The Downbeat: To Rest Or Not To Rest Players

Adrian Wojnarowski tweeted a rule change proposal that is being voted on:

This would make it possible for the league to fine teams for excessively resting players, or resting players during their most lucrative, nationally televised games. This has been an issue in the past few years, starting with contending teams like the San Antonio Spurs, Golden State Warriors, Cleveland Cavaliers using modern science to determine when players are most prone to injury, and simply need a rest to regain their freshness and ability to play at their highest levels for the rest of the season. It started because these teams were more concerned about their players being healthy for the playoffs than for the regular season. Slowly, the practice has spread to even non-playoff teams in order to preserve the healthy of their stars.

However, the NBA is in the entertainment business, and many fans are not happy with how this has played out. People pay to see their favorite players, and it is disappointing when the stars sit out. Not to mention when multiple star players sit out in the same game. Above all, the TV deals that are paying the players’ skyrocketing salaries were based on the premise that these players would be playing in the nationally televised games. It brings low ratings when stars sit out of those games, and makes the TV networks understandably and justifiably unhappy with this arrangement. Adam Silver seems to want to take care of both of these disgruntled groups, by fining teams for resting multiple players in a single game, or fining teams for resting healthy players in nationally televised games.

David Locke had a theory that I agree with in principle, that teams should simply cut minutes of players in certain games to rest them, rather than taking them out of games entirely. While this makes sense, it is something the players do not want whatsoever. Playing less minutes means that a player will naturally have worse looking stats, and that could impact their next pay check. That makes this suggestion basically unrealistic, and I doubt it is the solution that will make everybody happy.

Regardless of how teams will find rest for their players going forward, I feel this proposed rule change is a good fix, and an incentive for teams to find ways to rest their players without ruining the experience for fans.

Going along with the topic of rule changes, there has been talk of possibly allowing teams to draft players directly from high school once again.

The last player the Jazz drafted straight from High School was CJ Miles in 2005. This could change the landscape of the NBA. However, there is a danger of bringing such immature kids into the league. NBA draftees are already getting younger and younger without the rule change.

What are your thoughts?

Rudy has been recruiting players for his clan in the new video game “Destiny 2”. It looks like he has high standards for the players’ skill levels. Paul George didn’t make the cut.

He has been dropping a couple bombs, and leaked his gaming console of choice:

Many of you may not care of this, but I am personally disappointed in Rudy’s markedly poor taste.

In other news, NBA 2k18 was recently released. It has been received well by critics, earning a 9.1 so far on Metacritic. Fans seem unimpressed though, giving a score of 4.1/10. This is prone to change as more opinions are recoroded, but many are disgruntled with the amount of grind needed to progress, and the push for selling Virtual Currency (VC) in order to purchase player upgrades and cosmetic options.

Did any of you make the cut for Rudy’s squad? Are any of you playing NBA 2k18?

Utah Jazz assistant coach Igor Kokoskov lead Slovenia to the Euroleague title this past week.

He had to beat his native country, Serbia, in the final round. In the semi-finals he was even able to blow out the powerhouse from Spain, who were led by the twin tower Gasol brothers, and also included Ricky Rubio and a few high potential young players. It was a well-earned championship. Here’s to hoping Igor Kokoskov can help bring a championship to Utah as well.

We’ve seen these highlight reels a couple times, but I really enjoy watching Donovan Mitchell play.

I like David Locke’s take on Donovan for the most part. He’s probably going to be an exciting player to watch, pulling off some plays that will blow your mind. However, don’t be disappointed if we find him making bone-headed plays fairly often. All rookies do this, and Donovan probably won’t be any different. It’s part of learning to play in the best basketball league in the world. I think he will definitely earn a spot in the rotation by the end of the year, but let’s not allow our expectations to rise above what is humanly possible for him to achieve. Both Rodney Hood and Alec Burks have already gone through the rough learning process, so Donovan has some stiff competition for minutes. Coach Quin Snyder may slide players to different positions to make more room in the rotation for Donovan, but whatever he chooses, it’ll be interesting to see what happens.