NBA Open Thread

We had fun with this the other day, so let’s do another NBA open thread.

The question on everyone’s mind right now is that of the NBA’s new 65 games played rule to qualify for postseason awards, which depending on the contract can me a hell of a lot of money to these guys. There are two schools of thought here. The first is that the habitual resting of players is bad for the league. I don’t think I can disagree. It is bad for the league when the best players don’t show up for road games especially. The second is that resting players is necessary so keep their health up for the playoffs. The NBA says it has data showing it doesn’t matter. Maybe, but I’m not inclined to trust data on workplace safety from any employer and I am sure not going to take the league’s word for it.

However, there’s no question that a culture has developed of not playing the best players in a way that’s very different from 20 or 30 years ago. Given how much less physical the game is today–as we can see from the scores–it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense that players would be getting hurt more today, even though they are playing less.

But then you have a Joel Embiid, who always has been a bad step away from missing a lot of time. The Sixers rightfully got into trouble for not including Embiid on its injury report before playing at Denver, which is a serious issue today because of the embrace of gambling by professional sports. Lot of people lost of a lot of money because they didn’t know Embiid wasn’t playing. Then he missed the Portland game too. But he came back for Golden State, was a shell of his normal power, and hurt his knee. So clearly the man did need rest.

This is why the 65 game rule is a tough one. Do I think Kawhi Leonard needed to be sitting 40 games a year? No. He’s played in almost every game this year and hasn’t gotten hurt either. But some players quite clearly do need more time and a big man like Embiid is the classic example. Of course, if he hadn’t taken every game off at Denver for years before this, the league wouldn’t have cracked down.

So it’s just a not great situation and I feel real bad for Embiid. I hope he comes back soon.

This is an open thread for all things NBA or other sports. Keep your damned politics out of here.