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Warriors head coach Steve Kerr willing to take pay cut for shortened season

Steve Kerr Golden State Warriors Game 2 2017 NBA Finals

There’s a whole heck of a lot of debate going around in the NBA surrounding teams resting their star players. We’ve seen the Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs and Cleveland Cavaliers all come under fire recently for doing just that.

We’ve also seen NBA Commissioner Adam Silver issue a stern warning about teams resting their players without advanced notice (via ESPN).

Since then, Cavaliers forward and reigning NBA Finals MVP LeBron James has chimed in about the rest he’s received in recent seasons.

“I’ve played through injuries my whole career,” James said on Tuesday. “So I deserve to get a game [off] every now and then.”

There’s two ways to go about this debate. First off, teams currently find it a necessity to rest their star players given the length of the NBA season and the ridiculous back-to-back outings some squads have had to deal with this year. Though, when teams do indeed sit healthy players, it provides a less-than-stellar on-court product.

In the midst of a two-game losing streak earlier this month, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr decided to sit his three healthy All-Stars in an important nationally televised game against the San Antonio Spurs. That very same game saw both Kawhi Leonard and LaMarcus Aldridge of the Spurs sit for health concerns.

Needless to say, it didn’t live up to the billing of a prime-time ABC matchup between two of the best teams in the NBA. Kerr’s reasoning was simple. He needed to give his stars some time off after multiple road back-to-backs in recent weeks.

Now speaking up about the whole debate, Kerr has indicated he’s willing to take a pay cut if the season itself were shortened.

“I wouldn’t be opposed to it (shortening the season), even at the expense to my own salary, but it’s something that everyone would have to agree to,” Kerr said Tuesday night, via ESPN. “I think even just going down to 75 games, I think that would make a dramatic difference in schedule. Now I don’t see that happening because there is money at stake for everybody.”

The interesting dynamic here is that Kerr’s decision to rest his core players against San Antonio appears to be brilliant in hindsight. Since losing to the Spurs by 22 without their top players, the Warriors have won five consecutive games by a combined margin of nearly 100 points.

It stands to reason that teams will continue to look out for themselves more than national television ratings. They are not going to cater to Silver and Co. in the league office. This seems to suggest that the NBA itself needs to fix the issues we are currently seeing.

Whether that means shortening the season as Kerr suggests remains to be seen. The other option here is actually extending the 82-game regular year a week-plus in order to avoid multiple back-to-back games. That might lead to teams resting their stars less.

As to Kerr’s original point, it’s unlikely players would agree to take pay cuts in order to shorten the season. That’s a completely different conversation.

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