They should pay the fine in pennies.
If the rest of the league is lucky they'll take $60 of this money and buy Stern a copy of NBA 2K13 so he can live out his dream of being able to make any player do whatever he wants whenever he wants without ing the NBA up any worse.
They should pay the fine in pennies.
You really just haven't got this from the very beginning. The Spurs did nothing that hasn't been done before, by multiple franchises on multiple occasions, and has been explicitly addressed by the Deputy Commissioner as a practice within the discretion of the individual clubs as recently as April of this year.
What the Spurs did differently this time was to pick a game on national TV against the defending champ and cause an aging dictator to engage in a public temper tantrum and promise "substantial sanctions" for the offense of pissing him off. I'm sure he really wanted to drop the hammer on the Spurs as an organization and Pop as an individual, but his own lawyers must have told him that he didn't have a leg to stand on as the Spurs hadn't violated any specific league rule.
In the end he couldn't completely back down and fell back on the Commissioner's general authority to fine a franchise for behavior that was against the best interests of the league. The fine was all about Stern saving face and not admitting that he had just run his mouth without due consideration and had announced a forthcoming punishment without any thoughtful examination of the cir stances.
Pop will continue to implement his plans to rest his players. Some changes will be made in the manner that it is done, but it will obvious to any informed observer that nothing really has changed. Just as any informed observer can readily see that Stern issued this fine as a result of his own animus towards Pop and the Spurs and not for any violation of any existing league rule.
Likewise.
classic
LOL, I have a felling this is going to bite the spurs in the ass sometime in the near future but godam is that funny.
What exactly did he say?
Let's win 2 more championships and get the out of this leauge
i can't remember it word for word, i was drinking, but him and Mike Breen had a heated discussion about it. JVG got fired up, saying "no you're wrong", and was essentially pissed about the scheduling and the toll that is being placed on players. He said one of the main responsibilities of a coach is pacing, how Pop knows how to pace his guys better than anyone else, and basically the league has no business getting involved from that angle.
JVG also do not like Stern and his actions.
During 2000 ASG he was not pleased with having mics attached to him. And when he was sitting on the bench he after a pause asked his assistant /I don't know who it was but nvm/ .. he asked "where are those ing cameras?" And he found one and pointed at it.
I need to find it cause I have it on VHS
David Stern has only proven that he has a biased against San Antonio........We won 4 les, when in fact if Stern didn't get involved, we should have won 6 or 7.
exactly why I think Stern just reinforced and confirmed, he and the league has always had a biased against the Spurs. Everything we always thought Stern was doing to us to promote other teams and get bigger TV contracts(by keeping us out of the finals during negotiations)has been validated by this fine.
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nba--da...194828970.html
Based on Stern stainment the Spurs failed to inform sufficently in advance (the Heat and the NBA that they would rest the big 3. So I'm thinking what are the Spurs to do moving forward, pencil everygame and inform the NBA in the regular season that they see as a possbility for the big 3 to rest? Would this satisfy Stern's requirment ?
I wish the Spurs would fight this, and I wish the players union, coaches union and owners would issue statements of support, because it this is an utterly egregious infringement over team management and domain. Stern cannot be allowed to get away with it. When it occurs, against whom, and why any player is told to sit are utterly irrelevant. Either teams get to decide which of their personnel play or they don't. It is really that simple.
They can argue over whether it was a giant you to Stern by Pop (ignoring precedent and legitimate team building reasons for such a choice) and they can argue about the plight of the fan (it's sad, but any reasonable fan understands both team choices/longevity and the fact that purchasing a game ticket en les you only to see players in that team's uniform, not individual player match-ups); but everyone should be baying louder over the ridiculousness and unenforceable nature of this action and the detriment to team autonomy, as well as the massive insult to the vast majority of players in the league.
Shockingly bad decision by Stern.
Whether or not the players were sent home, while probably angering Stern further and fueling the sense of a you gesture by Pop, is likewise irrelevant. There was a completely legitimate reason to send the players home, and that was rest and conservation if energies. Players rest more fully in their own surroundings, and returning earlier on Thursday instead of late Thursday evening and/or early Friday is allowing for better recuperation. If the argument is about the stars not playing, then it doesn't matter whether they were in the arena or no. I don't care about seeing Duncan sitting on the bench in an ill-fitting suit. If he isn't playing, his location is unimportant, as he is under no obligation to sign autographs or speak to fans before or after the game; that makes it all the same disappointment to little Johnny Spurfan or Spurfan who paid big money to see their team out of town.
Likewise, there is plenty of precedent for a player not traveling with the team on a road trip or portion of a road trip, and plenty of precedent for a player being sent home during a trip. If this going to be actionable from now on, it'll simply be the new flu-like symptoms and tendinitis. Players will be sent home with the explanation that they needed to be evaluated by the team physician or needed treatment/rehab at the team facility. So ing stupid, Stern.
Actually, I totally have gotten it from the beginning. I just am not buying that what Pop did had anything at all to do with legitimately resting his players. And neither is the NBA.
Spurs fans would not be all excited about this FU to the league if they believed it had anything to do with all those guys needing rest either.
That's a whole different can of worms.
Since you've gone past crossposting into the realm of spamming with this same idea, allow me to point out that he either "has a bias" or "is biased". If this is so important to you to repeat ad infinitum, at least get it right. Thank you.
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