San Antonio Spurs to Receive Sanctions for Resting Players

[SidVish]

Re: San Antonio Spurs to Receive Sanctions for Resting Players

Popovich is a mastermind. Now the whole world is talking about the San Antonio Spurs. Who would've thunk it?

I just saw this interesting tweet.
darren rovell @darrenrovell
The 9 players who played for the Spurs last night will make $18.4 million combined in salary. LeBron will make $17.5 million.

[jeebs9]

Re: San Antonio Spurs to Receive Sanctions for Resting Players

Exactly 23... That's why it's not that bad. But if they get blown out it's really bad.

There was a moment in the fourth when the heat didn't have any one in the fourth quarter with about 8-6 minutes left. And I thought the Heat were tanking the game as well.

But I fully understand injuires though. That's something you can't control.

[JasonWilliams55]

Re: San Antonio Spurs to Receive Sanctions for Resting Players

Pops is the man, wish more coaches did this. If there was less games then this wouldn't be an issue, but no ***-**** Stern would rather maximize profits through over-abundance instead of quality. (1st round 7 instead of 5)

I believe Pops did it on purpose, but that's just my initial gut feeling.

To the "I payed for tickets" crowd, would you be upset/want a refund if a Star player(s) was (were) hurt the day before the game (that your about to see)? Probably not, so why the issue with this?

I get both sides, but the fan side has no leverage at all to complain, imo. And if they want to complain, complain through your wallet. Injuries, rotations, older players, matchups all come into play for a coach and as someone stated earlier, you paid to watch x team vs y team not y player(s) vs x player(s).

Love what you said 23, "too many star fans and not enough basketball fans"

[jeebs9]

Re: San Antonio Spurs to Receive Sanctions for Resting Players

If I went to last nights game Id be shocked at how good a coach Pop really was.

It wasnt exactly a game to be upset about as a fan Jeebs.


But again, if every coach chose to rest their players after a gauntlet stretch of road games, what arguement would you or the league really have? Would you be upset if numbers 7-12 werent put into the game? I mean Im sure some fan somewhere in an arena would love to see Scalabrine play, but he didnt play every game.

Would it be okay of the starters played idk 10 mins and sat the rest? How about 5 mins? Maybe 30 seconds? What is an acceptable number here?

I agree with you. The Spurs came to play and it turned out to be a really awesome game. All the way to the end. But if that game would of got out of hand. That staduim would of been empty in a few minuites.

Popovich is a mastermind. Now the whole world is talking about the San Antonio Spurs. Who would've thunk it?

I just saw this interesting tweet.
darren rovell @darrenrovell
The 9 players who played for the Spurs last night will make $18.4 million combined in salary. LeBron will make $17.5 million.

hahahaha Now that's funny.

[The 24th Letter]

Another good post from ST (edited)

It's funny how nobody cares about the Spurs when they're playing exciting basketball. Nobody cares about Tim Duncan when he's the best big man in the league. Nobody buys tickets to see the Spurs on the road. Nobody ever shows Spurs highlights. Suddenly everybody is so outraged that someone tried to deny them Spurs basketball.

[23]

Re: San Antonio Spurs to Receive Sanctions for Resting Players

Exactly 23... That's why it's not that bad. But if they get blown out it's really bad.

There was a moment in the fourth when the heat didn't have any one in the fourth quarter with about 8-6 minutes left. And I thought the Heat were tanking the game as well.

But I fully understand injuires though. That's something you can't control.

The Heat have looked lethargic or rather like they've been coasting all season so far... thats exactly what they looked like when they faced the Knicks remember?

[23]

Re: San Antonio Spurs to Receive Sanctions for Resting Players

Another good post from ST (edited)

It's funny how nobody cares about the Spurs when they're playing exciting basketball. Nobody cares about Tim Duncan when he's the best big man in the league. Nobody buys tickets to see the Spurs on the road. Nobody ever shows Spurs highlights. Suddenly everybody is so outraged that someone tried to deny them Spurs basketball.

...and that's exactly what I just said

but as far as the fans..most of us anyway wanted to see the Spurs win to spite David Stern which I think happened anyway because the game was so competetive...but this guy wants to be a prick and "sanction" the spurs like they're some kind of rogue foreign country.

[ojandpizza]

This is awful, Pop is the coach, he makes roster decisions.

[snepp]

Re: San Antonio Spurs to Receive Sanctions for Resting Players

My thought...


Stern can go **** himself.

