A.C. Green has a streak that will probably never be broken, considering the way players and coaches now view the 82-game schedule.
Green holds the NBA record for most consecutive games played with 1,192. Green’s streak looks more and more like Cal Ripken’s MLB Iron Man streak — something that no other player will come close to breaking. In today’s NBA, even a full season of games is considered too much to bear.
Coaches are resting players with increased frequency and commissioner Adam Silver isn’t happy about it. Many fans and the league’s broadcast partners are also irked by the practice of teams giving their stars who are healthy enough to play the night off. It’s become a hot-button issue now that two nationally-televised ABC broadcasts have featured a Warriors’ team sitting all their stars and the Cavaliers doing the same the following Saturday night.
Silver sent out a memo to all team owners imploring them to get more involved in decisions to sit out players, citing the “business ramifications” of these healthy scratches. It’s certainly not good for TV ratings and it shortchanges fans who bought tickets to these games, expecting to see LeBron James and Stephen Curry instead of second- and third-stringers.
Silver also called for significant penalties to be levied on teams who don’t given sufficient notice that they’re going to sit players.
Along with contenders giving their regulars a rest, some non-contenders are shutting down veterans to take longer looks at their younger players. The Suns are in case in point — they had to sign a player to 10-day contract on Sunday just have eight players suit up for a game earlier this week.
The flip side of the argument is that contenders want to keep their best players fresh for the postseason, rather than wear them out to collect a few more regular-season victories. As James, who has missed six games this season, points out, “A coach’s job is to figure out a way for their team to compete for a championship, not compete for a game.”
That brings us to our question of the day: Do you believe that the NBA needs to curtail the practice of resting players? If so, how should the league address the issue?
Please take to the comments section to voice your opinion. We look forward to your input on this topic.
The only way for this to stop is if the league cuts the back-to-back games to a minimum. They should really be home games not games where you travel from the midwest to the east coast overnight. If this were the case players would play all the games.
TNT or ABC is dumb enough to broadcast the back end of a back-to-back game where the Cavs or Warriors are on the road.. no sympathy for the tv networks here.
I’m also incredibly tired of hearing people tell teams to rest their guys at home. This is the dumbest idea ever.
Why disappoint 90% of the fanbase instead of 10%? The home team is liable to provide the show to the fans, not the visitors. I think teams should be penalized for resting guys at home if anything.
If wanna see Curry play, I go to Oakland. I’m not gonna expect the Spurs to provide a payer who isn’t even on their team.
Teams love to jack up ticket prices when Warriors or Cavs come to town, but can’t promise that the other team will play their stars. This is unfortunate but not the visiting teams fault.
I absolutely agree. buying a ticket gets you entrance to the game, that’s it. If a coach thinks a player needs rest, the commissioner is going to say “sorry, but the tv audience thinks he should play”? I’d rather have stern actually
The problem is you pay a premium for certain tickets because of the players on that team. If those players are not playing then you shouldn’t have to pay full price. There was an 80 dollar difference for the same seat between the Cavs and Timberwolves playing in LA.
I completely agree with your idea about home games. If anything, teams are more inclined to play their stars (aka not rest them) at home to provide for their fans. Cleveland has no obligation to provide for the fans in LA. Why would a smart owner/front office/coach purposely rest their players at home and anger the fans who they’ll end up playing in front of for 41 games a year? To take the Cavs as an example again, the Cavs want to please the Cleveland fanbase since they are more likely to pay for tickets and buy merchandise. What reason is there for the Cavs to make sure they please every other fan base other than to provide good entertainment?
If they want to sell shoes to fans in across the country (world) then they need to play. As a consumer if I buy a ticket to watch Lebron, KD, Curry, Harden and any other star that what me to buy his shoes he had better play if he is not hurt. My son a huge KD fan and we drove to Memphis to watch him play. If he would have rested for a game on Feb. That would have been the end of money going to any KD logo products. You want resting to stop punish the players by not buying their product and If sales drop Nike will have them playing all the games again.
Rest is fine when a player is banged up. It is the healthy player that doesn’t play road games that kills fans. Some fans get one shot to see a guy like Labron each season. If you are healthy go to work and if you are banged up rest a game. Just like anyone at their job.
I’m glad that coaches and players are coming to their senses. The NBA schedule is totally insane. Teams frequently play games after flying 1000 miles the night before and getting in at 2 or 3 am. The schedule is the problem, not the players needing to rest. The solution is very simple, the NBA has to continue limiting the number of back to backs, especially back to backs that involve long travel. Fortunately the league has improved the schedule a bit in recent years. Adding a week or more to the season next year will help even more.
