Official NBA 2012-2013 Season Thread

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Are we focusing more on the argument that Pop decided not to play his starters, or moreso the notion of having them sent back to San Antonio and not even attending the game?
 
CP1708 said:
J's, that game don't count cuz it was the end of the season, just before the playoffs. If Pop did this April 14th, that's not a big issue.
It's NOVEMBER 29th. How the **** his team "tired" after 15 games? :lol: (I get the 4 in 5, every team goes thru those each year)
Here's the best part, Tony Parker leads the Spurs in minutes per game, 31.7!!!! :lol:
Duncan is at 30.7
Manu 23.8
Green 30.9
And they went home after 15-16 games? Parker now has already missed 2 games, Manu his 3rd. Tim and Green their first.
Pop ain't foolin nobody, he was sendin a message as well as resting his core. Again, if he did this same thing but kept the guys in uni, just DNP's, non issue. If they was on the bench in a suit, non issue. If they sat out the game before on local tv, non issue. Pop chose a national televised game, and TNT games are HUGE to the NBA and everyone in this thread knows that. We all watch every single Thursday.
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Again...what's the principal behind picking and choosing when you want to levy sanctions? I get that it was game 66, but there wasn't a damn peep from Stern.


Al3xis said:
right, because this was on National TV the game before :lol:
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/boxscore;_ylt=AvslqBFSPZaNC69xzzRy58LJPKB4?gid=2012042402
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I can't recall Stern saying **** to Spoelstra on this.

Bottom line, Stern has an egg on his face right now. This SHOULD BE a non-issue.

Like PMatic said, Pop's coaching record speaks for itself. I don't think there is anyone in the league who should be questioning his roster decisions.
 
Hold up.... Kobe is 100 points away from 30k career points??!???! Cotdamn :wow:
 
 Silver said this back in April 
"The strategic resting of particular players on particular nights is within the discretion of the teams," Silver said then. "And Gregg Popovich in particular is probably the last coach that I would second-guess."
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Of course, it was a shortened season but there's nothing within the letter of the law that says you can't do this. Stern's argument will likely be about the spirit of the game and the obligation to the fans or some nonsense. Which would be funny coming from Stern and can be put right up there with "competitive balance" as another hilarious myth about the league.

And people should calm down and stop pretending like this is the LAST STRAW and the NBA is officially about entertainment and Stern is spitting on the grave of James Naismith. The NBA has been a business since you've been watching. This is exactly the kind of thing Stern would have a power trip over... it's the kind of thing Pop either unintentionally did because he really doesn't care and does what's best for his team or he did it intentionally because he really doesn't care about Stern or the national TV audience. Either way, Stern can make his statement, have some lame fine or official warning, the talking heads will blabber about it for a few days, and we'll move on.
 
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Sending a player along with three aging vets home early on the very tail end of a 6 game in 9 nights road trip and some of you are upset because it decreased "entertainment value?"

How are we so sure he was sending a message? I can easily see the rationale for them getting a jump on getting home. The fact that he pissed off Stern is just the cherry on top.

I love this game and will continue to watch, but this damn league leaves a lot to be desired. Stern did well for the game in his early years, but now he's just OD'ing as a dictator and trying to squeeze out every ounce of revenue he can before he retires. He doesn't care about the overall wellfare of the league as it pertains to the improvement and direction of the game so much as he does providing a glitz and glamour "show" with the few super teams as his horses.

I know a lot of us in here are big fans of the NBA and watch religiously despite any flaws we might see with the way David Stern handles "business," but do you realize how the majority of the sports fan population doen't really start getting into basketball until the playoffs? Sure, these casual fans tune in to TNT every Thursday to watch a great game, but they damn well know that the game matters much more in the Spring than it does in the latter half of fall. That's all Popovich is concerned with in the long run as well. And rightfully so.
 
The modern league has always been about the glitz and glamour and super teams... let's not go down that road again. 

Fans might not care about the early season because it overlaps with NCAA football, NFL, NCAA basketball... and along with the games mattering less early on. I wouldn't be against shortening the season, but Stern himself could propose that idea and it would be shut down immediately by the owners. Less games means less home games and less money for their clubs. Which means smaller advertising dollars and broadcast money. It's not happening. Yes, the dreaded "business" aspect again.
 
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good lawd! why does paul piece keep getting his ankles broke?? the way jameer nelson crossed son I thought he tore his ACL.
 
