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At the top of our Conference Semifinals prediction column, I asked for Adam Silver’s cell number so that I could call and complain about the first round of the playoffs. Even if I had his number, my hunch is his voicemail box is full right now. Things are happening and players, coaches and fans aren’t feeling what’s going on in the NBA right now.

Adam Silver has homework. Here’s three quick issues the NBA’s commissioner needs to immediately address in order to improve his product (and none of them involve hacking DeAndre Jordan).

1. Teams “Resting” Players

The rest thing in the NBA has really reached a point of absurdity. The San Antonio Spurs are like the NBA’s resident billionaires. The Spurs have so much equity throughout the leauge, everything they ever do is automatically taken as the gospel (every assistant coach is the next Gregg Popovich, every front office exec is the next Jerry West). So when Popovich began resting his older players throughout the season and developing younger players by staggering minutes, the whole league stood up and took notice.

Now it’s gone too far. Just a few short years ago, an actual reason was required for a player to sit out a game. Sure, teams manipulated this a bit to get their guys rest, but in today’s NBA players can actually miss games due to rest…and it’s just accepted!

Less than 10 players played all 82 games this season. To further incentivize these 20-something-year-old millionaires to show up to work, Jeff Van Gundy stupidly suggested the season should be shortened, or players should receive a $1 million bonus for playing all 82 games, as if NBA players don’t make enough money. In fact, the opposite approach should be taken— each player should be allowed three “rest games” per season (like personal days on your job), and if players miss more than three games for rest, they should be docked a (hefty) percentage of their game check. Notice of these rest games must come at least a week in advance, so fans can avoid getting sucker-punched by the news their favorite athletes aren’t suiting up when they arrive to the arena. Furthermore, if certain players (e.g. All-Stars) miss a game due to rest, fans should receive a portion of their money back (at least 33%).

The league and the Player’s Association would never go for these changes, but if the NBA truly cares about its product and its fans, they need to revise their current model.

Players today don’t need that much rest. Guys have been playing the 82 game schedule since the 1960’s. Now all of a sudden today’s players, who are coming into the league younger and fresher than players of yesteryear, want more money but a less rigorous work schedule. This, after LeBron James successfully lobbied to have the All-Star break extended in 2014. Even the worst players in the NBA are compensated very well, and going to an NBA game is not an inexpensive endeavor. An outing for two with seats in a nicknamed part of the building can easily cost over $400, and fans — who come from near and far to watch their favorite players — deserve to not have their evening derailed because the Kings decide to rest DeMarcus Cousins.

Seriously. The Kings were resting DeMarcus Cousins and Rajon Rondo at the end of the season. Resting them for what!? It damn sure wasn’t for the playoffs! All the Kings’ men taking the day off accomplished was it effectively ruined the integrity of the game. The Utah Jazz didn’t benefit from Cousins and Rondo resting against the Houston Rockets on April 13. Sacramento throwing that game away resulted in a 35-point Rockets win, as Houston and Utah were battling for the playoff spot in the season’s final days. This brings us to issue #2…

2. The Protected Draft Pick

Either you trade a draft pick or you don’t. At least, that’s the way it should be.

The protected pick not only convolutes a team’s future plans from a fan standpoint, it makes the league much less interesting. Trading an unprotected pick is what landed Kyrie Irving in Cleveland, which helped pave the way for LeBron’s return home, which indirectly opened the door for the creation of “Lob City”.

The honeymoon is over. Time for Adam Silver to go to work.

The honeymoon is over. Time for Adam Silver to go to work.

Dealing a protected pick offers the trader of the pick insurance that if their ping pong ball hits (or the team’s record is of some terrible threshold), they’re not left out in the cold. But above anything else, it feels like a punk move. A world without protected picks might reduce the number of overall trades, but it would certainly increase the number of blockbuster trades. It would also reduce tanking via “rest” — another major problem the NBA is faced with — because once eliminated from playoff contention, teams like the Kings wouldn’t be in a position where they needed to finish with the worst record possible due to a provision created by a protected draft pick transaction.

Silver needs to do away with protected pick parachute— there’s nothing is more fun than watching an overzealous team splatter all over the pavement.

3. The Next Day Referee Report

It looks like we’re at that point.

We’ve reached the point in our athletic society where too much transparency is crippling one of our major sports. We collectively lobby for more transparency in most instances, but usually, there’s a reason why everyone doesn’t get to see what goes on behind the curtain in all cases. As of this past March, the NBA has decided to release next-day reports of blown calls by referees inside the last two minutes of close games. Unfortunately, everybody hates them. The reports don’t help fans or the league, because this increases the perception that NBA officials are incompetent. They don’t help the players, who are now losing playoff games in part due to poor late-game officiating, but can’t possibly be compensated for the shaft job they just endured. And they damn sure don’t help the referees themselves!

The Tim Donaghy referee gambling scandal was nearly 10 years ago, and it’s clear transparency is far too delicate of an idea to legislate just for the sake of doing it. Nobody was clamoring for these next-day reports to come into existence, but here they are, and everybody hates them. Perhaps the biggest conundrum now is figuring out the NBA’s next move. They can’t renege on the reports; that would look like an admission that their product is so bad they can’t continue to remind us about how bad it is. Plus, it would erode the league’s transparency-driven agenda they’ve obviously prioritized. And they can’t keep the reports because they suck and (you guessed it) everybody hates them.

Best case scenario is the league drops the ref reports over the summer with zero fanfare in the hopes nobody remembers this nightmare by November 1. Failing that, we may just have to settle for trading the ref reports for an unprotected terrible idea to be named later.