NBA Commissioner Adam Silver on Sunday "fired a modest warning shot" at the NBPA, according to Howard Beck of BLEACHER REPORT. Silver said of the players possibly wanting to reopen the labor deal, "There will be things that we're going to bring back to the table, too." Silver made the comment during an interview on Bleacher Report Radio, and while he "offered no specifics, he was clearly alluding to the 2011 lockout, when NBA owners pushed for a hard cap, salary rollbacks and other new restrictions on player earnings." Silver: "There were a lot of things we left on the table. ... We went into collective bargaining seeking -- I don't want to get into it now -- but a number of things that we didn't accomplish. And we compromised. And they compromised as well." Beck noted there is a "strong case to be made for simply staying the course, with the league enjoying record revenues and popularity." But with $30M player salaries "on the horizon, owners might be eager to seek new restrictions -- including a hard cap, a measure they have been seeking for decades." Meanwhile, Silver said the new deal for HGH testing is a "very positive sign, in terms of our working with the union and in terms of going forward" (BLEACHERREPORT.com, 5/3).
PLANTING A SEED: Silver yesterday appeared on ESPN's "PTI" and discussed doing away with division winners and their higher seeds. He said the league has to decide whether “divisions matter." Silver: "You have to reward a team for winning the division, and hence give them a higher seed, or decide divisions don’t matter.” He added, “I’m not ready to go 1-16 in terms of seeding. I don’t want to go to extreme places and have a huge impact on the schedule. On the divisions, maybe they’ve outlived their usefulness because ... if we’re going to say divisions matter then we have to go all out and it has to mean something to win it. Fans have to understand what division their teams are in and I don’t get the sense anyone really understands it” ("PTI," ESPN, 5/4). The comments came after Spurs coach Gregg Popovich over the weekend said that the NBA "needs to change the way it seeds playoff teams after this season and do away with guaranteeing division winners a top-four seed." Popovich: "That should be changed immediately. That doesn't make any sense." He added, "It seems odd that a team that won 55 games and a team that won 56 games end up playing in the first round." Clippers coach Doc Rivers: "The divisions are important. They're nice to have. They're nice to be celebrated, for some and some not, but I don't know if they should be celebrated as far as in the standings. I think it's something that the league will absolutely look at and try to fix" (ESPNLA.com, 5/2).
REST & REWARD? Silver talked about coaches resting star players and keeping them out of games while tickets are still full priced. He said, “I'm extraordinarily reluctant as the commissioner with the league office to dictate minutes to coaches, and especially great coaches. I don't have an easy answer to that." He did mention Popovich often sits players in order to give them more rest during the regular season and said, "We're focused on the schedule and how to create fewer back-to-backs, fewer four games out of five nights.” Silver said he would tell teams it is a “partnership among the teams in the league to put the best product on the floor” but it is very “different to legislate it and require them to play (the star players) a certain number of minutes." Silver: "That I don't want to do” ("PTI," ESPN, 5/4).
