Yahoo Sports senior NBA analyst Kevin O’Connor is joined by NBA contributor Tom Haberstroh to discuss the league’s handling of recent injuries – including Jazz forward Lauri Markkanen – and why it puts the NBA in a potentially ‘ugly’ situation. Check out the full conversation on “The Kevin O’Connor Show” and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
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Video Transcript
This, to me, it, it is gonna create a lot more wedges between the league office and these front offices.
Adam Silver talked about this, Kev.
Like, at the All-Star, in LA, he said, “I don’t really wanna get in the business of, you know, deciding every injury and deciding if, is this tanking, is this not?”
And it’s gonna create a very, what he said, unhealthy relationship with the league office and its teams.
And I think we’re already there with the Utah Jazz.
You know, Ryan Smith, the owner of the Utah Jazz, coming out on X and putting out a statement about that they’re, they’re gonna a- agree to disagree with the way that the NBA is handling all these injuries, and it’s Two things can be true: the Utah Jazz are tanking, and they don’t want their best players out on the floor ’cause they don’t want them to get a catastrophic injury that we saw big, big-name guys at the end of last season with Jayson Tatum, Tyrese Haliburton, and Damian Lillard, how they totally, derailed those trajectories for those franchises.
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And I think the other thing is, too, is that maybe the NBA is overreaching when it comes to these injury reports.
And if you’re not gonna interview, according to Rick Carlisle of the Indiana Pacers, one of the most respected coaches in the league and a long-time head of the coaches’ union, what Rick Carlisle was saying was that the league office wasn’t actually talking to Aaron Nesmith about his injury, his injured hand, and didn’t even bother to do most of the due diligence that you would expect a league office- if you’re going to penalize a team for having a, quote-unquote, “fake injury,” then you should do a full investigation.
And it seems like Rick Carlisle really took them to task, and I think the Utah Jazz here, with the Lowry Markkanen news, it’s gonna get really ugly here.
Kev, it’s February 26th.
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Like, if we’re doing these- Right kind of investigations now, how bad is this gonna be in, like, a month?
Usually, we see tanking in the last week or two weeks of the season.
We’ve got a, over a month and a half left in the season.
a couple things here.
number one, I chuckle, about Rick Carlisle pushing back.
The Pacers have been tanking all year long.
Carlisle is the master of tanking in the NBA.
He is incredible at it.
He does it so subtly that people don’t even realize it’s happening underneath their nose with his rotations, lineup decisions, timeout selection.
The dude is the best, the best tanker in the NBA, okay?
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Let’s get that out of the way.
So I don’t wanna hear from him about, “Oh, this, this is ridiculous.”
You’re tanking, dude.
second of all, the, the Utah Jazz, I think it’s gonna get uglier, Tom.
I think you’re right.
We’re- it’s February 26th, as you said.
Like, it, it’s February 26th, and we’re already- dealing with this.
More teams are gonna start trying to tank harder.
I mean, the- right now, as we speak, the Bulls have lost 10 games in a row.
They’re fading out of the East play-in picture all of a sudden, now that the Bucks have, you know, won eight out of their last 10.
They’re starting to win games without Giannis.
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so the, the Bulls are sliding.
Some of these teams are gonna tank even harder.
What’s gonna happen with Memphis once Zach Edey comes up, time to be re-evaluated again?
They’re just gonna kick the can forward.
Is the NBA gonna review that again?
What happens when Ja Morant is healthy?
You know, what happens when some of these guys on the Wizards and the Nets, whoever it might be, have a, a little nagging injury?
What’s the league gonna do about it then?
This is If it’s a thing now, it’s definitely gonna be a thing in March, it’s definitely gonna be a thing in April.