It's Pretty Clear That The Brooklyn Nets Do Not Give Two Shits About The Regular Season

Jesse D. Garrabrant. Getty Images.

Remember at the start of the season when Adam Silver made all that noise about how the league didn't want stars sitting out big time games on national TV? Whoops!

Tonight is a massive matchup in the Eastern Conference, between two of the best teams the league has. Two title contenders playing in a game with potential big time playoff seeding implications. The season series is split 1-1, tonight is the tie breaker. Both teams in theory you would think want homecourt throughout the entire playoff run. Well, then you see who's out for the Nets and one thing is pretty clear. 

They do not give a shit about the regular season.

I ask you….why should they? Having played last night due to moving their game against the Wolves to Tuesday, I get it. No need to play Durant/Blake on a B2B. What's more important to the Nets title chances, a regular season game against the Sixers (who they beat without all 3 of their Big 3), or being 10000000% healthy for the postseason? It looks like Kyrie will be the only one to play tonight, and if you look at this matchup this season, we have no true feel for it.

The Sixers will have played 0 games against the BKN Big 3 this year. Of the two they've played, only Harden played in 1 of them. That makes it hard to gauge when you start talking about a potential playoff matchup. Do the Nets maybe not want to put anything on film for the Sixers to figure out? Whoever loses this game isn't out of the chase for the #1 seed either. They just can't finish with the same record, then H2H becomes a factor. But there will only be a 1 game difference with like 17ish games left.

But what it does do is point to a larger issue. With how condensed the schedule has been, this cannot be what the league wants. A big time matchup like this is when they want their stars playing, but if you're a team like the Nets, who cares? Are we going to see Silver fine the Nets for resting Durant and Blake, two guys with legit injury history? I'm sure BKN will gladly pay that fine. 

This is why I'm not really sure how the league fixes this issue. Especially in a season like what we are watching where guys are clearly impacted by the condensed schedule. I think everyone is going to be even more cautious after what happened with Jamal Murray. Would it shock anyone if the Lakers were even more cautious with LeBron/AD? Or the Mavs with Porzingis? Or the Celts with Kemba's/Jaylen's knee? For the Celts, Brad pretty much said he doesn't give a shit about standings/national TV matchups in terms of seeding if it comes at the cost of health

Why is this important? Well to end their season they have back to back games against the Heat, one of which is on ESPN. A big matchup with the Hornets is on ESPN at the end of April that comes off a pretty brutal stretch of games. 

When you have a team like the Nets, and their star power making decisions like this, it's impossible for the league to ignore it. There's just nothing they can honestly do to force these stars to play. The focus is the playoffs, which has been made abundantly clear.