The NBA issued a warning to the Bulls this week about resting healthy players, prompting the team to change course and plan on using veterans Robin Lopez and Justin Holiday more frequently, reports Shams Charania of Yahoo Sports.
Lopez has not played for the Bulls since a February 14 home loss to the Raptors; Holiday last played in a road loss to the Nets in Brooklyn on February 26. Chicago tried to unload Lopez, a free agent at season’s end, at last month’s trade deadline, but couldn’t find a deal. The Bulls removed both veterans from the rotation to evaluate their young players for the remainder of the season.
“After the All-Star break, we had communication with the league office about Robin and Justin’s roles. After healthy dialogue, the league determined that their situations fall into the ‘player rest’ policy,” Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations John Paxson said in a statement, tweets Darnell Mayberry of The Athletic. “We respect the communication and cooperative dialogue with the league and will adhere to their recommendations going forward.”
Commissioner Adam Silver has taken a firm stance against teams purposely tanking. He fined Mavericks owner Mark Cuban $600K in late February for public comments advocating for tanking. Since then, he sent out a league-wide memo warning teams that they will face consequences if they are found to be purposely trying to lose.
“If we ever received evidence that players or coaches were attempting to lose or otherwise taking steps to cause any game to result otherwise than on its competitive merits, that conduct would be met with the swiftest and harshest response possible from the league office,” Silver said.
The Bulls were viewed as one of the worst teams in the league entering the season. Thus far, their 21-42 record, the fourth-worst record in the Eastern Conference, has corroborated those predictions.
The best course of action for the Bulls is to play their young players, and not Lopez/Holiday. The league has no business telling teams how to conduct themselves in this manner. It’s not like anyone is buying tix or tuning in because of these two anyhow. I understand the leagues stance as far as resting “Star” players, especially in nationally televised games, but this is overstepping bounds. The Bulls need to do what’s best for the organization, not what Silver considers best for the league, however far fetched.
The teams have no business losing on purpose. They have a way to play their young players. It is called the G League. If that is all they want to do then maybe these teams need to leave the NBA and join the G League full time.
There is no substitute for actually competing against NBA players. What’s to say that Felicio or whoever else they play over RoLo doesn’t give them just as good a chance to win? The league might as well determine every teams rotation and tell them how much to play each player.
But they are not competing, nor are they ready to. That is the problem. Anyone that has ever seen RoLo and Felicio play would say that. I think you are taking it a little too far. Saying that you can’t have healthy veteran scratches for three weeks in a row is far different from telling you who and when to play. If they don’t want to play Lopez, then buy him out. Otherwise it is detrimental to HIS career to be seated when healthy. Having guys on the roster and playing inferior younger players is just wrong and I am happy the NBA is doing something about it.
You’re missing the point entirely. These guys have zero chance of making the playoffs, so the league is now forcing the team to play guys they don’t want to play, who are getting paid to be mentors. It’s not up to Adam “worst commissioner in American sports history” silver to run teams. If the league wants to keep fans they have to have cyclical teams. It’s pretty obvious there are only a handful of decent teams, and the rest will never figure out how to beat them if they are hamstrung by a moron with too much authority and an agenda.
Starting RoLo would seem to be a sure fire way into the lottery anyhow. You know he isn’t the future, so why not see what you have in the younger players. Where was the warning from the league when the Suns didn’t play Chandler or Knight the entire second half of the season last year? This has been standard operating procedure for teams at the bottom of the standings for a long time, but for some reason when the Bulls do it it’s a problem.
It’s not a detriment to RoLo’s career to remain benched while collecting paychecks. That would be his role on a playoff team anyhow. The Bulls have given him far more run than any other franchise.
What is the point in having a head coach when the commissioner is telling them what to do or they will get fined? I get it’s not the coach getting fined, it is the organization as a whole. But the commissioner should do other things. Look at what the 76ers did for so long and look at the future talent they have now.
Is Adam Silver brain dead?
if silver wants to deter tanking, then take embiid away from the sixers.
Yeah that’s a brilliant solution
frig off, barb! you’re not taking away my 1 percent!
Frig off Randy?!
The league believes it has to do something, so they issued a memo, that’s all. I wouldn’t expect RoLo or Holiday to play more than 15 mpg now.
Also, Mark Suleymanov (the writer of this post) couldn’t be more wrong when he says the Bulls were trying to dump RoLo. If that were true they would have taken one of the multiple offers they received for protected 2nd round picks. The Bulls value RoLo a great deal — unless they get an offer too good to turn down, RoLo will most likely be the Bulls starting center again next year.
They can always let Bobby Portis take care of it!
The league is so backwards. If you don’t want teams tanking, remove the incentive to tank rather than punish teams who are only doing what makes sense to do in the current system.
You pay attention to anything? They’re trying to figure out a way to do that. And besides it wasn’t until recently that teams started tanking on purpose. Thank hinkie for that.
Yikes you are a hostile fellow. Until the league fixes the system, they shouldn’t be punishing teams for correctly using the current system to their advantage. Your point about them working on a solution is irrelevant to the point im making. Also, tanking has been around forever, Hinkie is just the first to openly admit his strategy.
