Last season, NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver said the Spurs would not be disciplined after not bringing Duncan, Parker and Ginobili to a road game in Utah. Overall, Popovich held his top three players out of three games for rest last season.
"The strategic resting of particular players on particular nights is within the discretion of the teams," Silver told NBA.com in April with the qualifier that it was a lockout-shortened season. "And Gregg Popovich in particular is probably the last coach that I would second guess."
Popovich said he made the decision about Thursday night when the schedule came out in July, and it didn't matter the opponent or the interest level of the game, which pitted the Western Conference's second-best team thus far against the NBA's defending champions.
He did it against the defending champs on national TV. If he held them out of the Orlando game, Stern wouldn't have said a thing.
They had only 1 stretch of 2 days off b2b, and spent a ton of days on the road. God forbid Pop lets his guys get 2 days rest again for another tough matchup tomorrow.
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