Is resting star players a problem? Nope, but what the Lakers and Suns are doing is

NEW YORK – Adam Silver stepped behind a podium on Friday and it was there, in a gold-adorned ballroom on the second floor of the tony St. Regis hotel, did we learn the NBA commissioner has a future in politics. “I would categorize that as a different kind of resting,” Silver replied to a question about teams tanking, deftly tiptoeing around one of the league’s biggest problems.

Contending teams sitting players for national TV games? On that Silver was clear. The NBA’s Board of Governors meeting was highlighted by a “thoughtful conversation” about a “complex issue” that ended with a “shared view” that teams will avoid resting multiple players for nationally televised games and a that an effort will be made to rest players at home.

On a different kind of rest — known to everyone else as the unsubtle, late-season tanking by the Los Angeles Lakers and Phoenix Suns — Silver was less forceful.

“I think that is also a serious issue for the league,” Silver said. “It’s not a new issue, and the league … sometimes there are other advantages to that end-of-season resting. Sometimes there are opportunities to give other players on the roster additional minutes. But there’s no question there’s also a certain amount of jockeying that’s going on there as teams look to go into the draft.

“That is something that we discussed at our board meeting and agreed that we need to revisit it in a holistic way.”

Translation: It’s a problem — and we have no idea how to fix it.

It’s crazy how much bandwidth has been devoted to a couple of nationally televised games gone bust. The Warriors punted on an ABC-televised game against the Spurs; the Cavs no-showed an ESPN matchup with the Clippers. TV networks write big checks, but the NBA has made a mountain out of a very small molehill.

And besides: Home games? Not resting multiple players for national TV? A room full of well-dressed team officials bobbing their heads in agreement to those ideas is irrelevant unless Gregg Popovich, Steve Kerr and Tyronn Lue are among them. Divvying up rest games is dead on arrival with them. Rest is strategic. Teams are fighting for playoff position. They sit players en masse because they are willing to give away one game; why would they split the rest days and potentially give away two?

And really — who cares? TV? A couple of clunkers hardly devalue the contract. Fans? They deserve sympathy, sure. The dad who bought his son a pair of Lakers-Cavs tickets for Christmas, or the friends who gassed up for a six-hour drive to San Antonio for Spurs-Warriors are victims, collateral damage in a team’s chase for a championship.

But these games are rare. And fans attending get two teams trying to win. Remember the famed Spurs-Heat game in 2012? The Spurs sent Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Danny Green home … and held a lead in the final minute before Miami pulled away.

The stars were gone. The desire to win wasn’t.

In L.A.? Playing well gets you benched. Literally. D’Angelo Russell scored 28 points in the Lakers’ win over Memphis on Sunday. He was a healthy scratch Wednesday against the Spurs. Brandon Ingram scored eight points in the first half of that game. He kept his warmups on in the second.

Phoenix? They quit weeks ago. Brandon Knight hasn’t played since late February. Tyson Chandler, either. Eric Bledsoe made it to mid-March before the Suns shut him down. Phoenix isn’t even hiding it. Coach Earl Watson tells everyone the benchings are a management decision. The NBA’s response? Crickets.

Expect the league to care? It won’t. Why? Because you don’t. Lakers fans celebrate losses. They know the score: Slip inside the top-three, keep the pick, hang on to a 2019 first-rounder, too. The Suns have a star in Devin Booker and are willing to endure whatever humiliation they have to this season to get Markelle Fultz or Lonzo Ball to play alongside him. And no one pushes back.

So the NBA stays out of it. Only it shouldn’t. The league is tainted by dozens of games played with one team actively trying to lose it. The brand is tarnished when casual fans tune in to see the local team getting tattooed by 20. Playoff races are impacted by teams that are one step above a forfeit.

The solution? Easy. Fine them. Reach deep into their pockets. Former commissioner David Stern hit the Spurs with a $250,000 punishment for refusing to bring their A-team to Miami. That number works. See what Lakers owner Jeanie Buss’ and Suns owner Robert Sarver’s appetite for tanking is when a quarter-of-a-million-dollar bill comes with every game they kick away.

Wait, won’t they just fake injuries? It’s happened before. The injured list predates the inactive list, and in those days plantar fasciitis was contagious on teams that wanted to keep a couple of extra bodies on the roster. So send an independent doctor. Think Bledsoe is going to lie for a team tanking to draft someone to replace him? Think Luol Deng will take a bullet for the Busses?

Answer: They won’t.

The NBA says the integrity of the game is important, yet the Lakers and Suns actively trying to lose games is as damaging as ex-referee Tim Donaghy betting on them. Local television partners — who pay tens of millions for the contracts — don’t get their money’s worth. Fans ponying up hundreds of dollars for tickets don’t, either. Losing isn’t a strategy; it’s an excuse, a way for a team that has made countless bad decisions already to rationalize bottoming out.

The NBA lets them. But it doesn’t have to. And it shouldn’t.

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