The National Basketball Association (NBA) board of governors signed a new “Player Participation Policy” on Wednesday geared towards ensuring an improvement in player engagement during the regular season.
The new approved plan will commence immediately when the 2023–24 regular season begins in October, with the aim of improving the initial player resting policy that was approved just before the 2017–18 season.
Under the new policy, the NBA has asserted that “a star player” is any player who, in any of the last three seasons, was selected to an All-NBA team or an NBA All-Star team. This also takes into consideration the current season, as any player named an All-Star during that season is treated as a star player.
NBA Board of Governors has approved new policy that a team is unable to rest two star players in the same game moving forward, multiple sources tell @TheAthletic @Stadium. A star is defined as someone who has made All-Star or All-NBA team in the past three seasons.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) September 13, 2023
The player participation policy will ensure that NBA teams will be able to rest only one star player per game this season, with potential fines for a breach worth millions of dollars.
The NBA also informed the teams that they are to “manage their roster to ensure that no more than one star player is unavailable for the same game”, and also make sure that “star players are available for all national television and NBA In-Season Tournament games”. Also, in cases where a healthy player is to be rested, the team must ensure that the player is present at the games and visible to the fans.
The teams that fail to adhere to this new policy will be fined $100,000 for the first violation and $250,000 for the second. Each further violation will see the franchise sanctioned with a fine of $1 million more than the previous punishment.
The new player participation policy includes exceptions for injuries, personal reasons, and pre-approved back-to-back restrictions based on a player’s age, career workload, or serious injury history.
The 2023–24 NBA regular season will begin on October 24 and run until April 19, with teams set for their usual 82 regular season games, which will include the newly introduced in-season tournament.
