Adam Silver would prefer that the NBA's superstars 'rest' during home games
Adam Silver is doing as good a job as can be expected as NBA commissioner so far, and further evidence of such can be found within his reaction to another star sitting for a mundane game due to “rest.”
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The NBA, in a show of common sense, has declined to impose penalties beyond the whole “missing your best player because the schedule is tough”-thing on teams, while kneading their hands in unhappy anticipation of the latest round of steaming (and apparently not satiric) takes.
What Adam Silver would like, understandably, is for teams to rest the superstar in games featuring some familiar faces. At home.
Via Pro Basketball Talk, here’s Silver’s discussion with SiriusXM’s Justin Termine and Eddie Johnson:
I get it for those disappointed fans. Part of me would prefer that, if you’re going to rest a player, rest him for the home fans, because they get to see that player all the time. But on the other hand, I recognize it’s matchup specific. Once again, I’m not sure that having an absolute rule that if a player is rested, he must be rested at home works either. So, it’s not an easy issue to resolve.
The initial issue here is that these things are not “matchup specific.” Nobody is resting superstars because they had to take on another franchise player at their position the night before. And LeBron James didn’t duck out the Pacers because Paul George was in line to battle it out with The King.
They sat because they were playing on the second night of a back-to-back, which just about counts for double when it comes to the added heft of performance that the body takes on.
The “rest him for home fans” attempt at cheery suggestion is just Silver making the best he can out of what little room he has to influence (without fines or suspensions) in this particular realm. We all can relate – think of yourself in the final minutes watching a close game between two teams you don’t cheer for. You tend to root for the home squad, so as not to see some 20,000 disappointed faces. Because you’re not a weirdo and you don’t find joy in thousands of people having their night ruined.
The problem with Silver’s assertion is that the home crowd isn’t overwhelmingly filled with season ticket holders. The bulk of the fans aren’t the ones that are there two or three times a week. They’re exceedingly filled with those that could only hope to make it two or three times a year. Or just, on this particular night, once.
That’s the bulk of the NBA’s fanbase, with ticket prices ranging from the sensible to the outrageous, pooling all the cash for one big day at the races. These one-and-done’rs are not unlike the ones that have already paid for the next night, on the superstar’s road.
Also, as Dan Feldman at Pro Basketball Talk pointed out, the massive majority of these back-to-backs aren’t pitched as “home-and-road.” It’s a game in Miami, usually followed by a sometimes-missed game against the Magic. It’s the Pacers on a Friday, and a trip to Detroit on a Saturday. It’s a TNT game against the Warriors, then a trip up to Sacramento in a contest that will be seen by, um, much fewer people.
The live, paying audience still count among those few, though. Just because a star’s TNT work against the Warriors from Thursday is still fresh in everyone’s viral minds entering Friday afternoon, it doesn’t fully excuse the date night gone star-less in person on Friday night.
The NBA, which asks LeBron James to play full out from late October until (as it has been for the last six seasons) mid-June, has no way out of this until they extend the league’s calendar schedule. The 82-game season isn’t going anywhere, as it would cut the sort of “and the next night, in Indianapolis”-sort of games that we’re already hand-wringing about.
No, the NBA needs to start its regular season (which already runs parallel to the MLB postseason and pro and unpaid football seasons) earlier in October. It wouldn’t shift the needle in the slightest for any of the leagues ratings-wise, and a longer schedule frame to work with would allow for the needed elimination of back-to-back and four-in-five-night game action.
That might hit, with an agreed-upon new collective bargaining agreement, for the 2016-17 season. For the next four and a half months, though, we’re just going to have to grit our happy teeth through this. As Adam Silver has provided the action template for.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
