Two weeks ago, as San Antonio Spurs were about to play The Miami Heat in
Miami, Spur's coach, Popovich, decided to send his key main players
(Duncan, Parker, and Ginobili) back to San Antonio. Popovich's
intentions of keeping the squad in healthy conditions after playing five
away games in seven nights, lead to Stern's decision of fining the
Spurs franchise with $250K, for "showing disrespect to the NBA and its
fans." To the surprise of many NBA followers, Spurs only lost the game
by five points which ridiculed Stern and top-officials who were involved
in such decision. Critics focused on Stern's historical trouble in
marketing the Spurs, despite the four championships they've won in ten
years, and explained that he had found another reason to stand against
them. Instead of celebrating Spurs' exciting exhibition of basketball,
his mainly concern was to darken an institution's reputation that does
not favor the NBA structure. His clear posture of maintaining an
equilibrium and the status quo in the sport, will find no evolution in
the sake of the sport until those with power in charge of re-enforcing
and designing the structure of the NBA, forget about their economic
investments.
Santiago Guiter.
KIN332I.
1 comment:
I was watching the commentators on ESPN talk about this and thought that it was kind of funny how Popovich did this because I think he knew that it would make David Stern mad. He challenged Stern knowing that he, as a very well known and popular coach that he could not possibly get into too much trouble. Although it was not such a big action for him to send those players home for that game, he knew that it would have a big impact on sport media for the coverage of that game as well as a big impact for the fans who bought tickets to that game and now would not be able to see them. I think his goal was to actually have people side with him in understanding that players need rest in those kind of game schedules, and would turn on Stern instead and give Stern the pressure.
-Matthew Tong KIN 332
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