The NBA: Where You Get Fined for Resting Players

      David Stern, like most professional sports commissioners has always been the center of controversy in the NBA. Whether it's accusations of rigging the NBA Draft Lottery, NBA Refs rigging games or vetoing trades for "basketball reasons" the man just can't escape it. Now he's at again and for once I think he's outdone himself. On Thursday night the Spurs were playing their 4th game in 5 nights and Gregg Popovich decided to give 4 of his stars(Parker,Ginobli,Green and Duncan) a night off as they have a big divisional game against the Memphis Grizzlies on Saturday. Well this game just happened to be a marquee nationally televised game vs the defending champion Miami Heat. Surprisingly enough the game ended up being pretty exciting as the Heat only won by 5 points.
     The reaction to this lineup change was very surprising to me as people were acting as if Pop just started doing this or if teams have never done it before. Last year while riding a 11 game win streak Pop did the exact same thing and I didn't hear one peep from anyone about it. The only reason anyone is talking about or why I'm even writing about it is because it was a National TV game against the Heat. Yesterday the NBA released a statement saying that the Spurs have been fined $250,000. David Stern said that what Pop did was "a disservice to the fans". You know what's a "disservice to the fans" Stern, the lockout that made me miss precious games of basketball. I'm pretty sure the fans that went to last nights game were not disappointed one bit with the game they saw. I understand the fact that the NBA is a business and that TNT pays a lot of money to televise big games but you also have to understand that Gregg Popovich is a Head Coach not a GM or an Owner. His #1 job is to put his team in the best position to win a championship not a meaningless game in November.
    I'm very intrigued to see how Stern or Silver when he takes over handles this in the future. Is he going to fine teams in April who have already locked playoff spots for resting players on Nationally Televised games? Is he going to try and crack down on tanking which is essentially the same thing? Just last year the Golden State Warriors blatantly tanked in front of our very eyes. Tanking is something that happens in every sport and something that can't be definitively proven.
    Gregg Popovich is the epitome of a "rebel" in the NBA. He comes off like a jerk and he really doesn't care what you think. He's gonna do things his way and judging by his 4 championship rings his way works pretty well.