Where are the sanctions on Boston?

Earlier in the year, Stern fined San Antonio for resting some of their best players in a game against Miami. I disagreed with that decision. Now, Boston has rested Pierce for two games, and, tonight, is resting Kevin Garnett. Where IS that fine line between smart coaching decisions and unacceptable prudence?

By not fining Boston for sitting some of their stars, is Stern admitting he was wrong in fining San Antonio? Or, is he trying to intimidate small market teams into providing the maximum amount of entertainment, while allowing Big Market teams to create interest in the game by providing diversity?

I hope things change once Stern is gone.

Saint Louis wrote:

Earlier in the year, Stern fined San Antonio for resting some of their best players in a game against Miami. I disagreed with that decision. Now, Boston has rested Pierce for two games, and, tonight, is resting Kevin Garnett. Where IS that fine line between smart coaching decisions and unacceptable prudence?

By not fining Boston for sitting some of their stars, is Stern admitting he was wrong in fining San Antonio? Or, is he trying to intimidate small market teams into providing the maximum amount of entertainment, while allowing Big Market teams to create interest in the game by providing diversity?

I hope things change once Stern is gone.

Stern was F ed up the first time and now he has opened up a can of worms. Better fine Bean town if pulling same chit.

I'm assuming the difference is that Boston is resting one guy, not half the team like the Spurs did.

Resting a player here and there down the stretch has never been a problem, and is different than what the Spurs did IMO.

Saint Louis wrote:

Earlier in the year, Stern fined San Antonio for resting some of their best players in a game against Miami. I disagreed with that decision. Now, Boston has rested Pierce for two games, and, tonight, is resting Kevin Garnett. Where IS that fine line between smart coaching decisions and unacceptable prudence?

By not fining Boston for sitting some of their stars, is Stern admitting he was wrong in fining San Antonio? Or, is he trying to intimidate small market teams into providing the maximum amount of entertainment, while allowing Big Market teams to create interest in the game by providing diversity?

I hope things change once Stern is gone.

You guys forgot a, no THE, critical component of the Spurs fine, Miami v. San Antonio was a marquee, nationally televised game for the NBA. That fine was a message to the franchises that the NBA cares about the product on the court MORE the more people are seeing it, and if the league is going to put you on national TV you'd better put your stars on the court.

Boston suited everybody up for their Marquee Sunday match-up against the Thunder, and I guarantee you everybody is going to go against the Heat on ESPN Monday night, but in these games against lousy teams on local TV they can to whatever the hell they want and Lord-Dictator-CEO Stern won't bat an eye.

Of course the thing that was lost was that it was actually still a great game, and the unintended message it sent loud and clear was that star power is more important to the NBA than the quality of the basketball being played.

TheMagnus wrote:

Saint Louis wrote:

Earlier in the year, Stern fined San Antonio for resting some of their best players in a game against Miami. I disagreed with that decision. Now, Boston has rested Pierce for two games, and, tonight, is resting Kevin Garnett. Where IS that fine line between smart coaching decisions and unacceptable prudence?

By not fining Boston for sitting some of their stars, is Stern admitting he was wrong in fining San Antonio? Or, is he trying to intimidate small market teams into providing the maximum amount of entertainment, while allowing Big Market teams to create interest in the game by providing diversity?

I hope things change once Stern is gone.

You guys forgot a, no THE, critical component of the Spurs fine, Miami v. San Antonio was a marquee, nationally televised game for the NBA. That fine was a message to the franchises that the NBA cares about the product on the court MORE the more people are seeing it, and if the league is going to put you on national TV you'd better put your stars on the court.

Boston suited everybody up for their Marquee Sunday match-up against the Thunder, and I guarantee you everybody is going to go against the Heat on ESPN Monday night, but in these games against lousy teams on local TV they can to whatever the hell they want and Lord-Dictator-CEO Stern won't bat an eye.

