With the NBA's ever-soaring popularity, it seems remote at best that fans would boycott the league.
Even though they have every reason to.
The Brooklyn Nets have been accused of tanking during the last two games of the regular season so that they could avoid playing the Chicago Bulls in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.
The Nets lost to the New York Knicks on Tuesday night and then kept their starters home while playing the regular-season finale at Cleveland and losing 114-85. The losses pushed the Nets from the No. 5 seed to the No. 6 seed in the East. To be fair, the Knicks did play their starters against the Nets, but the team couldn't have looked more disinterested.
ESPN.com reported that first-year coach Jason Kidd denied that the Nets were tanking, preferring instead to say his team was following a blueprint that was hatched before the season even started.
"No," first-year coach Jason Kidd said. "We had a plan from training camp, and we stuck with the plan throughout the year. We dealt with injuries, we kept minutes down, we never went away from the game plan or the big picture, and we felt we would be the No. 3, 4, 5 or 6 seed and we would have to find a way to win a playoff series no matter who the opponent is.
"The talk about tanking or whatever, we had to play the games. Unfortunately we didn't win some of them, and we fell from fifth to sixth. But again, if you look at our injury report going into the playoffs, we achieved the biggest goal, and that was to be healthy going in. But we'll leave that to you guys to talk about tanking."
That mentality is an issue the NBA has to address at some point to ensure the fans get at least some value out of a regular-season game. Resting players that fans pay good money to see.
Tanking is even worse because it forces fans to watch bad players intentionally play poorly.
Even in the lesser evil of resting players, NBA fans be damned. In a league where the cheapest ticket single-game ticket $26.87, according to statista.com (for a New Orleans Pelicans home game), teams routinely give players the night off and rip off the fans left and right.
Consider that a family of four must pay $107.48 (before transportation or parking and concessions) to see a Pelicans home game against the San Antonio Spurs, who decide to rest Tony Parker, Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili.
That is a lot of money to pay for a single game without the benefit of watching the Spurs' stars. And that is the lowest price in the NBA. The same family in New York would've paid $517.52 in tickets alone at Madison Square Garden.
Apparently the NBA doesn't care. Certainly the NBA franchises don't. The NBA famously fined the Spurs $250,000 for resting Parker, Duncan, Ginobili and Danny Green in a game against the Miami Heat in 2012.
In November, 2012, that is.
Spurs coach Gregg Popovich was defiant in explaining his team's motives.
"We've done this before in hopes of making a wiser decision, rather than a popular decision," Popovich told reporters, according to the San Antonio Express-News. "It's pretty logical."
And pretty insensitive to the fans that helped make the league as popular as it has become.
Even the NBA, which handed out the fine, hinted that the Spurs might've avoided the fine had they just informed the Heat or the league of their intentions beforehand.
"The Spurs decided to make four of their top players unavailable for an early-season game that was the team's only regular-season visit to Miami," then-commissioner David Stern said, as reported by nba.si.com. "The team also did this without informing the Heat, the media, or the league office in a timely way. Under these circumstances, I have concluded that the Spurs did a disservice to the league and our fans."
If the teams want to sit players, then the NBA should make a rule as to how much of a discount fans would receive off the price of their tickets. For example, the Heat charged $78.30 per ticket in 2013-14, so the fans might receive a 60 percent discount and pay $31.32 per ticket if the Spurs were to rest the four players that they did in 2012.
Not fair to the Heat? Of course not, but then it would force the Heat to put the heat on the Spurs for their actions. And the Heat could retaliate when they visit the Spurs in San Antonio and affect the Spurs' gate.
Obviiously, all sports pull players to rest starters, but no other sport is affected by the absence of a single player like in the NBA.
If television revenue is the driving force for the NBA, ticket prices should be $25 at every venue. Then the buyer-beware argument is more palatable.
Until then, the NBA has to figure out a way to protect the fan as much as it does the franchise.
Do NBA teams have the right to rest players for multiple games to prepare for the playoffs? Comment below or tell us @SportsWN.
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