It’s the last day of the NBA regular season and there are three games that still have playoffs implications. The Chicago Bulls host the Brooklyn Nets while the Miami Heat will host the Washington Wizards and the Indiana Pacers host the Atlanta Hawks. The Nets are the worst team in the NBA record wise at 20-61 while the Wizards and the Hawks are locked into a playoff spots; so there isn’t much of anything for these teams to play for tonight. Now it hasn’t been announced if Washington plans to sit any of it’s players out of tonight’s game, but Brooklyn has already said that they’ll sit six players against the Bulls tonight. Trevor Booker, Jeremy Lin and Brook Lopez will all skip the game for rest. Quincy Acy will miss the game with an ankle injury. Joe Harris will miss the game the a shoulder injury and Sean Kilpatrick will be out do to a hamstring injury. Someone is goin to have to explain to me how a team that isn’t going to be in the playoffs needs to rest three players the last game of the season.
The Bulls and the Pacers have simple paths to get into the playoffs. All they have to do is win and they’re in. Now if either the Bulls or the Pacers where to lose and Miami wins the Heat would go into the playoffs and either Chicago or Indiana would stay home. So out of the 14 games o the NBA schedule tonight these are the three games that matter the most.
Now players taking a game off for rest in the NBA is becoming a bigger and bigger issue as the season goes on. Now with no possible chance of improving their playoff spot the Milwaukee Bucks left four players at home for their game on Boston against the Celtics tonight. Tony Shell, Khris Middleton, Matthew Dellavedova and Giannis Antetokounmpo all stayed behind as the Bucks traveled to Boston. The Cleveland Cavaliers had announced earlier in the week that LeBron James would miss the final two regular season games to rest up for the playoffs. Even M.V.P. candidate Russell Westbrook sat out the Oklahoma City Thunder’s final regular season game Tuesday night. Taj Gibson, Doug McDermott and Andre Roberson also skipped the final game for rest. So there are quite a few players who are taking the final game or more off to get ready for the playoffs.
Now I understand that the ultimate goal of any NBA team is to win the title, but as a ticket buying fan these rest days are tough to swallow. NBA tickets are expensive and if you take your family to a game between tickets, parking if you drive there and then if you buy souvenirs for you or your children you’re going to spend quite a bit of money. Now imagine this is the only game you’ll be able to afford to attend this season and you get there and find out that your favorite player or the one player your kids really wanted to see play is sitting out because he needs to rest. This isn’t going to sit well with the man or woman who’s at their job 40 plus hours a week just so they can afford a ticket to this chosen game. Sadly there isn’t an NBA player out there who is going to care that a family bought tickets so the kids could see him play and he took the night off for rest.
Now NBA commissioner Adam Silver has address this situation, but there’s really nothing he can do about it. If you noticed what the Cavaliers did for their game on Monday against the Heat was list James out with an injury. It would be very easy for an NBA team to just announce that a certain player is going to miss a game with a very minor injury. It would work the same way as giving the player a might off for rest without having to announce it that way. The only way the NBA or it’s players union will find a way to fix this issue is when it starts to affect the leagues attendance.
Now if you’ve listened to the Sports Time Radio podcast or I’m sure that I’ve written about it here before, but I’m a fantasy sports player. I participate in both daily and season long fantasy leagues. I play on FanDuel and on the two hour Sunday podcast Mr. Fantasy and I actually go over the FanDuel rankings and put a line up together and discuss who’s a good play, a bad play and who might be that sleeper kind of player for that day. Now I’m not a big bettor on the site. I don’t think I’ve ever played in more than a $2 or possibly $3 dollar tournament. It’s more a fun activity for me than a way of me trying to make a living. Now this season Mr. Fantasy has taken a more Sabermetic approach to how he’s building his line up and he’s off to a good start. I always try different methods of putting a line up together; especially early in the season. I’ve had some success with my line ups so far this season. I know no one likes to give away their secrets, but I’m always interested in listening to how other people put their daily fantasy line ups together. If you feel like sharing just go ahead and leave it in the comments or feel free to e-mail me at SportsTimeRadio@Hotmail.com
Speaking of daily fantasy; I hope when you put your line up together for yesterday you included New York Mets outfield Yoenis Cespedes. Cespedes went 4 for 6 with 5 RBI’s and 3 runs scored. 3 of his 4 hits where home runs and his other hit was a double. On the night Cespedes was worth 69.1 points on FanDuel. That may be the highest total a position payer has ever put up since I started playing on the site. I’m sure if you had Cespedes in your daily fantasy line up last night you at least got your money back.
You can listen to the Sports Time radio podcast on BlogTalkRadio.com or you can listen to the podcast any time you want @TuneIn.com
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