The Brooklyn Nets may be getting sent to the principal’s office.
Brian Lewis of the New York Post reported Sunday that the NBA is reviewing Brooklyn’s decision to load-manage several of their players during last Wednesday’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks. Lewis notes that the league is trying to determine whether the Nets’ actions rose to the level of a finable offense.
Brooklyn decided to sit out four players altogether (Nic Claxton, Spencer Dinwiddie, Dorian Finney-Smith, and Cam Johnson) and pulled another three (Mikal Bridges, Cam Thomas, and Royce O’Neale) after just the first quarter. They predictably ended up getting cooked by the Bucks 144-122.
The NBA has long frowned upon the load management of otherwise healthy players and passed new rules in the offseason to further crack down on the practice. But the Nets seem unlikely to be found in violation of those new rules since Wednesday’s game was not nationally-televised and also since no “star” players (by the league’s definition, those who have made an All-Star or All-NBA team within the previous three seasons) were rested. Ben Simmons is the only such player on Brooklyn’s roster, and he has been out for almost two months now with an actual injury to his back.
The Nets will maintain that their actions were necessary since Wednesday’s game was the second end of a back-to-back and part of a grueling stretch of six games in ten days to close out the calendar year. But the decision still stank for fans who bought tickets in advance for a marquee game against Milwaukee. The NBA has fined teams before under pre-existing load management rules and may do so again here with Brooklyn.
