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Ohm Youngmisuk, ESPN editor
NEW YORK — Calling it the most critical issue in the NBA today, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said owners want teams to stop resting multiple players during nationally televised games and players choose to rest more during home games.
“There is no bigger problem in the league right now, it goes to the heart of what we do and the heart of competition,” Silver said after the NBA Board of Governors meeting in Manhattan . “That’s something we’ll be spending a lot more time on.”
Silver later added: “What we talked about between our owners was a sense of obligation to the game and what appropriate behavior is. And so what we concluded is if we could focus on those two issues , namely to the extent (if) you If we rest, we rest at home and by avoiding leaving several starters to rest, especially in marquee matches, we could solve a large part of the problem.
Silver said owners discussed the “complex” issue of player rest at the Board of Governors meeting Thursday and will continue to deliberate on the topic when the competition committee meets in the future.
Silver recently sent a memo to team owners, obtained by ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, explaining how the league needs to ensure star players are rested during prime-time games and strike a balance between keeping players healthy and keep fans and business partners happy.
Silver said there are no plans at this time to reduce the regular season by 82 games. But he understands that not only does the NBA have to worry about suitors resting star players with the playoffs in mind, but also rebuilding teams that are holding back players as they fight for lottery draft spots .
“That was also discussed,” Silver said. “I would classify this as a different type of rest. On the one hand we have the mid-season type of rest, the marquee games, the nationally televised games, the teams that are clearly in the hunt and are resting for purposes strategies to move forward in the season. And then another type of rest, where frankly teams are focused on rebuilding. I think that’s a serious problem for the league as well. (But) it’s not a new problem for the league.
“Sometimes there are other opportunities to give additional minutes to other players on the roster, but there’s no doubt there’s a certain amount of maneuvering going on there as teams are looking to qualify for the draft,” Silver added. “The broader topic of the lottery and lottery odds, how the so-called lottery picks are protected, in some cases you have lottery picks of one to three protected, I think that’s something which we discussed at our board meeting and agreed that we need to review it comprehensively.”
Next season, the NBA will add a week to the schedule to spread out games more. Silver is confident that the chances of teams playing four games in five nights will be almost completely eliminated and back-to-back slates will be reduced.
Silver has repeatedly stated that he understands that rest is necessary for players and that it is linked to the risk of injury. But he also said that not all of the science on rest is clear.
“I’ve looked into this quite extensively over the last month,” Silver said. “The science is a lot less clear than I thought, and there are different philosophies in different organizations.
“I don’t think we’re at the point at all where we can consider it clear science that if a player plays 25 games and rests for three days, that decreases the risk by 26 percent of injury. Sometimes there is a I feel like the science might be there. That’s not the case, as far as we know.
Owners have discussed the possibility of issuing guidelines to teams on player rest, but nothing that would constitute an enforceable rule.
The NBA could review the schedule with the players’ association to find other ways to distribute games as well. Silver also wants the NBA to do “a much better job of being much more specific about exactly how we categorize absent players, which over time will help us get better data.”
“I have enormous respect for our coaches and our general managers who do everything they can to win, and I especially sympathize with our players because I feel like our players are suffering the consequences, but these are not not them who choose to rest,” Silver says. “…It’s not necessarily a function of the owners calling the coaches and saying I’m now going to dictate to you or micromanage how you coach the team or how you choose minutes for a particular player, but it must be organizational decisions where there are. It is a fair balance between competitive issues and very real commercial issues.”
“It’s a complex issue,” Silver added. “That doesn’t mean we’re going to solve it…we can’t take the game for granted and that the game is bigger than any team or any person in the room and we shouldn’t never take our fans for granted. We have to work at it.”
