John Smallwood, Daily News Sports Columnist
POSTED: Sunday, December 2, 2012, 3:01 AM
I guess a $250,000 fine can be considered
"substantial sanctions."
Substantial sanctions were what NBA commissioner David Stern said he was going to deliver to the San Antonio Spurs after head coach Gregg Popovich sent star players Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, plus key
reserve Danny Green, home to San Antonio to rest rather than play in Thursday's nationally televised game at the Miami Heat."The result here is dictated by the totality of the facts in this case," Stern said in a statement released Friday night. "The Spurs decided to maker four of their top players unavailable for an early-season game that was the team's only regular-season visit to Miami."The team also did this without informing the Heat, the media or the league office in a timely way. Under these cir stances, I have concluded that the Spurs did a disservice to the league and our fans."
Considering that Popovich didn't actually violate any official NBA policy and that what he did would probably be considered acceptable if this were mid-April instead of November, a quarter of million dollars is a healthy fine.
But in my view, the penalty wasn't harsh enough - not when you consider the dangerous precedent Popovich's actions could set for the workings of the NBA regular season and how fans could end up looking at it.
If I were Stern, I would have fined the Spurs $1 million, $250,000 for each player sent home. I would have suspended Popovich for four games, one for each player. I would have made such an example of Popovich and the Spurs that no other team would even think about doing what San Antonio did as a supposed strategic approach to the strains of the regular season.This was serious. Let's not be naïve about this, because we know that the NBA is a multibillion-dollar entertainment corporation. The success of that business is completely tied to consumers' enjoying and paying for the product - which, in this case, means games featuring the best basketball players in the world.
What the Spurs did was a direct assault on the NBA brand and the integrity of its product. If Popovich's decision is allowed to become common working policy for other elite teams, it will be as detrimental to the game as the hint of gambling or performance-enhancing drugs. Sending healthy star players home rather than put them out on the court for a game goes against all the compe ive and entertainment tenets professional sports are built on.
It is a threat to the confidence that fans have in the NBA as an entertainment product.
We all understand that things like injuries can happen. We accept that buying a ticket doesn't guarantee that you'll get to see the superstar players in a matchup as advertised, but this was different. Everyone was healthy. Fans attending or watching the game on national television had reasonable expectations that they were going to see the real San Antonio Spurs against the Miami Heat - not nine guys who normally ride the bench, and who ended up losing to Miami, 105-100.
Popovich, with the OK from Spurs management, basically committed consumer fraud against Heat fans. Stern clearly understood the implications, which is why he used his broad powers as commissioner to fine the Spurs for basically breaking an unwritten rule. I've listened to several basketball analysts who defended San Antonio for making a strategic basketball move. A few former players said that they appreciated what Popovich was trying to do for his players and that having them ready for the playoffs is the most important thing. That's all fine, but they are missing the bigger point. Coaches are notorious for parroting the successful actions of others. What if other teams decide they don't want San Antonio to gain a compe ive advantage and strategically begin resting their star players during the regular season to save them for later?
What if the Lakers left a healthy Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol in Los Angeles for their one visit to South Philadelphia? Wouldn't Sixers fans be justified to scream in outrage? Would you pay to see the Heat if you knew the coach didn't think enough of you to waste a healthy LeBron James and Dwyane Wade on you? What if the New York Knicks did that with Carmelo Anthony, or the Oklahoma City Thunder did it with Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook? If this becomes a common practice, it's not hard to envision that certain markets might never get to see a superstar opposing player compete. It matters. Not every NBA city has a championship team to root for. In a lot of cities, the opposing team and its superstars are as big an attraction as the home team, if not bigger.
If coaches started resting stars multiple times during a season for strategic purposes, it will disintegrate the NBA product. If fans believe that they can be purposefully deprived from seeing the top players perform as part of a planned strategy, the whole thing will begin to crumble. I'll be the first to acknowledgethat there is some hypocrisy in my position. It is common practice for NBA teams to sit star players at the end of a regular season when playoff positions are set and teams are gearing up for postseason runs. That is an accepted practice in virtually every sport. When this same issue was brought up late in last season, NBA deputy commissioner and Stern's named-replacement, Adam Silver, said the "strategic resting of particular players on particular nights is within the discretion of the team."
But nobody in the NBA anticipated that any coach would employ such a tactic 16 games into an 82-game schedule.
Nobody contemplated the idea that this could become a strategic practice to be used several times throughout the course of a regular season. Even though it is difficult to clarify how, there is a difference between sitting a game in Game 80 than sitting him in Game 8. It's just one of those gut-feeling things when you know something is wrong.
I applaud the fact that, with the $250,000 fine, Stern sent a strong message of disapproval for what the Spurs did.
