The NBA warned the Bulls not to rest healthy players

The NBA has issued a warning to the Chicago Bulls about resting healthy players, according to The Vertical’s Shams Charania. As a result, Chicago will look to play veteran starters Robin Lopez and Justin Holiday more minutes in the latter half of the season instead of shutting them down like the team announced after the All-Star break.

The Bulls have lost 14 of their last 17 games and announced in mid-February they would be sitting Lopez and Holiday for much of the remainder of the season. Lopez has missed the past six games, while Holiday has missed five of the last six.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver has been staunchly opposed to tanking and has taken steps to prevent its recurrence in the future. Over the summer, Silver and the league office changed the NBA Draft Lottery process to discourage teams from tanking for better odds at the No. 1 overall pick.

The team with the worst record in the NBA currently has a 25 percent shot at the top pick. The second-worst team gets 19.9 percent odds, the third-worst gets a 15.6 percent shot, and teams No. 4 through 7 get approximately eight percent odds. The Bulls currently own the eighth-worst record, but are only three games away from the worst record in the league.

But after Silver and the league changed the draft lottery format to inhibit tanking, the three-worst teams in the NBA will share 14 percent odds at the top pick. The reform will start with the 2019 NBA Draft. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.

The NBA’s warning also comes days after the league fined Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban an exorbitant $600,000 for his comments about intentionally losing on a recent podcast.

“I’m probably not supposed to say this, but, like, I just had dinner with a bunch of our guys the other night, and here we are, you know, we weren’t competing for the playoffs. I was like, ‘Look, losing is our best option,’ “ Cuban said on The House Call with Dr. J podcast. ”Adam would hate hearing that, but I at least sat down and I explained it to them. And I explained what our plans were going to be this summer, that we’re not going to tank again. This was, like, a year-and-a-half of tanking, and that was too brutal for me. But being transparent, I think that’s the key to being kind of a players’ owner and having stability.”

Cuban certainly wasn’t supposed to say that, and the Bulls certainly weren’t supposed to announce their intentions of ‘resting’ veterans in the latter half of the season. The moral of the story so far: If you’re going to tank, don’t be blatant about it. Tank in silence, or eat a fine.