Adam Silver: Players resting is NBA's biggest issue
NEW YORK — Calling player rest and health the biggest issue the NBA faces and characterizing the topic as complex, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the league is taking steps to curb how often teams rest healthy players.
Silver maintained he is not interested in micro-managing rosters but also acknowledged that NBA owners concluded there was a need “to find the right balance between appropriate rest for our players on one hand and our obligation to our fans and business partners on the other hand,” Silver said on Friday following the league’s owners’ meeting.
Next season, the league will start one week earlier with the goal of eliminating situations where teams play four games in five days and further reducing the number of back-to-backs teams play. Silver said each team should have the number of back-to-backs cut to 14 per season from 16 per season in 2016-17.
When it comes to resting players, Silver said, “There emerged from the meeting 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 at home.”
The issue dominated Silver’s news conference with reporters, and the issue reached feverish level last month when the Cleveland Cavaliers sat LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love for a Saturday night ABC telecast one week after the Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs sat players for a Saturday night game on ABC.
It prompted Silver to send a memo to NBA owners. Silver said there will be significant penalties if teams don’t abide by league rules regarding player availability for a game, and he implored owners to take an active role in those decisions.
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On Friday, Silver said owners discussed issuing guidelines for sitting players, but “not necessarily at the point of enforceable rules.”
“I only say this is a complex issue because many of our coaches have pointed out that as disappointing as it is for any individual fan on a night where a player is rested, if we all came to the point where we accepted the science (and) the medical data supports genuine resting as improving performance and prolonging careers and reducing injuries, I think we'd all have to agree that it does make sense at certain points in the season to rest players,” Silver said.
“Now, I'm hopeful we can accomplish much of our goals by better scheduling. The additional week I mentioned will make a huge difference in avoiding the four games out of five nights and reducing back-to-backs significantly.”
Silver acknowledged the league can do a better job of scheduling when it comes to marquee TV games, and don’t be surprised if a team doesn’t have a back-to-back when playing on the Saturday ABC game or one of the big-time TNT Thursday games.
Shortening the season is not an option now, and it’s accepted that players and owners will make less money with fewer games.
“It was not discussed, reducing the number of regular-season games,” Silver said. “I'd say because there is no support right now, hard support, for a belief that simply reducing the number of games will reduce the number of injuries. As best we understand the issue right now, it's a function of spacing games. It's not the totality of games.
Silver also said, “The question comes up all the time: would this problem be solved by shortening the season? Putting aside the obvious economic implications of shortening the season, it's not clear at all that it would be."
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