NBA teams shouldn’t rest their star players for games
The date was June 9, 2002, and the occasion was a bus trip with my young son to Yankee Stadium for a game between the Yanks and the San Francisco Giants.
The starting pitcher for the Yankees that day was Roger Clemens. Starting in the outfield for the Giants was Barry Bonds.
What could be better, I told my son, than to watch one of the game’s all- time best power pitchers match up with the sport’s future career home-run king?
Yeah, they both played. But, Clemens didn’t pitch to Bonds, at least not in theory.
Bonds got four at-bats against the Yankee hurler. Clemens walked him intentionally three times and, then, after some nibbling produced a 3- and-1 count on Bonds’ fourth at- bat, he in- tentionally threw wide for another walk.
In all, Clemens threw 17 pitches to Bonds. Thirteen of them were intentional balls. Three others were semi-intentionally thrown out of the strike zone. One, close enough ( barely) to have been called a strike.
Seventeen pitches, 16 of them very wide. Bonds didn’t take a single swing against Clemens.
So much for the anticipation of one of the sport’s greatest power-vs.-power match ups. But, at least they both played. These days, fans who pay exorbitant prices to attend professional games can’t even be sure of that.
The trend, which is more like a plague, is most-notable in the NBA, initially perpetrated by San Antonio Spurs’ coach Greg Popovich.
As that team’s core of standouts got older, Popovich thought nothing of resting key players by holding them out of regular- season games to keep them fresher for the grind of the post sea- son.
The intent is to have players at their best for the playoffs. That’s all anyone remembers anyway, right? We revere champions, and the Spurs have won four NBA crowns since the 2002- 03 season.
Yet, by doing so, Popovich has shown a total lack of consideration for basketball fans who pay hundreds … if not thousands … of dollars to attend regular- season games, or of viewing audiences watching on networks that paid millions of dollars for TV rights.
And, what began as Popovich’s trickle has become everyone’s flood.
The league’s top drawing card, LeBron James, only played 74 of the regular season’s 82 games. Stephen Curry, the NBA’s MVP for the last two seasons, only played 79 games.
And, so it goes far beyond those two. Is the NBA so physically demanding that players need to take an occasional day off
OK, there are too many games on back-to- back nights. Curry’s Golden State Warriors had 15 back- to- backs this season, but the majority were easy trips, ones like Orlando one night and Miami the next. Or, Philly and Washington.
And, in this era of luxury chartered-flight transportation, is it that physically demanding to expect players to play games two nights in a row?
We wish we could ask the late Wilt Chamberlain. He averaged 48.5 minutes played per game in the 1961- 62 season.
That’s not a typo. Regulation NBA games go for 48 minutes. Wilt accrued the extra half minute average from a few overtime games. Wilt not only never missed a game that season but nearly never missed a MINUTE of playing time.
You’d think players and team management would be more willing to ensure star players … any player, for that matter … perform every night, to put the best product on display for fans of the sport.
Music fans won’t pay to watch
the E- Street Band if Bruce Springsteen isn’t front and center. The Grateful Dead isn’t much since Jerry Garcia’s passing. And, fans who go to see the Cleveland Cavaliers aren’t getting their money’s worth if LeBron sits out.
Is it that difficult to play every day?
Ask Cal Ripkin or the late Lou Gehrig.
It would have taken an act of God to get Ripkin out of the Baltimore Orioles’ lineup where he resided for 2,632 consecutive contests.
It took amyotrophic lat-
eral sclerosis to get Gehrig (2,130 consecutive games) out of the New York Yankees’ lineup.
There are some players, though, who still “get it.”
James Harden played 35 minutes in the Houston Rockets’ final regularseason game on Wednesday that had no bearing on playoff seeding.
Russell Westbrook did play 18 minutes Wednesday in the Oklahoma City Thunder’s final contest, but only did so because Oscar Robertson, whose record for triple- doubles in a season was broken, was on hand to witness the game.
Osc a r Rober t s on shouldn’t be the only reason why a player decides
to grace us with his oncourt presence for all of 18 minutes.
And, how should members of the Miami Heat feel?
The Heat needed either the Chicago Bulls or Indiana Pacers to lose on the final day of regular- season play to get into the playoffs.
But, Indiana got past an Atlanta Hawks’ team that was “resting” three starters, including center Dwight Howard.
The Bulls knocked off the Brooklyn Nets, the league’s worst team that, for some inexplicable reason, opted not to use its best two players, center Brook Lopez and guard Jeremy Lin. Both per-
fectly healthy, were being “rested” … for what? Next season?
But, maybe the Heat shouldn’t complain. It got the win in its last contest over a Washington Wizards team that was resting its starting backcourt of Johnny Wall and Bradley Beal.
It all chips away at the integrity of regular- season games. And it chips away at the integrity of competition. Miami lost out on a playoff spot because two other teams got walk- over wins against teams that didn’t use its best players.
Answers? The NBA is certainly searching for solutions for what league commissioner Adam Silver identifies as the NBA’s big-
gest issue.
Next season the league will start one week earlier with the goal of eliminating stretches of four games in five days and reducing the number of back-to- backs teams play.
Silver said there is also a shared view that teams should avoid resting multiple players for national TV games, and to the extent rest is possible, there should be a strong preference for resting players for their home games.
It’s a start, but probably not enough to stop the trickle that has become a flood.
It all should make us realize that the regular season continues to be rendered almost meaningless.
And, somewhere, Wilt Chamberlain, Cal Ripken and Lou Gehrig are shaking their heads in disbelief.