Wow! I can't believe they actually did it and when this new rule was introduced I thought it would be impossible for the NBA to actually enforce it but I'll be damned, they actually followed through and fine the Nets 100 large for not playing their star players during a nationally televised game.
This new policy of fining teams for benching star players that could have played in a game was approved by the NBA before this season began and it works like this: First fine is 100k, second is 250k, then it is 1 million in cold hard cash.
Then the fine is meant to go up a million each time it has to be done again.
I presume the idea behind this is to not have good players on the bench when games are televised in order to keep people tuning in because this policy doesn't apply to games that are not nationally televised or at least that's the best I can interpret it.
In the Nets 144-122 relative blowout loss to the Milwaukee Bucks last week, the Nets benched or very sparingly played 7 of their best players. Spencer Dinwiddie (whose name I will never not fine funny), Dorian Finney-Smith, Cam Johnson, and Nic Claxton. The NBA is required to identify the injury preventing all players from being on the court and the reasons for all of there were pretty weak, one of which was simply listed as "rest." Relative star players Mikal Bridges, Cam Thomas and Royce O’Neale were not played beyond the first quarter and it started to appear as though the Nets' head coach Jacque Vaughn was intentionally losing this game.
An NBA official got straight to the point when he said that "if you’re gonna sit four starters at one time, that’s going to violate the policy." Then they set straight into fining the Nets the 100 grand.
Now I have mixed feelings about this policy and especially the fact that it is going to be rather difficult to decide who is violating the agreement and who is not, especially since there is no clear definition of what needs to happen in order to be in violation. In this particular situation though, I believe it was pretty clear that Brooklyn was not really even trying to win this game.
head coach Vaughn attempted to justify the benching by stating he was thinking about the long-term game for the season and was resting players to accomplish something like preventing injury or fatigue over the NBA's extremely long season. I'm not going to argue with the man about that. Personally, I think the NBA season is much longer than it needs to be and a lot of teams are guilty of sidelining players throughout the season.
I guess you could say that I am actually a bit surprised that the NBA officials actually went forward with this fine though. When they announced it last year it seemed to me like an idle threat but they didn't waste a lot of time implementing it.
Will this get the attention of the rest of the league and let them know that the NBA brass mean business and expect all televised games to have the complete participation from all teams? I think it might. $100,000 isn't a lot of money to most NBA teams but the threat of that fine increasing over time probably will be enough to convince teams to try as much as they can to win every game.
This could potentially introduce other bad aspects into a season such as players faking injuries and doctors signing off of things that they know are not true. Get ready for all manner of braces and temporary casts to start appearing on the sidelines in the future. This could get comical.