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The NBA’s Plan To Reduce Players Being Rested

For the past few years, resting players has become a big issue in the NBA that reached its climax during a nationally televised Warriors-Spurs game that was meant to be the long-awaited fight for the Western Conference crown. Instead, people 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.

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.

Back at the game, 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.”

 

For the new season, the NBA has sent a memo to teams with the league’s plans for approaching this season’s schedule, and it includes plan to “curtail marquee names resting during national broadcasts.” Also, according to ESPN, the NBA plans to eliminate back-to-back games preceding national TV games. There also won’t be four games in five nights schedulers, as well as 18 games in 30 days. On top of that, the season starts one week earlier than usual, to make these changes possible.

Here are some of the NBA’s changes toward next season (per CBS):

• Reduction in number of back-to-backs to 14.9 per team, down from 16.3 per team. In all, 40 back-to-backs have been eliminated from last season.

• Reduction of single-game road trips by 17 percent.

• Reduction in single-game road trips over 2,000 miles by 67 percent; there are only 11 of them on schedule.

• Increase in weekend games from 549 to 568, much of the boost coming on Saturdays. Previously the NBA avoided Saturdays and Sunday afternoons during football season to dodge conflicts.