With the grandstanding audacity of a politician in prime time, the Phoenix Suns’ owner, Robert Sarver, strolled to the public-address microphone at US Airways Center late in a recent one-sided game against what amounted to the San Antonio Spurs’ junior varsity and told the remains of a generously announced crowd of 13,552: “This is not the game you paid your hard-earned money to watch. I apologize for it.”
He wasn’t finished demonstrating what a sport he was. “Send me your tickets if you came tonight with a return envelope, and I’ve got a gift for you on behalf of the Suns for showing up tonight,” he said.
Here is a suggestion for what Sarver’s largess should be: a promise to season-ticket holders to never again make them buy into meaningless exhibitions, even if, as a Suns spokeswoman noted while emailing that Sarver was unavailable for comment, those games are priced lower-tier.
Bundling practice games into regular-season packages is one small example why sports owners like Sarver are more interested in self-serving shows of pseudo-compassion than in the best interests of fans spending their hard-earned money.
But forget, as Sarver conveniently did, that resting stars in preseason games is a widespread, common-sense practice; that several of the Spurs players left home — along with Coach Gregg Popovich — were listed as injured; and, most of all, that the Spurs had just finished a circuitous trip to Germany and Turkey as part of the N.B.A.’s Global Games.
Sarver missed the essential point that Ken Reed, the sports policy director for the League of Fans, a group focusing on consumer issues that was founded by Ralph Nader, was happy to make.
Forcing season-ticket holders to pay for preseason games, Reed said in a telephone interview, “is an unethical scam similar in nature to the personal-seat-license scam that pro franchises — and some colleges — are perpetuating.”
When extended to a too-long regular season, it’s also a philosophy that may be damaging to the core product — mainly the bodies of the players whom the fans and television viewers most want to see, especially during the playoffs.
Compassion like Sarver’s is easy to express when all you have to do is ship out a few hundred coupons for a soft drink or an overpriced burger. When it comes to questions of meaningful concern, or financial sacrifice, guys like Sarver are suddenly tight-lipped.
That’s when it’s time for spin, not sincerity. Think about the immediate aftermath of the recent news that N.B.A. television revenue would nearly triple after next season. Nearly three years before the next collective bargaining deal, we already have public posturing from management and labor, sounding like the game-distracting clatter inside league arenas.
Meanwhile, there is a more pressing issue, one that could finally provide relief to the ransoms demanded of season-ticket holders while helping to ensure they get to see the headlining stars when the games matter most.
Good for LeBron James and Dirk Nowitzki for recently saying — as the Nets and the Boston Celtics approached an experimental 44-minute preseason contest — that the problem is the length of the regular season, not individual games.
“We could play 50-minute games if we had to,” James said, adding, “If we are injured because there are so many games, we can’t promote it at a high level.”
The lineup of injured stars in the last couple of seasons includes Derrick Rose, Rajon Rondo, Russell Westbrook, Kobe Bryant, Marc Gasol, Al Horford, Brook Lopez and the latest casualty, Kevin Durant. If injuries are on the upswing — and there is no comprehensive study showing they are — it could have more to do with stress put on adolescent bodies playing too many games in an era of youth sports specialization.
But logic tells us that a compressed 82-game schedule can’t be good for a large man’s health, and if anyone has the right to express his dismay over the season’s length, it is the Knicks’ Amar’e Stoudemire, this decade’s most injury-stricken star.
“We do know for a fact that recovery is very, very important,” Stoudemire said after a recent practice. “Back-to-backs, three games in four nights, four in five, it makes it tough to recover. And when you don’t recover, that’s when you have a higher chance of injury. Fresh players are going to play better, and it’s going to be a better league.”
The caveat, he added, is that “you say you want to shorten the season, but then you’re taking away currency for the owners and maybe the players.”
James said he liked the idea of a 66-game schedule, or one similar to the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season, only spread over six months. The league forbids owners to publicly discuss issues related to collective bargaining, but one owner recently confided — while requesting anonymity — his preference for the continuance of 82 games, with the season starting earlier to ease the stress on players.
That’s the problem, said the Knicks’ rookie coach, Derek Fisher, a former players union president. Owners don’t want to give up dates, and neither do the television networks.
“I know players in the past have had some suggestions and opinions,” Fisher said. “But I think our television partners are probably most impactful in terms of what things will or won’t happen.”
Must they be? The N.B.A.’s powerful negotiating leverage was largely due to the clamor for live, unscripted programming and, better yet, the looming presence of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Sports 1. Had they been willing to sacrifice game revenue, the owners could have still scored a huge haul and experimented with a shorter schedule.
Be it 66 games, 72 or 76, they might have adopted what Reed called “the longer view for a healthier business instead of the short-term Wall Street mentality.” But you will never hear Robert Sarver or any other owners apologizing for that.