Fuck Adam Silver. This is probably about gambling.

If they appeal, it will most likely be rescinded quietly. Cos like you said it’s a ridiculous fine.

Only thing the Pacers did wrong was not resting enough guys. Furphy ended up tearing his ACL two games later

I do not understand how they can ascertain whether a team is tanking by who they sit and give out fines without the team fighting back. Seems like a claim impossible to prove

I’m still very confused about both fines. After reading through the Player Participation Policy I’m not sure which rule either team violated. Maybe the Jazz are felt to be in violation of the “no shutdowns” bullet point, but after news of JJJ’s knee surgery and the league doing nothing about Washington shutting down both Trae and AD, I don’t feel good about that one. The Pacers’ fine just makes no sense at all, unless they’re going to ding them because Siakam rested one game while Haliburton is out for the season as “multiple star players out,” which seems capricious to say the least.

It’s a purely reactive move by the league after the bad PR this week. Almost every team load manages the back end of B2Bs. The Pacers just happened to play the Jazz and Nets for their 2nd games and the league cares more about optics than process.

Pacers have been one of the most injured teams this year and resting healthy starters hasn’t been a regular pattern when they barely get enough starter minutes in the first place. The fine feels like insult to literal injury.

Does resting in back to backs count towards this? How are they deciding these punishments?

Agreed the fine is ridiculous. Also, we got like 4 teams rolling out dogshit lineups for the season and being “organically bad” which is apparently fine. The Jazz, who actually play their players for 3 quarters and give their fans something to see, get fined for minutes restriction? It’s all just a PR move because the media had nothing to cover last week

Every casual and Presti narrative bot on this sub wants to whine about the league’s ethics, but yeah it’s way more ethical to fine a small market team so that the team who paid Kawhi and his uncle millions under the table (possibly even while he was on other teams) can steal their top 5 pick. When Silver grows a spine and does something about the gambling problem and the Ballmer problem, then we can start fining teams for trying to do what they can to better themselves within the confines of a lottery system that he enabled and designed.

Fwiw, the Jazz are absolutely tanking, but JJJ and Lauri were both stated to be on minutes restrictions.

JJJ obviously has explicitly been revealed to need surgery, and as per comments just wanted to play one home game before going under the knife. Team allowed him to play til then on minute restrictions.

Lauri was legitimately sick like 2 weeks back IIRC, to the extent that when he came back he’d lost ten pounds and looked rough.

Both probably aren’t super urgent, and both stars could probably play through those injuries to some extent, but neither guy is 100%. I don’t particularly care about the fine, I’m not paying the thing, but think this sets a pretty bad precedent. And retroactively, shit like the Raptors sitting BI for an ankle sprain the whole year just makes it clear that this isn’t consistently / fairly being enforced.

Cavs got a 250k fine for keeping Darius garland on his injury restriction all because a game was on national tv.

The pacers are objectively not too 2 in worst behavior right?

Still cray to me that sitting players is a smaller fine than just playing players for bench player minutes 

If we didn’t have games where all the starters sat, we would have never known Walker has all that potential. Huff has gotten better too when everyone else sits and Potter just had a great game too. It’s not like they suck. They just came back from 20 something points to beat the nets without any starters. Kam Jones hit that winning three. Just because someone is medically cleared does not mean they should play, it’s gambling with the players who are still nursing injuries (nesmith, nembhard, TJ)

I miss the 2000s era of NBA where this was never a discussion. Now we have a third of the league in a race to the bottom and claiming their method of tanking is less obvious than another team

$100k ain’t shit.

This is where the NBA needs to drop the B2B games. Play a game, travel that night and play the next night is brutal on the body.

If they build the schedule right, then the league can be highly competitive

What did the NBA expect? Their star got injured, they traded away most of their team, and it’s in their best interest to secure a high draft pick to pair with Halliburton for the future. They’re likely targeting a big man too. This was absolutely the right move. As for the $100,000 fine, it’s meaningless when you’re potentially landing a player you’ll pay millions, someone who, if they live up to their pick, will bring far more value to the team and the city than 100K ever could.

$100k is nothing for these franchises.

Just take away a nationally televised game for next year.

The fine seems pretty justified. Your real complaint should be that other teams haven’t been fined for doing something similar and that the Jazz weren’t fined /.reprimanded even more than they were.

Pacers suck lol