Punish Pop? David Stern out of line

If David Stern is trying to create enthusiasm for the start of the Adam Silver Era, he's off to a good start.

Stern's bizarre decision to announce the San Antonio Spurs would face as-yet-unnamed "substantial sanctions" -- calling it "unacceptable" without ever specifying why -- for sitting out four starters against Miami on Thursday night, bore all the classic tenets of bad management: Reactive, inconsistent, overbearing, and moving us no closer to a solution to the underlying issue.

Let's walk through it. Understandably, ticket-holders in Miami were upset they wouldn't get to see San Antonio's three All-Stars (although Southwest ticket holders in Orlando apparently were thrilled). Also understandably, so was TNT -- one of the league's national television rights holders who thought it would have a marquee game to televise.

While we ended up with a surprisingly good game -- a 105-100 Miami win decided in the final half-minute -- it's likely that some viewers turned off their sets when they saw the assorted de Colos and Josephs on the floor for San Antonio. Or that's the argument, anyway, although it breaks down when one considers the Spurs have pretty much been a form of TV-viewer repellent for several years now. (Seriously, I've probably written a hundred columns on the Spurs over the past decade, and this may be the first one that more than eight non-relatives outside the state of Texas will read.)

Nonetheless, let's walk through the four main problems I have with Stern's sudden decree:

Reactive:Popovich told our Brian Windhorst that he'd basically decided as soon as the schedule came out that he'd be resting his players for this game. Certainly if the league had given him some warning not to do it -- Popovich has done this several times before, remember -- he would have thought twice about enacting his plan.

More important, anyone with any familiarity with the Spurs could see this coming from a mile away. I wrote about it in my column Thursday morning, and it's not as if I'd had a sudden burst of clairvoyance; San Antonio Express-News beat writer Jeff McDonald had been warning fans for several days that the Spurs would likely tank this game.

Stern's reaction was to be Captain Renault in "Casablanca," shocked to learn that teams sometimes sit out healthy players in his league. He probably felt some blowback about what had happened, and immediately went into knee-jerk mode. But this was not some sudden, unexpected thunderbolt like the fight at the Palace. He should have been prepared for it.

Inconsistent:This is not the first time Popovich has done this; not even close. Last season he sat all his starters in a game at Portland just before the All-Star break, for instance, and unlike Thursday night that contest wasn't close at all: The Blazers won by 40. (A night remembered fondly out there as "the last time we thought the Blazers were good.") He also has done this a couple of other times over the past few years, nearly always at the end of a long road trip with a back-to-back set, like Thursday night's game at Miami. And he has never been sanctioned.

Moreover, Popovich isn't the only one. You want a bad national TV game as a result of sitting stars? How about last year's Miami-Boston game on April 24, in which six of the seven All-Stars from the two different teams sat out because of assorted maladies, both real and imagined, and the result was a 78-66 abomination that may be the single-worst game I have ever seen in person. (Did I mention I flew up to cover this putrescence?) I'm still waiting to hear about the sanctions facing those two teams.

Or, more important, there's the little matter that the league is completely unwatchable in March and April because of all the rampant tanking taking place by teams out of the playoff chase, combined with playoff teams resting key players as well. Here's what I wrote after being subjected to that Heat-Celtics stinker last April, and my feelings haven't changed. Fixing the abominable quality of the last two months of the season is one of the bigger problems facing the league. The league has shown no real momentum toward addressing it.

But Popovich sitting out his starters for one game in November, so he can have a better team by the end of the season and win more games (which he usually does)? That's the problem that requires action?

Overbearing: So now we're going to have "substantial sanctions" for this event, that the Spurs had no idea was going to provoke a response from the league despite the ample and obvious warning signals they'd given that this would happen?

Great. So next time San Antonio wants to do this, it will be five percent harder. The Spurs will have to make up fake injuries, perhaps (how we missed you, "tendonitis," ever since the injured list went away), and probably have them chill on Miami Beach on game night instead of flying them home early from Orlando (that'll show 'em!). He might even have to choose a different game to tank -- I don't think we would have had such a commotion if Popovich had sent out the 'B' team against the Magic a night earlier, for instance.

Better yet, maybe if the commissioner is so concerned about fans being able to see the stars compete, he can tell us what sanctions he gave himself last Nov. 29, when nobody could see any games because the players were locked out.