I love the way Silver handled the issue with playoff teams resting vets. He saw the resting as a symptom of a bigger problem, then identified that problem, and he addressed it. A lesser commissioner would’ve just disciplined teams without addressing the real issue … I always give him kudos for that.
And I fully expect him to do the same with the issue of tanking this off-season. Tanking isn’t a problem. It’s a symptom. The bigger problem is the competitive disadvantage a team faces for being average…
We throw around the term NBA hell. And the Bulls were a perfect example of that. They were a team led by a single star, trying to compete against teams with 3 stars, but having absolutely no path of making up that gap.
Given their cap situation, the fact that Chicago isn’t a destination city for any NBA player, and the team’s annual first round selection in the early 20s, the Bulls only realistic course to being competitive was through tanking…
The lack of options for teams in Chicago’s situation is what actually needs to be addressed.
Where was the warning for Philadelphia during all those years of “the process”? The NBA has no problem looking the other way when the same teams tank year after year. The Bulls decide to gave more playing time to their young players, and suddenly it’s an issue? My guess is they don’t want Chicago getting a top lottery pick in the upcoming draft (sudden rule change on the lottery). The utter contempt for every professional sports franchise in the city from respective leagues and the national media is obvious, and a head scratcher. It’s ok for L.A., Boston, Houston, Detroit, and other cities, but Chicago is wrong for not maintaining the status quo of mediocrity as expected.
I’d be willing to bet any amount of money that the NBA is not anti-Bulls. They aren’t actively trying to prevent its 3rd largest media market from acquiring a star. And they’d prefer that one of its most important global brands be relevant…
How many people have said the lottery is fixed?
Lakers get Lonzo with the 2nd pick when they could have lost it. The Cavs getting Kyie, the bust Anthony Bennett, and Andrew Liggins after LeBron left. The reason big cities have an advantage is called TELEVISION REVENUE. The Lakers, Bulls, and Celtics I don’t think you can call irrelevant.
That’s Kyrie and Andrew Wiggins. When else has an NBA team had 4 no. 1 picks in a decade. Celts have been fortunate too.
The Pacers weren’t inept this year. In fact they’ve been remarkable. !/2 game behind Cavs with 20 to go and a salary of $93 million vs. Cavs $180 plus million is pretty good. And thats with Myles Turner, Victor Oladipo, and Darren Collison missing games. And they’ve been on national television ONCE this year. That was Paul George’s return game to Indy. You can’t market globally (how do you or I know what goes on overseas? Hearsay!) If you’re not on tv, Toronto is another example, how can you market?
Thomas, players don’t need to be in big market cities because fans worldwide follow players, not teams. LeBron, Durant, Davis, Westbrook, “Greek Freak”, etc. etc, all do quite well in terms of marketing themselves and endorsements while playing in small markets. Free agents don’t even bother coming to NY, Chi, L.A.
I do find it odd that Houston,
San Antonio and Miami have been the most popular destinations historically for FAs in the NBA though. Certainly has something to do with low taxes in those states.
inept, history and recent events suggest otherwise. Big markets aren’t relevant in the NBA, and they never have been. Players market their own brand to a global audience.
This is a misconception that two niche groups can carry league revenue. In reality, neither group is big enough to be the focal points for league revenue.
There are a handful of elite NBA players who transcend the boundaries of their city and appeal to hardcore NBA fans.
But For the most part, the league is filled with guys who aren’t elite. And NBA revenue is dominated by casual fans.
League revenue is optimized when the biggest markets generate huge interest from those casual fans. That’s when you get the most people tuning in, the most people buying jerseys, and the most people attending games.
Hinkie lost his job because of the Process. The Sixers got their replacement GM through pure nepotism. The Sixers got punished plenty.
I saw the Bulls get slaughtered by the Celtics last night and In that one game I saw enough of David Nwaba and Felicio to know that they are not the future of the Bulls.
I would rather watch Lopez play. He wont be back next season but at least he has a clue.
The commissioner is doing his job. He represents the entire league and its integrity, not just one franchise. Away tickets as well as home tickets… people pay to see the other team too.
No offense, but that’s b.s. Nobody cares about Robin Lopez and Justin Holiday. This has everything to do with lottery draft picks. Teams tank all the time. The same teams tank every year, and you don’t hear the commissioner warning them not to sit players or trade for expiring contracts. The league is rigged, that’s all there is to it. It’s why most of your best players and best teams are in the east. It’s also why most teams will never win another championship. $$$
I meant to say west, not east.
I like to watch Robin Lopez. I would say he has been the most entertaining Bulls player that has actually been playing. Home fans may feel better about Markanon but the league also makes money from neutrals and opponent fans.
The best argument Bulls fans have is that they got singled out, not that teams should not get called out.
But the Bulls were the team that was most often mentioned by neutral writers, perhaps due to Felicio being so dreary.
I’d be more inclined to watch the Bulls if they were playing the young guys instead of Lopez and Holiday. Also, Holiday sucks, who’s to say he just didn’t fall out of the rotation due to lack of skill?