REST OF THE STORY
No easy answer for NBA’s benching of healthy stars
THESE are the souls that try men’s times.
Best wishes and sympathies to NBA commissioner Adam Silver, now stuck up a well-known creek without a paddle.
Starting with the mid1980s arrival of Michael Jordan, when Silver was in his 20s, the NBA, its TV partners and advertisers determined it would sell individual stars as opposed to its teams or even basketball as a team game. The league and its business associates continue to sell stars as the reason to spend one’s time and money on the NBA.
Thus, Silver has not ignored what is increasingly conspicuous: unrequited come-ons in the form of ticket and TV bait-and-switching that gives the teams’ stars the entire game off — a “bye game” by today’s silliness — especially late in the season with the playoffs approaching.
For the best teams, that is both a luxury and a sound strategy, as it allows rest while limiting the chances of injury.
So while Silver can encourage teams to play their stars to meet TV and ticket sales come-ons — he can’t succeed in a demand to play them a minimum amount of time in every or any game, not that he would want compliance with such a mandate.
After all, Silver, no more than the players’ coaches, would want exhausted or incapacitated stars come the NBA’s postseason.
If, say, Stephen Curry were injured in a nationally televised, sold out, late-regularseason game in which he might otherwise — and sensibly — have been rested, who takes the hit? Why give Curry’s coach, Steve Kerr, the opportunity to explain, “I was following NBA orders”?
And what can happen will happen.
Silver’s stuck to do right when there are two rights to choose from — both in direct conflict with the other.
I’m left with Homer Simpson’s toast to booze: “To alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”
So good luck with this one, Commissioner. And have one on me.