Not Silver’s call

Assuming neither had a family emergency, I believe Sashi Brown and Hue Jackson were wrong to skip recent pro day workouts at Clemson and North Carolina.

The Browns have private workouts scheduled for Deshaun Watson, the quarterback from Clemson and Mitchell Trubisky, the quarterback from North Carolina. Brown, the Browns’ executive vice president of football operations, and Jackson, the head coach, were conducting a private workout for another player at the same time Clemson was conducting its pro day March 16.

No head coaches attended the North Carolina pro day March 21. Even in private workouts, Brown has better things to do than stand at the finish line with a stopwatch in his hand. Browns scouts were at both workouts, and I presume they chronicled the workout information just the way Brown wants it. I get all that. I conducted a Twitter poll March 22 asking whether the Browns were wrong to skip the pro day for Clemson and North Carolina and was surprised that 71 percent of those responding said going to the workout was not necessary.

My retort to that is: “1-15 in 2016 and nine straight losing seasons.”

When you’re running the show for the worst football team in the league and when you’re the head coach of that team, you are obligated to do more than your peers to become respectable.

Brown and Jackson had nothing to lose by attending the pro day of each school. Watson and Trubisky were not the only players working out for the scouts.

Who knows? Even if every move every player made was captured on video for Brown and his personnel staff to analyze, maybe a player who wasn’t previously on their radar would have caught Jackson’s eye when the camera wasn’t rolling. The Browns could have scheduled a private meeting with that player.

As for Trubisky and Watson, if the Browns are seriously considering taking one of them with the 12th pick, attending the workouts might have given Jackson more insight on each player. Even if what he could have learned checked off just one box on a list of 500 boxes, it would have been worth the trip.

The Browns have always considered themselves smarter than every other team since their return to the NFL in 1999. The results speak for themselves.

As long as I’m in a pontificating mood … NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is crossing a line when he starts telling coaches when they can and can’t rest players.

Silver whined about the obligation teams have to play star players to appease television partners and fans after Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue rested LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love in a nationally televised game against the Clippers in Los Angeles on March 18. The Cavs were playing the Lakers in Los Angeles the next day.

Irving suffered a minor knee injury in a home game against Utah on March 16. That was also Love’s first game back from missing 30 days while recovering from knee surgery. Rather than resting only Irving and Love, against the Clippers, Lue decided to rest all three of his stars.

Two days after the Cavaliers-Clippers game, Silver sent a memo to all 30 NBA owners saying resting star players is “an extremely significant issue for our league.” The memo said “significant penalties” would result if teams don’t provide “notice to the league office, their opponent, and the media immediately upon a determination that a player will not participate in a game due to rest.”

Silver could have added Las Vegas to the list. A bettor could get rich with inside information.

Silver’s memo was not inspired solely because of what the Cavaliers did. One week earlier, Golden State coach Steve Kerr rested Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Andre Iguodala in a game against the Spurs. The Warriors were in the midst of a schedule that called for them to play eight games in eight cities in 13 days.

Silver said it is unacceptable for team owners to stay uninvolved. That is preposterous. Cavs owner Dan Gilbert should not be telling Lue or Cavs general manager David Griffin who should play or giving them permission to rest James, Love or Irving. And I would love to be in the room to hear Spurs owner Julianna Holt tell Coach Gregg Popovich when he should play or rest his best players.

Fans are the victims. Silver is right about that. But a 24-hour or 48-hour notice does them no good unless they plan on buying tickets from a secondary market at the last minute.

Of course, all the backto-back games teams must play cause this dilemma for coaches. The Cavaliers hosted the Wizards on March 25 in the back end of a back-to-back that started in Charlotte on March 24. Ten games remain in the regular season after facing the Wizards. The Cavs have three more back-to-back pairings to account for six of those games. Lue will have a difficult decision to make with the NBA East race as tight as it is; the Cavs lead over the Boston Celtics in the East is one game.

Kluber pitched seven innings in an 8-3 victory over the Rockies on March 23. He struck out eight, walked one and gave up one earned run, plus two runs that were unearned.

Manager Terry Francona and pitching coach Mickey Callaway plotted spring training so Kluber could have a lighter load than others in the rotation. He has four Cactus League starts compared to six for Danny Salazar and five for Trevor Bauer and Carlos Carrasco.

“There’s no doubt in his mind he’s pitching opening day,” Francona told reporters. “That’s good enough for me.”

Kluber was 18-9 in the regular season last year with a 3.14 ERA and 227 strikeouts in 215 innings. He pitched 34 1/3 innings in the playoffs.