Silver: "We agree on the rests of NBA stars"

There is no peace in relations between franchises and the league, and the issue of forced rests of stars are becoming increasingly thorny for all parties.

Adam Silver in the day yesterday sent a missive to all franchises asking (veiledly imposing) complete cooperation between the league and franchises in the management of rests.
Silver would like to agree with the teams on scheduled and forced rests for the players. The final straw came in the Cavaliers-Clippers game when James, Irving and Love rested at the same time. Shortly after Gilbert’s choice came the savory phone call from the Olympic tower asking for clarification.

“I have to win titles, not please the league -Gilbert himself said-I get paid by the Cavaliers and I have to do their best interest to win. I fully understand the marketing needs, and indeed I apologize to ABC for any harm we have done them with our decision, but formally there was only one player resting, the other two were assimilated to injuries.”

The commissioner’s response was not slow: “We have obligations with the televisions and with the fans who pay tickets to see the games. We cannot afford to provide a poor product to those who pay for the rights to the games, at least not in live national situations. We have shortened the preseason next season and provided an extra full week of regular season to reduce even more back-to-back and long trips, but we have to understand that no one can do for himself.”

Already at the time of the Spurs-Warriors game there had been some disagreements, but in that case the Warriors rested the stars after a literally unmanageable and extremely heavy schedule with eight cities touched in thirteen nights and as many as 11,000 miles traveled with two trips that crossed the continent.

Kerr’s words were very similar to Gilbert’s and focused the point on the ultimate goal. Obviously at the end of the season only one team will lift the trophy, but at least 4/5 will fight to do so, and this querelle exposes the league to either forced or very judiciously reasoned remedies, because it is true that by reducing the games there is less revenue, but to produce on national TV star-studded matches without stars, for the image, is almost worse.

In collaboration with basketissimo.com