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Lets discuss the topic of resting players, which has been a hot topic this week as a result of Silver bitching about teams resting players during the marquee ABC games on Sat night. Clifford has said several times that he doesn't believe in resting players because Jordan and Ewing don't believe in resting players. Not surprising to hear Clifford's mentor Stan Van Gundy recently state that he doesn't believe in resting players.

On the other hand, science and the Spurs suggest otherwise.

Is our front office just being stubborn? Would they change their tune if we were front-runners with superstars that had their eyes set on the finals and not just grinding it out to make the playoffs? Would our front office have a different tune if we had been close to winning the finals once or twice only to have tired players or overuse injuries derail the team at the very end? Does the league owe it to the fans to ensure the stars are on the court? is this all the league's fault for having back to back games?

some quotes from the Observer article

Reason Charlotte Hornets refuse to rest players like other NBA teams do is the GOAT

“It’s easy for me, because I’m working for an owner who just doesn’t believe in it,” said Hornets coach Steve Clifford. “And I have an associate head coach who would kill me if I started doing it.

“It’s pretty easy here.”

“When I played there wasn’t anybody resting people,” said Ewing, who played from 1985-2002. “We just played. I’m not going to say I disagree, because sometimes you need a rest, but it just wasn’t something we did. We got everybody out there.”

“We’re not in a position to rest guys,” said forward Marvin Williams. “We’ve got guys who are beat up, sick or hurt – and we need all hands on deck. We need to bring whatever kind of energy we can to get in to the postseason.”

“Coach (Clifford) does a great job of getting us rested and having our tough practices be few and far between,” said Williams. “It’s low impact, not much banging, and he gets us out of there.”

“I’ve had two or three dinners with Michael and Patrick where we’ve talked about this,” said Clifford. “Michael doesn’t understand it. Nor does Patrick.”

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nba/charlotte-hornets/article140395273.html#storylink=cpy

Its especially frustrating because of the injury history of our team and some of the examples of us rushing players back from injury too fast (with devastating consequences in the case of MKG's shoulder injury).

We are doomed to be mediocre as long as MJ is the owner. His ego will always make him a crappy owner! Magic Johnson has the right idea and the right ownership to back him. It's too bad that the GOAT player = WOAT owner. The ceiling is not the roof under his ownership!


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I thought Silver put people's health and needs over making money? Which is it? Is he a business man or an activist?

Secondly one thing or another needs to stop. Either these players take games off, shorten the seasons, lessen B2B games and call themselves entitled pussies and not the greatest athletes with all the advancements in nutrition, technology and medicine etc or they keep playing these games, keep collecting checks and keep making commercials that make them look like superheroes. Because I don't want to hear about these guys being the fastest, strongest, greatest athletes ever with every advancement and also play less games than guys that wore Chuck Taylors, played at a faster pace, and had to fly commercial or ride busses.

In terms of Charlotte, Clifford needs to a better job of spacing out the minutes of key players (he's done a better job of this with Kemba this year and Kemba made the All-Star game: Coincidence?) and trusting the reserves more and the medical staff needs to learn how to rehab players properly. But sitting guys out of games? No, not unless you're tanking or something. The only reason why Popp and the Spurs get away with this is that they're so good they realise that the regular season means nothing to them. They don't care about seeding, they just have to get into the playoffs. If there were no playoffs and the regular season meant something there wouldn't be this problem.

The thing I'm most fascinated about is the lack of perspective shown by certain people who were both a part of the NBA back in the 90s and are active in it now. Like, didn't they notice their sleep drunk players stumbling to a double digit loss on the road on a particularly badly scheduled stretch of games? I get what someone like SVG is saying about the guys having it worse back in the 90s and that today's guys are having it easy. And that someone like him wouldn't be exactly easy to persuade to give the guys even more of a break. But that isn't any kind of an excuse not to do so. If you know how bad it was back then, wouldn't it mean that you should be more open to change nowadays!?

Thank god there are people like Chris Webber, who openly said on air that, you know what, I would have had a longer career if I wasn't needlessly pushed to practice when I actually was semi-injured.

The guys one the Hornets get plenty of rest ... while they are out with injuries.

