Joe’s Notes: The NBA Tries to Make Its Players Play

The NBA Board of Governors is meeting this week, and today’s big happening was the unveiling of a six-page Player Participation Policy. Aware that fans are frustrated with the degree to which the league’s best players are missing games, the NBA having accidentally incentivized regular season rest over regular season wins for most teams, NBA governors have agreed on the following requirements for its “star players,” defined as anyone who has made the All-NBA Team or All-Star Team at any point in the last three seasons:

1. Teams can’t sit multiple star players in the same game.

2. Teams can’t sit star players during nationally televised games or games affecting the In-Season Tournament.

3. Teams should try to sit players more at home than on the road. (I think the idea here is that fans buy tickets when the Lakers come to town because they want to see LeBron James, and it sucks for a fan in Atlanta to show up that night and not get to watch LeBron play.)

4. Teams can’t shut players down for just any reason.

5. Teams have to make sure fans can see star players if they’re healthy and resting. (This is very funny. This treats the NBA bench like it’s a zoo.)

The document goes on, describing how the league will investigate star player absences, what exceptions will be available for old guys, and how much the fines will be—i.e., how much it will cost to break these rules. It’s…I mean, I don’t envy the NBA here, but they did this to themselves.

One of the NBA’s problems, as we’ve described before, is that it made its playoffs too big and then became beholden to the revenue those playoffs generate. The result is a world where once teams are comfortably in the playoffs, the importance of seeding pales in comparison to the importance of players being fresh, incentivizing teams to rest their players a great deal once a playoff spot is secured. With the added issues of tanking and a ubiquity of trade demands, the NBA regular season sucks.

The league has tacitly acknowledged this, adding the In-Season Tournament and creating this policy, but approaches like these treat the symptoms. They don’t treat the source of the problems. Maybe they’ll alleviate the issue enough to make a meaningful difference, but the success of the policy depends on how harsh the NBA is willing to be, and on how much the Players Association pushes back. The price gets high once teams get caught three or four times, but for the first two offenses, teams might decide the cost of sitting a star is worth the benefit received, and in a phenomenon very familiar to college football fans right now, everyone wants ‘no exceptions’ until they want an exception for themselves. Practically speaking, it takes a lot of resources to conduct an investigation, especially with an uncooperative subject. Is the NBA league office willing to police this enough for it to have its desired effect?

Turf Wars

Aaron Rodgers’s injury occurred on turf, not grass, and a few NFL players—most notably Rodgers’s close friend David Bakhtiari—didn’t hesitate to implicate turf in the issue. Evidently (I’m taking Bakhtiari’s word for this, I have not verified it but I don’t think it’s important, as we’ll get to in a moment) all NFL stadiums are going to have grass fields come 2026, with so many being venues for the World Cup. That did not stop Bakhtiari from saying to the NFL, writ large, “You care more about soccer players than us.”

That is a heavy accusation, David. How dare you! Grass fairies????????

On the soccer topic, for a moment more: The World Cup has about ten times as many viewers at its peak as the NFL does at its own. I understand that these are NFL stadiums, but given how much enjoyment the NFL gets out of being the biggest fish in the American pond, this is a good opportunity to remember how small a fish American football is globally.

On the turf topic: The issue with grass is that we’ve seen a whole bunch of horrible grass fields in the NFL, even in the last few years. Plenty of others have pointed this out, but how did Robert Griffin III get hurt? How’s the grass usually been in December at Soldier Field? You can put grass in there, but you have to take care of it for it to be safe, and while resources should make that doable, maintaining a safe grass playing surface will likely require NFL stadiums to be used for fewer things. Maybe this is ok, but a lot of these stadiums had taxpayer funding, and a lot of those taxpayers were promised their money would be used for concerts, and for city high school championships, and for big soccer matches which bring vitality to areas around the stadiums during the offseason.

I’m not saying David Bakhtiari should have considered the taxpayer while crafting the tweet. David Bakhtiari can tweet whatever he wants. But in case anyone else is blaming turf for Aaron Rodgers’s injury: It’s more complicated than Grass vs. Turf. Also, you’re doing the thing people do when they say climate change definitively caused a hurricane. Turf might make injuries more common or more severe, but it’s not all or nothing.

