Yes yes, I know it's 3 A.M. But upon hearing the possible decision by David Stern to potentially punish the San Antonio Spurs for choosing to send home their star players Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, and role player Danny Green rather than play them in a road game against the Heat, I became enraged and had the urge to blog.
So let me get this straight. As the coach of the Spurs, Gregg Popovich has the right to choose whatever starting lineup he wants game in and game out, but for some reason that now violates NBA rules in some way enough to possibly receive some kind of reprimanding from the league? What!? Now granted, I don't know the rule book of the NBA, but if that is written somewhere anyway it still makes the league a laughingstock in the realm of professional sports.
We see lineup changes in sports all the time. In the MLB playoffs when A-Rod was struggling and got benched no one saw Bud Selig butting in saying woah woah woah, Joe Gerardi...you can't hand in that lineup card, the fans want A-Rod in the game. Boom...Sanction! And how many times have we seen in weeks 16 and 17 of the NFL when teams have a playoff spot locked up coaches sitting key starters like Peyton Manning when he played for the Colts.
What kind of bush league nonsense is this? Between last years blocking of a trade and now this incident I am quite convinced that David Stern is quite incapable of overseeing the NBA in an effective way.
Might as well get rid of coaches altogether. A coach can't even make the decisions that are the best for their team at any given time in the season, whether that be in the regular season, the playoffs or even the preseason, the starting lineup, and game plan are in the hands of the coach.
So, a few Spurs fans who decided to travel to Miami to watch their team play are upset cause they didn't see their best lineup on the court...Big deal. Guess what there are 82 games in an NBA season. I don't think one game where your big name players don't play is the end of the world. Add to that the fact that Hello! The game was still fantastic! The Spurs startling lineup was made up of usual off the bench players and they still gave the defending champs a test on their home court that came down to a big 3 point shot by the future hall of famer Ray Allen to seal the deal the deal for the Heat late in the 4th quarter. It doesn't get much better than that.
Yet David Stern is up in arms because a coach made a decision in his right, to sit his three best players and now the fans have to wait to see their stars on TV tomorrow . Whether Popovich's decision was to give them more rest after playing 4 games in the last 5 nights, for personal reasons or just cause he wanted to give some other players a chance to shine, is irrelevant. David Stern has no right to intervene and now in back to back years looks like a complete fool to NBA fans everywhere.
If the NBA really puts sanctions on San Antonio for this very much so, within reason decision, by the head coach of the team then it's just another reason to not watch the NBA till April rolls around for playoff time.
Otherwise....Bring on March Madness! If anything when you get benched in college it just makes things more interesting and competitive.
Rant over.
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