NBA commissioner David Stern knows that the San Antonio Spurs
are an old team. He also knows that head coach Gregg Popovich will rest his aging
starters from time to time.
Stern even admitted as much by saying that he has no problem
with teams resting their starters. But when it comes to the Spurs playing in a
nationally televised game, he expects all the stars to be playing.
That is the real reason why he fined the Spurs $250,000 for
resting stars Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker. Sure Stern cited a
couple of other reasons like the fact that the Spurs didn’t notify the league
or the opposing team the Miami Heat with enough notice, but that was all
bluster.
The fact of the matter is the NBA gets paid huge sums of
money by the networks who pay to broadcast their games. Unless a player is injured
and unable to play, they are expected to be on the floor.
Now most people understand what Popovich was doing also. His
team was in the midst of a playing four road games in five nights.
And while the Heat make for an exciting matchup, the game
Popovich was more concerned about was San Antonio’s upcoming game against the
division-leading Memphis Grizzlies.
Stern’s main goal since he became the league’s commissioner has
been to market and grow the league so it’s understandable that his main concern
is to the league’s sponsors and owners. Popovich’s only concern is making sure
his team can compete night in and night out.
But what gets missed in this argument is that Popovich could
have easily rested his starters during one or two of the other games during
that four-game stretch. He knew the matchup with the Heat would be nationally
televised.
It’s not like he didn’t know his team would be playing a
tough stretch like this. Popovich even admitted that he had planned to rest his
starters during this game way before going into that stretch.
Which means he had more than ample time to notify both the
league and the Heat that Duncan, Ginobili and Parker wouldn’t be playing. He
also had plenty of time to switch which game he would rest his starters.
But I’ll admit that when I first heard of this incident I was
ready to accuse Stern of being the evil tyrant he sometimes emulates. This time
though I have to admit he was right.
Roosevelt Hall is an NFL Blogger for The Sport Mentalist and an NBA Blogger for The Sport Mentalist 2. He is also a Sports Reporter for Pro Sports Lives. He can be contacted at sportmentalist@yahoo.com and be sure to follow him on Twitter @sportmentalist.
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You ALWAYS notify the other team at the last possible second, that way they have as little time as possible to draw up a game-plan to take advantage of your star players not being in the lineup.
ReplyDeleteThe only time to give a team advanced notice of this sort of thing is when it's injury related so they already knew it.