Photo Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Jeff Van Gundy Rants About NBA Stars Resting – “Fans Are Told You Don’t Matter”

Last night’s nationally televised Warriors-Spurs game was meant to be the long-awaited fight for the Western Conference crown. An outlook of what’s to come in the playoffs. Instead, you got to see Bob McAdoo and Kyle Anderson compete (no front, both are great players). But Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala, Tony Parker, Kawhi Leonard and LaMarcus Aldridge didn’t play because they were either rested, or out because of an injury or illness.

While it obviously isn’t anybody’s fault that players are ill or injured, resting players seems to be some kind of competitive distortion. It’s unfair to other teams who are still fighting to make the playoffs, and it is unfair to the fans, who paid a lot of money to see the game in the arena.

The always outspoken Jeff Van Gundy had an on-air rant against teams resting their players during last night’s broadcast. He said:

“Once again the fans are told, you don’t matter. Pay us up front, we’ll take your money and then we’ll give you whatever product we want to. If sports science really has a beat on what’s healthy for the players, then they need to tell the league how many games that is healthy for players to play and then only play that many games.”

Van Gundy about Andre Iguodala’s remarks following Friday night’s loss to the Timberwolves.

“We’re supposedly partners with the league. We’re supposedly partners. We’re not. It’s one sided. We used to get access to players for paying a billion dollars. Now they don’t feel like they have to come in and we can’t ask them these questions because when you say stuff like that you should have to address them.”