Seems like he’s getting unfairly cheated by the system here. He shows up to play for his team despite the fact that they screwed him over and lied to him in the off-season, but they’re holding him out as some sort of revenge.
I assume the NBA will step in and force the 76ers to either play him or trade him. If it causes him to miss the 65 game barrier for All-NBA, that’d be unfortunate.
Not necessarily the case, but it has intrigued me what the league would do if a “star” didn’t play due to basketball reasons. I think of the Kemba Walker case. He was an all-star in 2020, so his “star” status would go on until 2023. Except last year he played only 9 games. The year before that, only 37 with many of those being due to coach’s decision.
Would the team be penalized? If not so, then could the team just have a load management strategy where they just say the player isn’t playing due to coach’s decision?