NBA to Consider Stricter Guidelines on Resting Players

The NBA’s Competition Committee has focused in on new ways to prevent teams from resting marquee players during nationally-televised games.

As reported by ESPN’sAdrian Wojnarowski, the Board of Directors have potential policies put in place, with a vote set to begin on Wednesday.

ESPN Sources: The NBA’s Competition Committee has recommended stricter guidelines on resting players for national television games and multiple stars together in the same games. The league’s Board of Governors expected to vote Wednesday to pass the measures.

In a second post, Wojnarowski outlined a few of the new policies: upon the first offense of resting players during a national TV broadcast, teams would be fined $100,000, and then $250,000 for a second violation, and then a steep jump up to“$1 million more than the previous penalty”for ensuing violations of the new rule.

The Athletic’s Shams Charania and John Hollinger provided some additional context, making note of the possible plan to prevent teams from restingmultiple “star players”— defined as an All-Star or All-NBA recipient in the three previous seasons — in the same game.

ThePortland Trail Blazers, as currently constructed, would not be among the teams most impacted. Despite their assemblage of offensive talent such as Damian Lillard, Jerami Grant and Anfernee Simons, only Lillard has been named as either an All-Star or All-NBA talent in the last three seasons. They also only have one nationally-televised game, a Mar. 27 TNT tilt against the Miami Heat, over their entire 82-game slate.

Nonetheless, Wednesday’s vote has a chance to heavily impact the general NBA as a whole, as the league continues its attempts to combat load management.