The final day of the NBA regular season is here. 195 out of the total of approximately 450 players listed as active in the league right now were initially listed as unavailable for tonight’s fixtures in a baffling domino effect of moves across the league to rest most starters.
Charles Barkley made an appearance on NBA on TNT, where he spoke about this situation in the league right now. The NBA legend was clearly not happy with the starters league-wide, who seemed to have collectively decided not to play tonight. He feels it only makes sense to rest star players but not almost every starter.
“You rest, Wemby, maybe. You rest Joker, Jamal Murray, and Aaron Gordon… You rest LeBron because he’s 102 years old. All these dudes sitting out, it’s just disrespectful,” said Barkley before the Nuggets confirmed that Nikola Jokic will indeed be playing tonight to stay eligible for the postseason awards.
Moreover, even LeBron James ended up playing tonight for the Lakers despite locking in a homecourt advantage in the last game and initially being listed out. Since it is the last day of the regular season, most of the scenarios for the playoff seeding have panned out for teams.
They seem to have collectively decided it is best to rest most of their starters heading into the postseason, as teams like the Thunder began doing that after the last game itself.
According to Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press, the total salary for players listed out for tonight’s games adds up to $2,526,031,083, which is over a whopping $2.5 billion. Therefore, it is natural that it would impact the quality of the basketball product in the final game of the regular season. This did not sit well with Barkley.
Subsequently, Barkley also addressed the 65-game rule and tanking as a trending talking point across the league. He was upset with the players for complaining about the rule when it had been set in place with their consent.
“I don’t think 65 games is a lot to ask. Y’all voted in the collective bargaining, and now you want to complain. If y’all weren’t sitting on your a– half the time sipping margaritas and stuff, they wouldn’t put the 65 games in there, shut the hell up,” Barkley said.
Barkley saw a video of Victor Wembanyama, who is set to miss tonight’s fixture against the Nuggets, doing maths quickly in a viral video where he was offering an alternative solution to the 65-game rule: calculating minutes played instead of the games played.
“What we need to do is send all these bad a– American kids over to France to go to school. That’s the first thing we need to do. All these dummy kids over here. We need to send their a– to France,” said Barkley. Furthermore, the NBA legend cracked down on tanking and offered a creative solution to the problem.
“Teams have just been tanking for three months. Every team that does not make the playoffs should get one ball. You can’t improve your chances by losing. Every team gets one ball. That is the fair way to do it. Only with our stupid NBA crap. Come on, man. Just give everybody one ball, and that would stop tanking,” concluded Barkley.
In essence, Barkley’s main problems with the players today pertain to participation and intentionally losing games to get better odds in the lottery. He wants teams not to have improved odds in the lottery, but rather should be punished for not making it to the postseason.
This season has certainly given the NBA office significant cause to revisit and review the player-participation policy and heavily crack down on tanking across the league. It will be interesting to see if the league office makes any changes to these rules in the offseason.
