If you ask anyone in or around the NBA What’s the biggest problem facing the league, there’s a high probability many of them will say load management. It’s a topic that has been discussed in the NBA for years and resurfaces every time a team rests star players. There hasn’t been an adequate solution to this problem, but the league has done its best to prevent this from happening. First, it limited the number of consecutive games on the schedule, especially before nationally televised games so that the biggest stars would play in the marquee games. But that didn’t eradicate the problem.
Now, the league will impose harsher penalties on teams that decide to rest their players in certain situations. On Wednesday, the league’s board of governors voted in favor the new player participation policy, which will see teams receive hefty fines if they sit a star player in a nationally televised game or tournament game during the season, if they sit multiple stars in the same game or if they stop a star player for a long period of the season. The policy will come into effect at the start of the 2023-24 season.
The league has defined “star” players for the purposes of this policy as those who have been part of an All-Star or All-NBA team in the past three seasons. (Forty-nine players fit this description.) The fines will be as follows for each violation:
- $100,000 for the first offense
- $250,000 for a second offense
- $1 million more than the previous fine for any additional offenses (i.e. $1.25 million for the third offense, $2.25 million for the fourth, etc.)
The NBA can investigate a player’s availability, and an investigation will now be triggered automatically if a star player misses a nationally televised game or in-season tournament, if multiple star players miss the same game, or if there are inconsistent public statements about the availability of a star player. by ESPN.
There are exceptions to the rules: If a team contacts the NBA at least a week before a back-to-back game, it can request permission to seat a star who is 35 or older on opening night or who has played 34 000 regular season minutes. or a total of 1,000 regular season and playoff games – Mike Conley, Stephen Curry, DeMar DeRozan, Kevin Durant, James Harden and LeBron James qualify here – or request approval to sit a star due to previous injury. In other words, the Clippers could reasonably ask Kawhi Leonard’s permission to sit back-to-back coming off his torn meniscus.
In the eyes of the league, teams appear to have overdone their desire to err on the side of caution during the regular season. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver won’t accept that, though.
“If you are a healthy player in this league, you are expected to play,” Silver said at a press conference on the issue Wednesday. “It’s a recognition that we went a little too far,” he added.
We’ll have to see how seriously teams and players take these new rules, but it’s clear the league will do everything to avoid having its top talent miss out on games, especially those that are nationally televised.
