What a moron. If those "healthy" players get injured during the regular season and miss the post-season then the whole season will be in vain. I swear, if Stern starts fining teams for resting their star players...
Translation: "We don't care about the health of our players, because the revenue from those last games at the end of the season is more important than them."
Reduce the regular season to 65 games. Injuries can happen any time but most players will have more energy going into the playoffs.
It's all lip service. The NFL offices pretty much said the exact same thing then when it came up for discussion, no owners would support infringing on any other team's choice.
this is stupid. teams should be able to rest the players whenever they want. if you can bench a guy the whole game, then this should be just fine. teams who get themselves in this position should have the luxury of resting their players if they wish. and i don't have that much of a sympathy for teams trying to get into the playoffs in the last few games of the season. it's like having sympathy for a someone who procrastinates.
I think Stern is just talking to be talking. There is nothing the NBA can realistically do about this. Teams can easily find a way around whatever rule they put in place.
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Also they don't care about the fans, don't buy these ticket fans...because there is good chance that your team will either have one foot on the beach or not even thinking about the regular season. You see the NFL response to this was "This is a slap in the face of competition." The NBA's "Go ahead guys, it makes sense to rest your guys and tell your fans the remaining games don't really matter anymore."
But scheduling division games at the end of the season will stop it. If that had been the Texans playing the Colts that week instead of the Jets, Peyton would have played the entire game. Because the Colts have shown they are not going to rest their guys against a rival, and i'm sure most teams in the NFL feel the same way.
i think he knows that its fair if teams want to rest the star players before the playoffs. obviously, he can't condone this publicly because his job is to make the nba profitable. you don't sell tickets by announcing that you will be watching the B team play tonight. i think he answered the question in a diplomatic way, appeasing both sides of the argument.
first the NFL, now the NBA? In the NBA is more reasonable to rest players, they usually rest the players for like 5 games, so you got 77 more games to sell tickets when the star is playing. and in the playoffs, I think they raise the price of the tickets, so you got there the money of the tickets you didnt sell in the last 5-10 games of the season.
I said it before. Playing 82 games in the regular season just makes a whole bunch of games meaningless.
This would be great for fantasy owners. I almost lossed the fantasy finals today because i own lebron. However, fantasy beasketball is the worst reasoning to support making healthy players play. It is definitely better for them to rest as it provides longevity to the star players of the NBA. This is extremely important to keep the NBA more competative.
I'm all for reducing the length of the season, but how can you say that any game is meaningless when you look at how close some of the playoff seeds turn out every year?