Seriously I don't expect anything to change around here as long as MJ is the owner. Personally I agree with what Lamar posted above & with what Bill Simmons reposted in his latest mailbag.

https://theringer.com/the-no-sleep-till-the-nba-playoffs-mailbag-5fc89d3ff889#.9qa7ibnip

“I wonder if the guys just play harder game to game now … I was just watching how casually they played defense in the ’80s. They would turn it up in the last six minutes of playoff games, but for the most part, you just played offense, and you kind of half-heartedly jog around guys, maybe in the low post you shove people. But you can’t do that … Everybody plays really hard and you have to run out on shooters all the time … [there’s] more ground to cover, and if you don’t give a crap and you mail in a possession or a play, you end up like Otto Porter in … ‘Shaqtin’ a Fool.’ So there is this pressure to just go [all] out all the time … and what Westbrook was doing as you said earlier, it’s not sustainable. You’re gonna lay in the runway. You’re gonna fall on your wrist. Your knee is gonna act up. You’re gonna be playing through some injury and pretend you don’t have it. And I just wonder, do these guys go too hard, and do we have to reduce the season now? It feels like we do.”

Is there anything to the possibility that changing the illegal defense rule is one of the main causes for the injuries and wear that we see these days? I'm not going to take it as far as Simmons and say that players in the 80s or 90s didn't play hard on defense because I don't think thats the case at all, but it certainly does seem like players have to move a ton more on defense now than they did back then. I think it is mostly due to the difference in the illegal defense rule and how it affects how team offense operates. Most players are sliding and scrambling constantly and all over the place on most defensive possessions these days.

Players got injured and their careers got cut short in the 80's and 90's too. I think the players just need to shut up about rest because they are being paid millions of dollars to play a sport most of the world play just play for fun. I wouldn't be opposed to the NBA fining players for resting games unless a injury is reported.

Of course this just means that players and teams will make up injuries to the most minuscule reasons like itchy neck and stuff lol but at least players won't be sitting just for "rest" while fans are paying top dollar for tickets.

These players are being paid in one year more than the average American get paid in their lifetime. I don't think "rest" is a good enough excuse for sitting out of a game they'll still get paid for.

They absolutely should rest players.

They are getting paid so much Because they are the greatest in the world at their profession and are highly valuable assets and should be treated as such.

Your body simply can't sustain repeated outputs without hormonal crashes every few weeks which increases your susceptibility to injury ten fold. Look at soccer players who rest games... powetlifters back cycle every few weeks, etc. It's just basic science

Pre illegal defense basketball was mostly standing around watching and alternating 1 on 1 possessions. One time you'd post up, one time pick n pop. One time inside/outside game, one time iso...

Now you actually have to run a real offense to generate efficient looks. Because if you don't you'll get crushed. You cant go iso because there is a defender parked in the paint.

Most Guys couldn't shoot in the old days so you just glued to the SG.

You could lay off 90% of the SF and PF from 3. Now those guys will roast you if you do that.



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Excited about the Playoffs now that Durant has given other teams a fighting chance

Didn't MJ "take a rest" twice in his career?

I can see the problem from NBA's point of view. People pay money to see the stars only for them to take a night off.

Imagine if you bought tickets for the Rolling Stones only to find out on the night that Mick Jagger had decided to take the night off to rest. You would demand your money back.

Stars get so full of themselves they forget the importance of the consumer in all this. If people didn't spend money, they wouldn't be getting paid.

Braggins wrote:Is there anything to the possibility that changing the illegal defense rule is one of the main causes for the injuries and wear that we see these days? I'm not going to take it as far as Simmons and say that players in the 80s or 90s didn't play hard on defense because I don't think thats the case at all, but it certainly does seem like players have to move a ton more on defense now than they did back then. I think it is mostly due to the difference in the illegal defense rule and how it affects how team offense operates. Most players are sliding and scrambling constantly and all over the place on most defensive possessions these days.

I honestly think it's the semi-circle and the lost art of the clean, hard foul that's the reason why ACLs are exploding everywhere. Between guys being able to take charges under the basket, big guys being able to lay the wood to you without getting whistled for flagrant 1's and 2's basically for bigness, and hand-checking, you couldn't get to the rim at will back in the day. Oh and Euro-steps (the bad ones that are 3 steps and still uncalled b/c it's Lebron, etc) too. The paint is a runway now so you see all these Derrick Rose hurky jerky leaps constantly, that's where the repetitive motion injuries are coming from.

I mean, c'mon, people played defense back then. Are you kidding me? Saying everybody stood around on defense is the biggest revisionist history BS I've ever heard. Guys like Gary Payton used to actually take pride in defense and criticized AAU culture routinely for killing defensive fundamentals, has he been lying for years? It looks like standing around b/c back then you couldn't go to the rim anytime you wanted to thanks to an uncalled moving screen and neutered big men. You had to actually earn FTs too. If moving without the ball was all it took to light up those non-existant defenses back then guys like Hornacek would've led the NBA in scoring. **** ridiculous the **** I hear nowadays.