People pay hundreds of dollars per ticket to see these pampered millionaires put a ball through a hoop, some of them drive hours to games, and when they get glorified D-League games because the star players rest, it ruins the experience.
This is the quickest way the NBA can isolate its fans. If that’s what the league intended to do, it couldn’t do any better.
Resting players is a disgrace and an insult to the customer.
It truly borders on consumer fraud: I buy a ticket for an NBA game I expect an NBA product not a D-League product.
So the simple solution is if teams insist on resting players, those games’ tickets are adjusted to D-League prices. All fans will be entitled to a credit for use at a future game or a cash refund for the difference.
You don’t wanna play 82 games? Fine. Don’t sign an NBA contract. Your game pay goes into the fund to refund fans.
When I buy a Pearl Jam ticket I want Eddie Vedder. Not a choir boy stand-in.
This whole conversation really pisses me off. It’s a total f
You want ticket prices adjusted to D-league prices? Go watch the D-League then. Even if the stars are resting (LeBron, Kyrie, Curry, Klay, etc.), the rest of the roster is still better than a D-League team. What happens if the teams don’t rest their players but the game is still a mess (poor shooting, sloppy turnovers, etc), are we going to ask for refunds on the game because it didn’t meet our standards?
In regards to the 82 games part, so you’re basically saying that if a player doesn’t play the full season (due to rest) that he should just give up his contract/not sign a contract? I mean what you’re proposing there is the same as telling a normal, everyday person to give up their job because they took a “sick day” or want to go on vacation.
And while I agree with the Pearl Jam/Eddie Vedder part, that’s simply not how it works in sports. You’re buying a ticket for the whole group/team, not a single person. I mean if your spending money on a ticket to see a single person play and don’t really care about the rest of the group/team, you’re probably better off saving that money and just watching it from home. When I buy tickets to games, I’m not buying them to see a certain player play. If I wanted that so badly I would watch YouTube highlights. I’m going to the game for the atmosphere and hopefully to see my favorite team win.
How about coaches man-up and take the blame? They decide how many minutes each player plays per game. A lot of the stars have more minutes because well, they are the stars. But maybe if LeBron wasn’t averaging 37.6 Minutes per game he wouldn’t be too tired to play both back-to-back games. Average 25MPG for 82 games if healthy instead of trying too hard some nights and sitting out others. Win-Win for players and fans. Playoff seeding does not mean that much anymore.
Normally do not comment but this issue is one that keeps coming up. I do not see the issue of resting players over an 82 game season baseball players get regular rest and play four games in a row regularly in a far less taxing sport. More specifically pitchers are limited in the amount of innings they throw in order to keep healthy for the postseason or from injury. There is no foul in protecting your most valuable assets.
Agreed. And baseball players don’t play all 162 games anymore and the game is more conducive to resting players in game. In football, players will regularly miss practice to rest up and even then, the players often rotate in-and-out to prevent fatigue (with QB and usually O-linemen being the exception).
Want to rest your guys that’s fine. Better come with some free LeBron jerseys and free swag in addition to whatever “$1 hot dog” night promotion you’ve got going on.
I’m watching Michael & Jemele talk about how the everyday fan doesn’t want to hear about players being tired and needing rest and not getting paid enough. They are like “well these guys put their body through so much” except last time I checked no NBA player got black lung playing basketball, never died from working in a +10% LEL environment, never died from an excavation cave-in, the only reason they die is from a drug over-dose or a pre-disposed disease. It literally is a game, it’s not a “job”. No one plays a pick-up game of confined space entry.
There’s a reason I won’t go to games, no guarantee I’ll even see the player I went to go see. Better view from my couch. And I don’t have to pay for ancillary stuff like… $20 parking or $5 water bottles. The incentive is waning. And I used to go to dozens of sporting events a year.
Every point you raise here is 100% true and I agree. Although to be fair not many, if any, other professions come with the same injury risk to their heads (like concussions) or just muscle and bone tears/breaks/fractures/sprains. Granted, the chance of them dying in their profession isn’t high, but there’s still a chance.
And I agree with the last part. I prefer watching games from home because its relatively cheaper (to watch and for food/drinks), the view is good, and you rarely miss anything if you take a bathroom break. In my opinion, people go see a game live for the experience and atmosphere, not actually for the game. You can’t get an arena-like atmosphere from home or at a bar, and that’s honestly what makes seeing a game in person so great.