One of the major issues that arose during the NBA regular season was teams resting multiple star players on the same night. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver says that is something he would like to combat with policies.
Silver spoke with ESPN’s Cassidy Hubbarth for an interview that was aired prior to the NBA Draft lottery. In the interview, Silver addressed the resting issue and said he wants to put some guidelines in place to combat the issue.
“I think the things we can address most immediately is the resting of multiple stars in one night,” said Silver. “That crosses the line in my mind from strategic resting to gamesmanship. I think at our last owners’ meetings in April there was a general consensus among teams in the room that that’s not appropriate, that we’re misserving our fans and misserving our business partners when we do that.
“The other issue is, to the extent players need to be rested, let’s rest them at home whenever possible. Because there’s 41 home games during the regular season. Your home fans have an opportunity to see your superstar players on a regular basis. But especially when a team in the Western Conference only travels East once, for those fans in that city who might not otherwise have an opportunity to see that player, let’s try to play the player on that night.
“What we hope to do is issue guidelines to our teams this summer. By definition, guidelines are a little softer. I’m hoping that with these guidelines, we can deal with the worst parts of this issue.”
Both the Warriors and Cavaliers employed this practice during the season. The matter received significant attention after the teams did it for primetime national TV games on Saturday nights. Even LeBron James addressed the matter with these comments.
The NBA setting some guidelines should be a priority this offseason.