Of course the thing that was lost was that it was actually still a great game, and the unintended message it sent loud and clear was that star power is more important to the NBA than the quality of the basketball being played.

Agree only a little about the Spurs not playing ALL their potentials against Miami. Except, the Spurs almost won that game. You were wrong about Boston putting Garnett in tonight. Turn's out, Boston sat Garnett and still almost won. Green had best game of his life, and almost won it for Boston. The fine against San Antonio (IMO) was complete bullshit. I don't think there should be a fine against Boston for not playing Garnett. I just think the league should be consistant, and should accept it if one team thinks it is best to rest their players for any game. Screw the TV ratings-- if a coach makes the right decision about who to play and who not to play, that coach should be rewarded, not fined.

Now that it's tank time for some teams: where are sanctions against Phoenix? Their coach admitted they were basically shutting down Dragic for the rest of the season even though he is completely healthy.

I don't think they should be fined for this-- but, how is this not much worse than Pop resting 4 of his stars in a brutal stretch mid-season? It IS much worse! This amounts to throwing games. Phx would LOVE for the Jazz to make the playoffs and push the Lakers out-- because they have the Lakers' first round draft pick.

When Pop made the decision to rest Duncan, Parker, Ginoble, and Green, it most likely gave his team the best chance of beating the Heat in that game! Duncan, Parker, Ginoble, and Green were gassed, and San Antonio had bench players that matched up really well against the Heat. That didn't stop Stern from fining San Antonio.

Saint Louis wrote:

Now that it's tank time for some teams: where are sanctions against Phoenix? Their coach admitted they were basically shutting down Dragic for the rest of the season even though he is completely healthy.

I don't think they should be fined for this-- but, how is this not much worse than Pop resting 4 of his stars in a brutal stretch mid-season? It IS much worse! This amounts to throwing games. Phx would LOVE for the Jazz to make the playoffs and push the Lakers out-- because they have the Lakers' first round draft pick.

When Pop made the decision to rest Duncan, Parker, Ginoble, and Green, it most likely gave his team the best chance of beating the Heat in that game! Duncan, Parker, Ginoble, and Green were gassed, and San Antonio had bench players that matched up really well against the Heat. That didn't stop Stern from fining San Antonio.

I think this is MORE egregious than what the Spurs did. Tanking is one of the great banes of the NBA, there are a lot of good ideas out there to fix it, and it needs to be fixed.

I guess Stern would be happier if teams rode their players into the ground, like the Lakers did Kobe.

It's a great story to see a 33 year old player, playing 48 MPG for a week straight until something happens like what happened to Kobe. I mean honestly it was inevitable that something bad was going to happen with him playing minutes like that, at that age, with the amount of career minutes he has on his body.

Pops is smart and protects his guys from stuff like that and tries to conserve his guys for a playoff push. He is punished for that, yet a guy like MDA is allowed to run guys into the ground.

Regardless of the health of the players, I think we are getting to the point with players sitting games where it is becomming an issue for the NBA as a product, and it is continuing to get worse, so it won't be long untill the league steps in to do something about it. Much the same way they did with Flopping last season.

The sad thing is that they will probably try to do the exact same thing they did with Flopping, fining teams and players for not playing otherwise healthy players, instead of doing anything to actually fix the problem.

The NBA needs to re-imagine the way they play the regular season, and the way they incentivise teams to play hard, beyond just fining people.

There have been a lot of creative ideas, but the one I like most (orginally Bill Simmons idea I think) is reducing the number of games in the season by 4-6 games, shortening it by one week, and having a "consolation" tournament to determine lottery seeding AND the last spot in the playoffs.

How awesome would that be? You take the bottom 8 teams from both conferences, pair them up cross-conference by where they are in the standings (#8 east vs. #15 west), and make them all play 4 games in one week to determine who gets the last playoff spot and the most ping pong balls in the lottery. While that is going on the teams already in the playoffs get to rest their guys. It's perfect.