Photo Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
ABC Broadcast Crew Rip Cavaliers For Resting Players
Saturday’s primetime game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Los Angeles Clippers, was the second nationally televised Saturday game in a row that was a bust. Only one week after the Spurs bench played the Warriors bench, Cleveland announced, that Kyrie Irving, LeBron James and Kevin Love won’t be playing, only a couple of hours before tip-off.
The ABC broadcasting team around Mike Breen, Jeff van Gundy and Mark Jackson did not like the decision to say the least, calling it “an absolute joke” and “a prosecutable offense”.
The folks at ABC aren't too happy about the Cavs sitting LeBron, Kyrie + Love tonight. pic.twitter.com/jeaho7Bjzq
— Ben Rohrbach (@brohrbach) March 19, 2017
“I understand the medical information that we are acquiring,” said Jackson. “I even understand that we are getting more and more data to protect the players, but this still is an absolute joke. Who is protecting the fans? Who is protecting the game of basketball? Something’s gotta be done.”
“If this was any other business, it would be a prosecutable offense — this type of bait-and-switch maneuver that the NBA allows its teams to pull,” added Van Gundy, “and quite frankly, if you look at the athletic performance teams, these groups that are supposedly preventing injury, when I look at the Cleveland Cavaliers, they’ve been injured all year, so how good are they doing at what they say the can accomplish?”
While the fans didn’t get to watch Cleveland’s star players, LeBron was sitting on the bench drinking coffee.
NBD, just LeBron James sippin’ some coffee on his day off
(via @clippittv)pic.twitter.com/3mE6YdBV81
— Def Pen Hoops (@DefPenHoops) March 19, 2017
The Cavaliers General Manager David Griffin said he received an unpleasant call from the NBA league office, only 7 minutes after the Cavs announced that they will be playing the game without their ‘Big 3’. He also said:
“I feel bad for the league. I really do. But it is what it is for us from an injury standpoint.”
When asked about the league’s concern that fans and ABC paying a lot of money for the games, he said:
“Yeah, and they’re paying me to win a championship.”