Stern has just taken a running start down a mighty steep and slippery slope by essentially telling a team how to manage personnel. That's particularly true when it's a team trying to actually win and not that more common, depressing scenario of draft-inspired tanking. What if he orders Pop to play his guys and then Duncan gets hurt? Or at a lesser level, what if the Spurs lost a more important game upcoming against Memphis because they were tuckered out from this one and the long trip? These are the decisions coaches are making every day in this league, and they know their teams far better than Stern.

Not addressing the underlying problem: If the 82-game schedule is too taxing for virtually any player over the age of 25, and if back-to-backs at the end of long trips are particularly problematic, maybe the solution is not to throw the book at teams who try to manage for the long haul and have everybody in peak condition in June. (Sadly, there are a great many teams who don't fall under this banner.)

Maybe, just maybe, the problem is trying to schedule prominent national TV games with one of the teams on a back-to-back at the end of a long trip. Here's an idea: If you really want to make sure the TNT and ABC games are marquee events, then make sure both teams have a day off heading into it.

Instead, Stern's response essentially is to chastise the Spurs for being smarter than everybody else and figuring out that if you only contest, say, 79 of the 82 games on the schedule, you can come out of it in a lot better shape at the end.

I'll insert the caveat that there may be variables we don't know. Perhaps warnings were sent, wags of the finger given, and all of it happened behind the scenes. I still don't agree with it, for all the reasons given above, but it would seem maybe five percent more sensible than it does now.

Nonetheless, the initial takeaway from this affair is that this was a fit of Selig-ian lunacy not befitting of the best commissioner in sports history. One hopes that the league will sit down and take a more reasoned approach before deciding its "substantial" sanctions ... unless, that is, one of those sanctions involves Popovich taking extra questions in his between-quarter TV interviews. In that case, everybody wins.
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The message was that Pop was pissed that the Spurs were coming off 6 ROAD games in 9 nights plus 4 road games in 5 nights and the Heat were coming off 4 days off rest. The Spurs were being set up for a blow out, might as well make sure your main guys are fresh for the next gamel.

Stern probably did this because he thought people would be outraged but honestly, it's 1 game out of an 82 game season- people don't really care.
 
The NBA is a business first and we were reminded of that last night. I applaud David Stern for saying something about Popovich's tactics. This is a marquee game that's being televised nationally in a city that they will only play once per year. Stern not only spoke up for the fans who paid to see them last night, but voiced the opinions of the league's sponsors and broadcaster. This was a game in November not the end of the season where sitting a player is acceptable. There's no reason for the players to be that tired 17 games in. If they can't handle that, what are you playing for? Play the guys that people pay to see. Stern's rationale was solid, he just went about it poorly. He should have let the game play out and then announce a punishment.
 
 
I don't see why it matters if it was a marquee game or not. Players' bodies will break down if they're playing the Heat on TNT or the Kings on Comcast SportsNet.

Steve Nash can run, but with some pain and risk of further injury... is he more inclined to play today since the Lakers are on ESPN? I know Steve Nash is "actually" injured compared to the Spurs who Pop is taking "preventative" measures with, so you can say it's on another level, sure... but he can run just like the Spurs could've run last night. But doctors say Nash shouldn't play yet if he doesn't want to risk damage, and from Pop's reasoning he didn't want to play his players four games in five nights to risk damage to them.

Now if Pop picked the TNT game just to be defiant, that's another issue. But we have no reason to assume he did that.
 
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PMatic said:
Maybe, just maybe, the problem is trying to schedule prominent national TV games with one of the teams on a back-to-back at the end of a long trip. Here's an idea: If you really want to make sure the TNT and ABC games are marquee events, then make sure both teams have a day off heading into it.
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Logistically speaking, I don't know if this could work...but it makes all the sense in the world to me.
PMatic said:
Let's walk through it. Understandably, ticket-holders in Miami were upset they wouldn't get to see San Antonio's three All-Stars
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I'm sure those people were extremely devastated.

...

Good article though.
 
I really don't buy this as an argument by Stern for the fans sake exclusively for punishing the Spurs. Too me this just seems like the NBA is just scared to potentially lose money if other teams decide to this for their marque games on national television. I'm curious as to what the ratings were last night compared to other TNT games so far with people knowing that the Spurs big three were not going to play. Maybe not that much of a difference but I cant seem to find that information anywhere. 
 
The last couple pages has really exposed to me the critical thinking ability of many on this board.  I'm very disappointed that I'm either speaking with dummies or children.  Props to Jesus Shuttlesworth and JHawk for "getting it". 
 
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