Rick Carlisle is right and wrong

The Pacers coach went after the NBA for fining them for tanking-related reasons. He has a point, but not all the points.

Good morning. Let's basketball.

Before the All-Star break, the NBA fined the Jazz and Pacers under its player participation rules. The league fined Utah for sitting healthy stars in the fourth quarter of close games (including in a game the Jazz won) and fined Indiana for resting healthy players when facing a fellow tanking team (in this case, the Jazz). The fines came amid feverish discourse around tanking and reported anger from commissioner Adam Silver about teams being particularly anti-competitive this season.

In a perfect world, the NBA would have absolutely no business managing coaches' rotations, anyone's playing time or, unless to protect players from unsafe team demands, player-team health decisions. But the NBA's not perfect, and has a draft system that rewards the worst teams by making it possible for them to add the best young players at discounted salaries for up to the first seven or so years of their career.

This is the situation we're in: because of the perverse incentives that lead to tanking, both institutional (like the Nets and Wizards building teams incapable of winning many games) and tactical (resting your best players in a game you'd particularly like to lose), the NBA has a responsibility to ensure its rules around this are enforced lest the tanking race becomes a free-for-all of anti-competitive behaviors that turns the league into a full-on joke and fully distracts from the teams trying to win.

Enter Rick Carlisle, who lambasted the NBA's decision to fine the Pacers on Tuesday. From The Athletic:

“There was a league lawyer that was doing the interview that kind of unilaterally decided that Aaron Nesmith, who had been injured the night before and couldn’t hold the ball, should have played in the game, which just seems ridiculous.

“… We asked them if they wanted to talk to the doctors, our doctors, about it because it was something that was documented by our doctors and trainers,” Carlisle continued. “They said no, they didn’t need to. They talked to their doctors, who did not examine Aaron Nesmith. And we asked them if they wanted to talk to the kid (Nesmith), and they said, no, they didn’t need to. This was shocking to me, and during the interview, they also asked if we considered medicating him to play in a game when we were 30 games under .500.”

The NBA rejected Carlisle's claims.

“Coach Carlisle’s description of the process that went into the decision to fine the Indiana Pacers is inaccurate. An independent physician led the medical review. In addition, the Pacers’ General Manager and the team’s Senior Vice President, Sports Medicine and Performance were interviewed as part of the process. The Pacers confirmed that it had provided all of the information requested by the league and the team reported that an interview with Coach Carlisle or a team physician wasn’t necessary.”

Here's the deal: Carlisle is absolutely right to be critical of an outsider questioning the decision to play Aaron Nesmith given an injury that would have potentially required a pain or anti-inflammatory shot to make him game-ready. This is absurd at face value. Carlisle appears to be fudging the details about the NBA not actually investigating it properly, and perhaps Indiana's front office kept Carlisle at an arm's length to protect them from him sounding off (which he is known to do; he is certainly The Grumpy Coach now that Gregg Popovich has retired). Any process that leads to a league representative asking a head coach if a fourth or fifth starter considering getting a pain or anti-inflammatory shot to play in a February game while the team was more than 20 games under .500 is absurd. Plain and simple.

And yet Nesmith was one of just three players mentioned in the league's punishment announcement. One suspects that if Carlisle had only had Nesmith in street clothes, the NBA would've never come knocking. The Pacers also benched Pascal Siakam and Andrew Nembhard for that game. Perhaps the NBA just shouldn't have mentioned Nesmith in the press release, because resting Siakam and Nembhard for such a crucial game in the tanking race is eyebrow-raising enough. And Carlisle doesn't seem to have a defense for that. In fact, Carlisle raising hell is a perilous game, because he's only going to draw more ire from the league office and teams who stand to benefit from Indiana tanking less. And Siakam has now missed four of the last five games due to a mix of rest, personal reasons and injuries. Nesmith has missed four of five games, too. Nembhard is playing more frequently but did sit in one of the Pacers' two back-to-back losses to the Wizards, another tank team in Indiana's standings range. Again, Carlisle yelling at the league is a perilous game. The Pacers don't want more scrutiny on their player availability decisions.

Again, it's absurd that the league is at all involved in this. But if they aren't, these teams will stretch bounds of the tank strategy to their snapping points. The NBA getting involved in the day-to-day of team operations is a necessary evil at this point to protect the sanctity of the game.

Scores

Sixers 135, Pacers 114 – Joel Embiid is back!

Wizards 98, Hawks 119 – It's Jonathan Kuminga time in the ATL. Twenty-eight points in his Hawks debut.

Steve Kerr and the Warriors visit Atlanta on March 21. I'm marking that one down.

Trae Young, still in street clothes, also got a tribute video. Well-deserved. Best Hawk since Nique. No offense to Joe Johnson or Al Horford.

Mavericks 123, Nets 114 – Marc Stein reports that the Mavericks are letting Khris Middleton determine whether to take a buyout or finish the season in Dallas. I'm not sure Middleton has shown he can make a positive impact for a contending team, but maybe I didn't consume enough Wizards basketball.

Thunder 116, Raptors 107 – It just might be that this stretch requiring The Other Thunderians to find their offense makes OKC even more powerful in the playoffs. I'm nervous!

Knicks 94, Cavaliers 109 – New York's offense couldn't get uncorked. Cleveland gets enough despite a tough shooting night. We should have paid more attention to what James Harden would do for Jarrett Allen, perhaps.

Hornets 131, Bulls 99 – Kon Knueppel is going to win Rookie of the Year and I'm not convinced it's going to be a trivia answer. It might just be in 20 years, "Yeah, Kon Knueppel won Rookie of the Year. Of course he did."

Heat 117, Bucks 128 – Milwaukee play-in threat check: the Bucks are tied in the loss column with the Hawks and Hornets and sit 1.5 games out of No. 9 and 10. No word on when Giannis will return.

Warriors 109, Pelicans 113 – Zach Lowe pointed out this week that Zion Williamson hasn't missed a game since December 11. New Orleans hasn't been good, but they are now the fifth-worst team in the NBA, not dead last. And Zion is absolutely going to have some buzz about him this summer ... if the Pelicans brain trust doesn't see this and think they can come back strong with the same roster next season.

Celtics 97, Suns 81 – Phoenix's offense without Devin Booker or Dillon Brooks is rough. They've scored 158 over the past two games. Reminder: Denver scored 157 in regulation against Portland last Friday.

Boston is a win in Denver away from a 4-0 road trip, even with Jaylen Brown missing the Phoenix game.

Timberwolves 124, Blazers 121 – This is a nice little send-off for the Portland national TV crowd from the Wolves.

Magic 110, Lakers 109 – A brutal collapse and an unbelievable decision from Luka Doncic in the final seconds.

Luka, LeBron and J.J. Redick all talked about it afterwards, with LeBron covering for his teammate (good) and Luka acknowledging he should have shot it (good). It's not really a huge deal in the grand scheme (unless the Lakers fall to No. 7 by a single game), but it is emblematic of the imperfect fit of this team. There's just something off.

Great win for Orlando. If they would have lost because of that backdoor cut on a baseline out-of-bounds, though ...

Schedule

All times Eastern. Highlight games in bold.

Thunder at Pistons, 7:30, ESPN
Spurs at Raptors, 7:30
Warriors at Grizzlies, 7:30
Kings at Rockets, 8
Cavaliers at Bucks, 8
Celtics at Nuggets, 10, ESPN

Be excellent to each other.