Adam Silver: 'NBA stars are not playing enough' / News - Basketnews.com

Credit: PA Pictures – Scanpix Credit PA Pictures – Scanpix

NBA commissioner Adam Silver held a press conference on Wednesday night following the meeting of the Board of Governors.

One of the topics Silver touched on was the star players' reluctance to take part in games.

"The bigger concern is a trend of star players not participating in a full complement of games," Silver noted.

"I'm not standing here saying I have a great solution," Silver continued. "Part of the issue is injuries. One of the things we have focused on at the league office and we're spending - are there things we can do in terms of sharing information, resources around the league to improve best practices, rehabilitation?"

Silver also added that another solution could be additional incentives.

"The play-in tournament, I thought, was a beginning of creating renewed incentives for teams to remain competitive and be fighting for playoff position. It might be through in-season tournaments and changes in format where we can get at it," he said.

Silver also added that changing an 82-game regular-season schedule might be on the table.

"I also have said in the past, if we have too many games, that's something we should look at as well," Silver said. "It's something, as we sit down and we're looking at new media deals and looking at a new collective bargaining agreement, we will be studying."

"There wasn't any banging of the table or anything like that. From my discussions with players, they recognize it's an issue, too. The style of the game has changed in terms of the impact on their bodies.

I think we've got to constantly assess and look at a marketplace going forward and say, what's the best way to present our product and over how long a season," he added.

Finally, Silver also mentioned that intentional fouls to stop a fast break could be punished more harshly in the near future.

"That is something, as you know, we're very focused on and considering making a change for next season. We still have some work to do with our competition committee. We'll be meeting with the board again in July, which would be a possible time to change that rule.

But as we're seeing sort of a pretty dramatic increase in take fouls, we don't think it's a great part of our game. International basketball has another way of getting at it, but that is something that potentially we'd like to tweak," Silver concluded.

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