Like the Nets before them, the Heat received a $25K fine from the NBA on Friday as the league cracks down on injury reporting violations.
According to a statement from the NBA (Twitter link), the Heat “failed to disclose an accurate game availability status for several players” before the team’s Wednesday game vs. Oklahoma City. As Anthony Chiang of The Miami Herald explains, citing a source, Miami didn’t formally announce prior to Wednesday’s tip-off whether a handful of players listed as probable and questionable would be available or out.
A $25K penalty is a drop in the bucket for an NBA franchise, so it’s not as if the league is coming down hard on teams for improper injury reporting. Still, fines for two separate teams this week suggest the NBA may be making it a point of emphasis to encourage more transparency.
As Danny Marang of 1080 The Fan in Portland tweets, the Heat appear to be going the “petty” route in response to the fine. They’ve listed all 16 of their players on the official injury report for Saturday’s game in San Antonio, with seven designated as probable, six as questionable, and three as out.
I don’t get the mechanics of this. They didn’t disclose if some players as probable and questionable were available or not for the game prior to tip off. How many and which players were not disclosed? Some, or none of the ones they were supposed to report? How is this report usually issued? Somebody at the game receives a piece of paper prior to tip off? 30 minutes before? Is the team supposed to send a message online to enter in some central database? The Heat reported some players but not all the ones they were supposed to report?
And then they are petty because they put all their players as probable or questionable, requiring them to put everyone on this necessary report before game time? I don’t see how that is petty so much as trying to make a decision on how to avoid making a misstep on which players need a final report.
Designations like “probable,” “questionable,” and “doubtful” are only used well in advance of the game. I believe the deadline to update all of those statuses to either “available” or “out” is 30 minutes before the game. The Heat didn’t do that in this case, as seen here in the 8:30 PM ET injury report from Wednesday: link to ak-static.cms.nba.com
Listing all 16 guys for today’s game strikes me as a sarcastic “is this enough information for you?” response to the NBA. Don’t think it’s any deeper than that.
danke schoen