Adam Silver threatens ‘significant penalties’ for NBA teams that rest stars without notice

We warned that NBA commissioner Adam Silver will soon come down on teams that rest their marquee players for national TV games without advance notice. That time may be here.

In a memo obtained by ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, Silver told NBA owners there will be “significant penalties” for teams that fail to give the league “adequate notice” a key player will be rested for a game. Silver also said the owners cannot simply delegate the responsibility of resting players to other members of the organization.

The memo comes after the league’s two marquee teams sat their top stars for consecutive ABC Saturday showcases.

The Warriors sat Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Andre Iguodala for a March 11 game against the Spurs. Warriors coach Steve Kerr justified the decision by noting the Warriors were at the end of a grueling travel schedule that featured eight games in eight different cities in 13 days.

"It's my call and it's the right thing to do in terms of the way the season is playing out and the way the minutes have gone and (Kevin Durant's) injury," Kerr said when announcing the decision. "It's the right thing to do, so we're doing it."

A week later, the Cavaliers sat LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love for a game against the Clippers in L.A. The Cavaliers were just beginning a four-game road trip and had a back-to-back in the same city against the Lakers the next day. Irving picked up a minor injury two days prior and Love is still not playing back-to-back games as part of his recovery from arthroscopic knee surgery. James has no injury, though he has logged heavy minutes this season.

Cavaliers general manager David Griffin said a league representative called him seven minutes after the team announced its decision to express their displeasure. Coach Tyronn Lue said it was “stupid” to criticize the team for its decision.

But ABC commentators Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy ripped the Cavaliers for pulling a “bait-and-switch” on fans.

“I understand the medical information that we are acquiring,” Jackson said. “I even understand that we are getting more and more data to protect the players, but this still is an absolute joke. Who is protecting the fans? Who is protecting the game of basketball? Something’s gotta be done.”

“If this was any other business, it would be a prosecutable offense — this type of bait-and-switch maneuver that the NBA allows its teams to pull,” Van Gundy added. “Quite frankly, if you look at the athletic performance teams, these groups that are supposedly preventing injury, when I look at the Cleveland Cavaliers, they’ve been injured all year, so how good are they doing at what they say the can accomplish?”

Just how severe will those penalties be if Silver follows through on his warning? In 2012, then-commissioner David Stern fined the San Antonio Spurs a whopping $250,000 for sending Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, and Danny Green home for a TNT game against the Heat.