[JODYE]

Re: San Antonio Spurs to Receive Sanctions for Resting Players

Another good post from ST (edited)

It's funny how nobody cares about the Spurs when they're playing exciting basketball. Nobody cares about Tim Duncan when he's the best big man in the league. Nobody buys tickets to see the Spurs on the road. Nobody ever shows Spurs highlights. Suddenly everybody is so outraged that someone tried to deny them Spurs basketball.

Pure gold. And so true.

23, I love what you said too. "Too many star fans, not enough basketball fans" Pretty much sums it up perfectly.

[wwharton]

Re: San Antonio Spurs to Receive Sanctions for Resting Players

Stern sticking his nose in Coaching Decisions is only going to open up a whole can of worms because then it's just a matter of time before he's telling teams that they can only play Man Defense and ban Zone Defense because "scoring is too low". It's ridiculous.

Funny because this has already happened. Zone defenses have only been allowed again for a few years now.

I'm surprised this has been a debate about whether or not Pop was wrong, but no one is pointing the finger at Stern for the situation in the first place. The league is structured in a way that older players should either retire or be lucky enough to have a coach like Pop or Doc. If these older stars are so important to the turnstyle and commercial ads then why not shorten the season? The schedule maker is an idiot here but beyond that, Sterns anger shows that he finds Duncan and Ginobli and other players like them too important to miss what he considers a "big" game, so why doesn't the nba have a schedule that caters more to star players playing longer?

This isn't a da throne rant about shortening the season. I'm fine with how it is but I'm also fine with what Pop did (and yes, I would be if I bought tickets to the game). But Stern isn't fine with it and he has the power to change it... and it's not by trying to strong arm coaches to care about his ad dollars. Shortening the season would probably even get younger players to go harder every night instead of coasting through half of the season if not more. The season is long as hell, and then the playoffs come and you have pretty much an entire season in the post season.

For a comparison, if the NFL ever did go to 18 games, we'll see more of this over there as well. Greed blinds men to the balance needed for the optimal quality. And the most greedy bark loud and point the finger at everyone else for their problems. Pop did this on purpose but props to him for forcing the little hobbit to look in the mirror.

[ProfessaPackMan]

Re: San Antonio Spurs to Receive Sanctions for Resting Players

Shortening the season would probably even get younger players to go harder every night instead of coasting through half of the season if not more. The season is long as hell, and then the playoffs come and you have pretty much an entire season in the post season.

1. Players aren't simply going to go hard every night, even if you shorten the schedule. We just had a 66 game schedule last year, where everything was basically packed in and you still has cases of players "coasting" thru some games.

2. 16 games is an entire season now? Or does it seem like it because the League decides to schedule 2-3 in between games, causing the 1st rd to take as long as 2-3 weeks to do(last year being the exception obviously)?

[SteelersFreak]

Re: San Antonio Spurs to Receive Sanctions for Resting Players

Every team goes through this...as someone mentioned, the Heats schedule to start off Nov was just as bad...so I don't so much have a problem with the schedule because it evens itself out....I just don't think you can start interfering with coaching decisions. Very dangerous precedent.

Well its that combined with playing a rested Heat team and putting the last game of the road trip on TNT.

[ojandpizza]

As for the "I'd be mad if I bought tickets" comments.. Coach Pop's job isn't to make road game fans happy, his job is to make sure his team is in the best position to compete for a championship.. Something that I'm sure true Spurs fans can agree on.

[aholbert32]

Re: San Antonio Spurs to Receive Sanctions for Resting Players

I know this forum is very anti-Stern but I'm kind of shocked at the response. Pop chose to rest his best FOUR players who werent injured.

I have Wizards season tickets (I know its a shame) and they play the Heat on Monday. Now if Spo chooses to rest Wade because they are coming off a long road trip, I'm OK with it but if he chooses to bench Wade, Bron and Bosh, I would be ****ing furious. I bought those tickets with the expectation that barring injury, the stars would play. Resting 1 star is understandable but 4? When people paid their hard earned money to watch them play?

I agree with Stern's position from an advertising/TV perspective too. The networks and advertisers have the same expectation as the fans....that the stars will play barring injury. Everyone knows that stars draw ratings in the NBA. Now say I'm the head of marketing at Sprite, I bought ad time during that game and expected that the game would do a 1.0 rating. Then I read that Pop pulled his best players and find out that the ratings for this game were lower than expected...I would consider pulling ads from NBA broadcasts.

Add to that that because of the lower rating, TNT now has to issue make goods (free advertisements) to those advertisers who bought time during the game. Its shortsighted to just think that Pop's responsibility is only to his team. The fans, advertisers and the league are significant reasons the league exists.