesday night conference game, it wasn't clear that even highlights would make the air, let alone the game. It was just a different time. I'm wary of the comparisons of today & decades ago. It's a different game now. There's a different level of transparency on everything that happens in the league today.
The issue of teams tanking. As you sit back & look at the system as it's set up, do you believe some change or tweak is in order for that system, where there is a race to the bottom? I do think some sort of change is necessary. When I first became commissioner, I proposed changing the draft lottery. I lost the vote. It requires a super majority(2/3). 17 teams were in favor of it. Majority were, not super majority. I would say I learned my lesson that I need to do a better job counting heads before I propose something to owners. More importantly, it wasn't just the question of the vote. There were some very interesting points made by some GMs as unintended consequences of rule changes like that. We all agreed instead of trying to twist arms & bring it to a vote at the next meeting, let's wait & see what happens with the new CBA which is now in place. Teams were saying if FA is gonna change, if the draft changes in any way, those are other ways teams get top players so we should do this holistically. We will turn back to that now. Back to the Mara family, things have changed. While I can't expect teams not to act in self-interest, in the "old days", there was a more sense of obligation to the league. We have 30 teams. If every team is well managed, if every team has the same resources as roughly with the salary cap & same amount luck, the analytics will say your chances of winning are once every 30 years. Yet, teams are operated as if there's a chance every year. Of course some teams will. If it's only about winning, it will be very unsatisfying to be part of a NBA franchise. While the Rooney's had it all because they also won multiple championships, there was a sense that the team was a community asset. Yeah, fans are disappointed if they didn't win the championship that year but it was part of their heart & soul. Truly part of the fabric of the community. We're losing that a little bit. Maybe it's the value of the franchises when people are paying on average over a billion dollars to own a NBA team. We will have to react & change incentives a bit. I do think it's frustrating...for example, Steve Kerr last year, they set the all-time record for regular season wins. Hardly any rest. When they got to game 7 of the Finals, roughly 2 months after the end of the regular season, a lot of the critics said to Kerr "You should have rested your players more during the season." Those same commentators when he rested this season said "How dare you?" Calibrating it just right isn't so easy. I was watching the Knicks/Philly game. At the end, the MSG Knicks feed, one announcer said when they won, "OK, I guess that's good?" It was decreasing their chances in the lottery. It's hard to just blame the teams. Culturally, it's boom or bust a little more today than in the old days. It's hard to be critical of teams for reacting to that notion that everything is about winning. If that's the case, we'll have to change or tweak this system. I was talking European soccer a little while ago. I'm not suggesting we'll do it in the NBA but they have the best incentives of all. Teams get relegated out of the league. Think of the consequences there. they lose TV money, they lose the big ticket revenue from not playing top teams. They have every incentive not to fall to the bottom. I think in our league it just may be, as I watch a team like the Sixers be praised for the so-called "Process", a favorable comparison to the Knicks as if that's what Phil Jackson should have done. Completely blow up the team, have the worst record in the history of the league over 4 years, that the Knicks would have been better off. I don't know, maybe they would have been. If that's the case, we definitely have to change the rules if a GM like Phil Jackson doesn't have the incentive to try & build a team over time but rather have to completely blow it up & start from absolute rock bottom. In the new CBA, Paul George will be the first test case. There is $75M on him making 3rd team All-NBA. The media will decide that. People in our industry are uncomfortable with that power over that kind of money. Is that something the league has looked at? It is something we're looking at. The notion there, it came about from not the most recent CBA but the one 6 years ago. One philosophy going into the negotiation was that we had to do a better job tying pay to performance while we have a salary cap & there's a maximum player salary & max number of years. The other notion was to help teams keep their own FAs. Let's put them in position to pay them more than another team could. The idea was that...it's a zero sum game in the pie of money distributed to the players & the players who perform at the highest level should receive the most money. One way we did that was to try & tie directly to performance on the floor their ability to get the max increase. So then, how do we determine who are the the highest performing players? One concern from both sides(owners & players), if it were entirely statistically based, you'd have players padding their stats or with incentives to pad their stats & not focused on winning. On the other hand, there was a sense if it was just about winning, if there was an incredible player but didn't have the support he needed to play at the highest level, therefore he'd be disincentivized to stay as they try to build a team. We looked for an objective measure. The best we could come up with was a panel of media members, roughly 100, who vote on the All-NBA teams. I see there's an issue with it. I haven't come up with a better way of doing it. It's a touchy subject. Over time, when you have 100 people voting, you're most likely to get to the right results. In the old days, team broadcasters employed by the team were allowed to vote. We took them out of the pool because we thought there'd be too much pressure on them to vote for their players. That's how we came up with it. If there's a better way of doing it, we'll look at it. Why couldn't Tony Romo play in that game? I thought we reached a fair compromise. It's my job to say no. I don't think either Tony or Mark were shocked that the league feels stunts like that should only go so far. Integrity of the game & more importantly on behalf of the greatest players in the world, I'm not sure you should be issuing contracts on an honorary basis but nothing against Tony. He's a great guy.