As for the Packers: What a great day on Sunday. Bears fans were so outwardly confident. They were so, so outwardly confident. But hey, there’s a reason some franchises can only ever win the offseason. Hopefully Aaron Jones’s hamstring is good to go on Sunday. Jordan Love looked solid, but he was also playing the Bears.

Oregon State and Washington State Won (For Now)

The courts have not yet decided who comprises the Pac-12’s voting board, but the courts have decided that the courts will decide that. They will decide it at a later date.

To rehash what’s happening here: There’s still some money in the organization that is the Pac-12, and there’s still rights to the league’s name and some future earnings. Oregon State and Washington State would like to retain those valuable assets, being the only two Pac-12 members who haven’t left the league. The other ten members have other ideas for the assets, namely, keeping them themselves. So, Oregon State and Washington State sued for a temporary restraining order.

On Monday, they got the restraining order. Per ESPN’s Pete Thamel, the expectation is that there will be a preliminary injunction hearing in October to determine who gets to vote on the Pac-12 board of directors.

One consequence of this is that any movement involving Oregon State, Washington State, and the Mountain West (the presumed dance partner for the pair, whether that comes through the Beavers and Cougars joining the MWC or something more like the MWC merging with the Pac-12) will presumably be delayed until October, and maybe beyond. That complicates matters, with the Mountain West still under its own television contracts (which one would imagine will have to be altered) and the bones of the 2024–25 athletic schedule already built for most leagues. For example: Where will the Pac-2–Mountain West Championship be held? This is going to be fine, but it is going to be complicated. I wonder if we’re going to see some kind of settlement.

Iowa State Is in a Good Place

There are two prisms through which to view Iowa State’s loss to Iowa, but they both begin in the same place: That was an ugly loss. It was a game Iowa State would have won had it played well. Part of being a good team is playing well, this isn’t to say Iowa State is better than Iowa, Iowa State is not better than Iowa. But, it was frustrating. Yet again, Iowa State played a bad game of football against Iowa. Iowa has this effect on a lot of teams, the Cyclones are not alone in this, but it was rough.

One way to look at the thing from here is to say that it’s disappointing the program got caught in such a moment of turnover, especially now that we’re two years removed from the unexpectedly large senior class. Part of running a successful program is managing rebuilding and/or reloading, and Iowa State being in such a rebuilding position two years in a row is a negative commentary on the work Matt Campbell is doing.

The other way to look at the thing is to say that it’s great that even in the midst of sizable turnover, Iowa State looks like it’s nearly as good as an Iowa team that should be the favorite to win the Big Ten West.

After the game, one or two Iowa fans dug up a tweet of mine from February of last year, when reporting held that Michigan was going to pursue Matt Campbell as Jim Harbaugh flirted with a return to the NFL. The tweet read:

It’s wild how much Matt Campbell has changed the overall trajectory in Ames. I just earnestly asked myself whether it’d be more plausible for him to make a bunch of playoffs in the next decade at Iowa State or at Michigan. It’s Michigan, duh, but what a shift to be asking that.

To this less–than–a–handful of Iowa fans, the idea that Iowa State could make “a bunch of playoffs” seems preposterous, and I get that. If an Iowa fan was tweeting these things, I would laugh at them myself. The problem is that Iowa is chasing at least four programs in the New Big Ten, and probably more than that (Wisconsin should be a fifth, UCLA and Oregon and Washington all might eclipse the Hawkeyes to make it eight). Iowa State, in the New Big 12? It’s chasing Kansas State, and probably Utah, and probably Colorado now, and let’s say probably TCU. After that? I don’t know. How do you feel about Texas Tech?

Michigan is in a better place than it was when I sent the tweet—it went on to beat a good Ohio State last year, and the expanded playoff gives Michigan a great path if it can go 10–2 every year, never needing to schedule a competitive nonconference game again—but Iowa State’s still in a strong position as a program. It plays in a relatively open league in which it’s one of the programs running most effectively right now. If Campbell continues to stay, it’ll continue to have some of the best continuity in the sport, and that continuity continues to produce positive results. It’s not Michigan’s position for playoff appearances, but it’s much better than Iowa’s, and even comparing the Cyclones and the Wolverines: Iowa State has won a New Year’s Six bowl much more recently than Michigan has. That’s not a playoff appearance, but it counts for something, and it’s much more than Iowa can offer.

