At dawn on September 14 , the NBA officially passed a new rule that will be applied immediately in the next 2023-24 season.
Reputable journalist Shams Charania of The Athletic said that the executive board of the American professional basketball tournament stipulated that ” teams will not be allowed to rest two stars in the same match” .
A team’s star player is noted as an athlete who has made the All-Star or All-NBA team at least once in the last three seasons.
Regarding the story of rest, this is a phrase that teams often use for the reason for players’ absence when they are not injured, simply resting to recover their physical condition.
ESPN reporter Adrian Wojnarowski further noted that in case of violation, the team will be fined depending on the number of violations. The first time the fine will be 100,000 USD for each case.
In the second time, the team will be fined $250,000 and from the third time onwards, the fine will exceed the threshold of $1 million for each time two stars rest in the same match.
This newly passed law is the NBA’s latest move in an effort to reduce the frequency of “Load Management” for players.
In recent years, many teams have begun to rotate stars to rest during the Regular Season, creating the concept of Load Management.
This helps avoid wasting the strength and physical condition of key players, so that they are more fit during the sprint of the regular season or Playoffs round.
The above request from the team is understandable, but teams overusing it is having a negative impact on the NBA, especially when key matches without big stars appear more and more.
There are many cases where fans spend money to buy tickets to the stadium, even traveling thousands of kilometers from other countries to watch their idols play.
However, what they got was nothing because the NBA stars they expected to watch only wore plain clothes, sat on the bench or sometimes did not even appear at the arena.
On the team’s side, there has been some negative feedback about this rule. ESPN expert Bobby Marks said he received a number of anonymous shares with the following content:
“The concern is that sometimes players after stressful matches, especially back-to-back matches (two matches in two consecutive days), need more rest to recover.
But with the NBA’s new rules, these star players who often have a large number of minutes will not be able to rest. In case the player still insists on resting unrelated to injury, the team will have to pay a fine.
