How the NBA’s crackdown is affecting this season

In the last decade or so, the NBA has had a difficult time getting its star players to play a full compliment of games when healthy. Teams have aimed to reduce the wear and tear on their most important players by strategically sitting them out of games. The league has taken big steps to prevent teams from doing so this season. All statistics are sourced from Basketball Reference. New rules are sourced from ESPN.

When the NBA Board of Governors implemented the new protocols relating to rest, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver stated that this was done with the fans in mind.

The league office is coming from a good place, as it’s a bummer for fans to pay high prices to watch an NBA game only to find out star players will not be on the floor.

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One of the most important parts of the new rule is that teams with two or three stars cannot sit all of those players for the same game. The rule allows for one player in a star pairing or trio to be rested for a particular game, but the others must suit up so as to maintain the level of competitive integrity in a matchup.

For the purposes of this rule, the NBA has defined a star player as anyone who has made an All Star team or been named to the All NBA team in each of the last three seasons.

The current landscape of the NBA features 15 organizations that have two or more players that meet these qualifications, so this has impacted half of the league.

There are certain contests throughout the season that the NBA features more than others. For example, nationally televised games are always going to garner more attention because of the popular teams they feature. Additionally, the NBA also increased regular season interest with its first-ever in-season tournament.

The NBA has stated that they would prefer for teams to rest players at home as opposed to benching headliners on the road. This makes sense as well, as many teams only make one visit to opposing NBA cities.

It would be disappointing for LeBron James to be rested during the Lakers’ one and only visit to Indiana, for example.

When players are rested in accordance with the new rules, the NBA wants them to be seen by fans at the arena and on TV.

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This promotes a level of engagement from that player with regards to their team’s success, and to the NBA product as a whole. It will be interesting to see how this is policed when the season begins.

The league is also trying to get away from players on losing teams being unavailable for weeks or months on end. Franchises have opted to do this in order to keep these players healthy, but to also jockey for better draft position.

Fans will be watching closely to see if teams that are out of the playoff mix keep their stars out.

As with many rules, there are some exceptions. The NBA will be more lenient in granting players rest who are 35 years old on opening night, have played more than 1,000 career games, or have played more than 34,000 regular season minutes, Basketball Reference.

Administratively, teams will need to contact the league office when they want to utilize this exception for back to back games.

It appears as if the league's rules are having a positive effect. The league fined the Brooklyn Nets $100,000 in early January according to NBC New York for resting four healthy players in a game against the Milwaukee Bucks. An independent medical professional ruled that they could have participated.

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