Iowa is a better team than Iowa State this year. That is undeniable. But over the next five years? It’s hard not to be more bullish on the Cyclones.

In more Cy-Hawk news, Noah Shannon’s appeal was denied, so Iowa will be without the starting defensive tackle for the remainder of the season. My impression, from this, is that DeShawn Hanika is going to see his similar appeal denied, meaning his career in Ames is likely over. It’s not something that changes the outlook much for this year’s team, but it’s sad, and it’s arguably the biggest failing of the Campbell administration, right up there with Campbell’s abysmal record against the Hawks. Maybe this will be proven wrong, but this is how it looks right now.

The Nationals Are in a Weird Spot

The Nationals figured out a Mike Rizzo extension, though they still haven’t come to terms with Stephen Strasburg on how to handle the rest of his contract as he prepares to officially retire. It’s a strange position for the franchise. Their owners want to sell, there’s a hangup with the Orioles over shared media revenue that probably needs to be solved before the sale, the Orioles’ own ownership is comprised of notoriously ridiculous people, and meanwhile there’s a rebuild going on in Washington and it seems to be going rather well, with a fun, young, talented team coming on strong over the last few months, giving fans in D.C. something to be excited about ahead of next year.

Odd confluence of events.

Max Scherzer Is Done (for the Year)

Max Scherzer reportedly has a major strain in his broader shoulder region, and he’s expected to not only miss the rest of the regular season but also miss any October games the Rangers play. Also missing the remainder of the season for the Rangers, of course, is Jacob deGrom, who’s been out since spring, which is part of what necessitated the Scherzer trade in the first place. Two historic talents, both off the roster, and the Rangers enter tonight’s game in Toronto wedged between Houston on one side and Seattle and the Blue Jays on the other, the four ballclubs fighting for three remaining American League playoff spots. Oddsmakers have the Rangers with the worst chance of the three of holding on. That was before the Scherzer news.

The Brewers Lost Their President

David Stearns is still the Brewers’ president of baseball operations, but it is being widely reported that Stearns has already agreed to join the Mets once this season is over, the architect of the best teams in Brewers franchise history off to play the same game with better resources, namely Steve Cohen’s pocketbook. It is a great deal for Stearns, it’s a great deal for the Mets. It’s hopefully also something in which Cohen’s fanlike approach to the sport could sand off some of Stearns’s anti-human edges.

I don’t think it was a bad idea for Stearns to trade Josh Hader last year. I think it was a good trade on paper for the Brewers, and we saw a similarly poorly-received Mariners trade work out very well in 2021. The problem, though, was that Stearns let his clubhouse get really pissed off about it, and it seems pretty likely that affected the team’s play the rest of the season, with the Brewers eventually missing the playoffs. The thing you have to do, if you’re going to be that shrewd, is manage the human side, and the message Stearns seemed to send—one he’s backing up here, leaving Milwaukee while still ostensibly in pursuit of a World Series title—is that he doesn’t really care about the Brewers. Maybe this will be different when he’s with the Mets, since he’s so publicly a Mets fan, but it’s a shitty way to treat a franchise, unless Milwaukee brass has been treating him shittily itself. The Brewers deserve better. Especially the players, many of whom are on this team through no choice of their own.

To be fair, Stearns’s work with this Brewers roster is mostly done. The trade deadline has passed. The waiver deadline has passed. The roster is what it is, and it’s the roster that now has to do the hard work of bringing home a pennant or a championship. To also be fair, maybe Stearns’s thought, agreeing to the deal now, is that the speculation can now be over. It sure feels messy, though.

On the Cubs side: Part of why I’d be bad at being a single-team blogger is that I’m not dramatic enough. Yeah, these last two losses were bad. They came in bad ways. Yeah, the Cubs really could have used a series win in Colorado against a very bad team. Even in the worst case, though, the Cubs are two games up in the loss column on whoever the 7^th-place team is in the league after tonight, and they now get a long-awaited day off ahead of this weekend’s series in Arizona. There is a ton of work left to do over these fifteen games to secure a playoff berth, but the Cubs aren’t going to win every single game. If you want panic and are struggling to find it, let me know. I have a half-dozen blogs in whose direction I can point you. Coincidentally, they were all very outwardly confident this offseason about the Bears.