I'm just not sure that it was severe enough to stop Popovich from doing it again or to stop another coach from following his lead. The NBA cannot allow this to become a common practice, not if it was to keep the consumer confidence of its fan base. What Popovich and the Spurs did was dangerous for the business of the NBA. Stern should have spanked them harder, because sometimes business has to take precedent over the game.
http://www.philly.com/philly/columni...the_price.html
Somebody's panties is in a bunch! I hope he understands that 90% of people don't agree with any of this bull ! Pop did the right thing.
The guy is a moron. While the NBA is a business, the head coach is worried with X's and O's. If you do away with that aspect then you become the WWE. For a league that already has had too many run-ins with "tampering" and "big market favoritism" you would think people would realize how foolishly David Stern acted, not only about this one incident, but repeatedly in the last several seasons.
nba and integrity dont belong in the same sentence...
What a complete re .. And your 90% comment is an understatement, more like 98-99% would disagree..
Among the many things wrong with Mr. Smallwood's article is that Danny Green is not a reserve and EVERYBODY saw this resting coming.
What jilts NBA fans more? Seeing TD in a random game in November or out with an injury for multiple games in April? Lack of rest equals higher frequency of injury especially for older players.
What a stupid fkn article. how do so many sports journalists have such poor insight on what they write about?? they literally dont care how bad they do their job, and this uses such false grandiose passion to try to cover up his lack of knowledge / vision / understanding.
Get this off my computer.
Pure attention grab. Some people don't write all that well, so they have to take the unpopular/ridiculous position to get any attention at all.
Knicks fan.
"We all understand that things like injuries can happen. We accept that buying a ticket doesn't guarantee that you'll get to see the superstar players in a matchup as advertised, but this was different. Everyone was healthy. Fans attending or watching the game on national television had reasonable expectations that they were going to see the real San Antonio Spurs against the Miami Heat - not nine guys who normally ride the bench, and who ended up losing to Miami, 105-100. "
this guy is just so unhappy and it turned out that those nine guys who normally ride the bench could ACTUALLY beat the defending champs..forgot to mention it was Allen, new recruit, not a part of the 2012 Heat championship team who saved their asses & was instrumental in beating the Spurs bench-warmers...
what a clown..
lol John SMALL Knick fan still butthurt @ 99
I suppose he'd be happy if Pop had used the old 'injury' excuse like most coaches when they want to rest a player. What will be cool is when Pop does it again.
As Pop would say 'there's the Fan's perspective' and then there's 'the coach's perspective'.
one of the issues with this argument is that it assumes NBA fans are a monolyth of people who watch the game because of the biggest stars. Sure, I understand that a lot of people tune in to see the big names, but a lot of people don't tune in for that reason. Sometimes I pay the closest attention in garbage time to see new talent develop. What about the thousands of fans who watch the game because its a team sport? What about the the people who feel they have a team to follow in the league that isn't all about 2-3 guys but approaches the sport as a team sport? If there is a team in the NBA that carries these kinds of fans its the Spurs, and there will be more of those kinds of fans tuning in because of Pop's decision and overall approach. There are plenty of teams and superstars that stern and this jerk don't have to worry. If you want to broaden the appeal of the NBA, broaden the philosophies of the game represented therein.
I haven't seen one negative response against Pop from anyone in the NBA coaching fraternity.
Wouldn't it be great if the coaches got together in support of Pop and held out one star player for a game on the same day. Stern's head would explode.
I agree with this guy. The Spurs should not have sit their players, it was nothing more than a power move by Pop against the NBA and the Spurs should have been hit hard by fines and suspensions. I doubt the Spurs were even all that tired that they could not play at a high level in the game.
The stars are the biggest draws as to why the fans watch. Pop was punting the game away by sending the players home. It was surprising the Spurs stayed close but it didn't matter in the end because they did not have the go to star who could make the big play down the stretch of the game. Barkley even called it before the game ended, the Spurs did not have a closer on the court.
Just butthurt over having the name Smallwood, tbh.
I think Cuban had an excellent point, scheduling of the games by the league is "stupid" and that is the point that Pop is making and that the rest of the league looks at when they voice their support of Pop. Pop has been vocal about this for a long long time, and the integrity of the sport is not helped by scheduling game where a leg weary team goes into an arena where a well rested team is waiting. That's a major reason why good teams get routed on the last game of a long road trip by poor or mediocre teams.
Isn't that Stephen A. Smith's modus operandi?
Last edited by BanditHiro; 12-02-2012 at 11:36 AM.
Crap..
Stern and his cronies rigged this game to embarrass a road weary Spurs team against the defending champs on national t.v. Props to coach Pop for giving stern a big FU.
If that's the case, then the average TNT fan got to see every star that network promotes in their promos: LeBron, Bosh, and Wade all played.
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