The only reason people have to move constantly on defense now is because moving is the only thing you can do on defense now. Just move your feet and hope you guessed right that the guy coming off the illegal screen, travelling and palming the ball zigs instead of zags. Can't guard the 3pt line, all the shooter has to do is land awkwardly and he gets 3 free throws. Can't guard the weakside, shooter just has to flail his arms after he shoots to get free throws. Can't guard the post-up, they don't exist anymore b/c they're just decoys for somebody running off an illegal screen or camping out at the short corner three that is a three pointer for no good **** reason whatsoever. Plus, refs actually still call travels on big men in the post, even ones that aren't just b/c they don't travel as fluidly as guards. This is some watered-down, sell out to morons, blasphemous era of basketball we're living in.

Now that I'm done venting I'll hop on my rascal scooter and scoot over to Cracker Barrell for my 4 pm dinner.

Eoghan wrote:

Braggins wrote:Is there anything to the possibility that changing the illegal defense rule is one of the main causes for the injuries and wear that we see these days? I'm not going to take it as far as Simmons and say that players in the 80s or 90s didn't play hard on defense because I don't think thats the case at all, but it certainly does seem like players have to move a ton more on defense now than they did back then. I think it is mostly due to the difference in the illegal defense rule and how it affects how team offense operates. Most players are sliding and scrambling constantly and all over the place on most defensive possessions these days.

I honestly think it's the semi-circle and the lost art of the clean, hard foul that's the reason why ACLs are exploding everywhere. Between guys being able to take charges under the basket, big guys being able to lay the wood to you without getting whistled for flagrant 1's and 2's basically for bigness, and hand-checking, you couldn't get to the rim at will back in the day. Oh and Euro-steps (the bad ones that are 3 steps and still uncalled b/c it's Lebron, etc) too. The paint is a runway now so you see all these Derrick Rose hurky jerky leaps constantly, that's where the repetitive motion injuries are coming from.

I mean, c'mon, people played defense back then. Are you kidding me? Saying everybody stood around on defense is the biggest revisionist history BS I've ever heard. Guys like Gary Payton used to actually take pride in defense and criticized AAU culture routinely for killing defensive fundamentals, has he been lying for years? It looks like standing around b/c back then you couldn't go to the rim anytime you wanted to thanks to an uncalled moving screen and neutered big men. You had to actually earn FTs too. If moving without the ball was all it took to light up those non-existant defenses back then guys like Hornacek would've led the NBA in scoring. **** ridiculous the **** I hear nowadays.

The only reason people have to move constantly on defense now is because moving is the only thing you can do on defense now. Just move your feet and hope you guessed right that the guy coming off the illegal screen, travelling and palming the ball zigs instead of zags. Can't guard the 3pt line, all the shooter has to do is land awkwardly and he gets 3 free throws. Can't guard the weakside, shooter just has to flail his arms after he shoots to get free throws. Can't guard the post-up, they don't exist anymore b/c they're just decoys for somebody running off an illegal screen or camping out at the short corner three that is a three pointer for no good **** reason whatsoever. Plus, refs actually still call travels on big men in the post, even ones that aren't just b/c they don't travel as fluidly as guards. This is some watered-down, sell out to morons, blasphemous era of basketball we're living in.

Now that I'm done venting I'll hop on my rascal scooter and scoot over to Cracker Barrell for my 4 pm dinner.

I'm not saying the modern game is necessarily harder on the players overall. Its probably easier in most ways, but I think the defense being so movement based might make it harder on the bones and soft tissue in the leg joints specifically. All the flying and flailing around and euro-step type stuff is probably a factor as well.

Oh I know, I wasn't directing my rant at you. Just quoted you for the train of thought. I just look at other sports where they move around constantly like hockey, soccer, tennis, etc. Are they complaining about their seasons being too long? Are they blowing out joints constantly? I don't know but it doesn't seem like it.

I don't understand how its even possible to survive a game of hockey.

Odd example of using soccer to support the claim that NBA players shouldnt rest. Soccer teams rotate players all the time, especially if they have 2 games in one week.

I would be down for small changes. Ive always liked the 76 game season. So, basically reduce the regular season by six games and the preseason by half and start the preseason a week early. That would add about two weeks to the regular season, which should be enough to schedule 76 games without any 4 in 5 scenarios and a limited number of back to backs (maybe none).