As you may have noticed, the increased occurrences of NBA teams resting players has become a very buzz-worthy topic of conversation in recent weeks. It has been discussed by every sports talk show and seemingly every former player wants to chime in with their two cents.
Because of this and the fact that the NBA’s nationally televised Saturday night game on ABC was greatly affected two weeks in a row by top teams resting their star players (networks paying a lot of money to broadcast these games don’t like that), NBA Commissioner sent out a memo to all NBA teams to dissuade them from resting star players as often, which let’s be honest, only basically applies to the Cavaliers, Spurs and Warriors.
The Spurs have another ABC prime time game this Saturday, and instead of resting his players then, Head Coach Gregg Popovich is resting his players tonight, so they will be available for Saturday’s game.
The Spurs are locked into the No. 2 seed in the western conference.
Is it because he is following Adam Silver’s orders or is it just because the team and its staff has determined it is more beneficial to rest their better players Friday night?
Pop marches to the beat of his own drummer, he is the godfather of this recent trend for Pete’s sake, so I’m going to guess it just works out better schedule wise for his team.
Don’t be surprised if the NBA tries to tweak some rules to discourage the resting of players this off-season.
