We all need to rest, there’s no way around it. Getting the proper amount of rest results in  having a better mental and physical lifestyle. It improves all aspects of your well-being and for the most part, no one will contest that getting more rest is always a good thing. Unless you’re a professional basketball player in the NBA.

San Antonio Spurs head coach, Gregg Popovich, has rested his players for most of his coaching career, but now that other coaches are starting to do the same, the league has gone under fire for it.

Fans and league officials believe that resting players is unfair to those who spend money to see their favorite teams in action.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver stated in a memo to team owners about resting players, “Decisions of this kind do not merely implicate issues of player health and team performance on the court; they also can affect fans and business partners, impact our reputation, and damage the perception of our game.” he said.

But with that in mind, resting players has logical reasoning. According to an online article from RSVLTS.com, the average NBA career span is five years, trailing the MLB and NHL by only a year. That career length is up from a three years average in the early 2000s.

Also, not only is the NBA in the top three for career length averages, it’s also the top American played sport where the ball is live and in play. The NBA is ranked second to only the NHL for time spent with the game ball or puck in action.

According to an article published by The Wall Street Journal, the MLB averages roughly 18 minutes of action for two and a half hours of televised time, while the NFL averages 11 minutes per three-hour game.

These statistics, in a way, debunk the myth that NBA fans are getting cheated out of their money when players rest.  The real party getting taken advantage of are the fans that attend baseball and football games. This also tells us that NBA players are more likely to get fatigued compared to baseball and football players because of the non-stop action.

Fans who’ve never experienced playing at this level of competition would never understand what their bodies go through, and the argument that these athletes get paid millions of dollars to perform and play every single night isn’t an accurate rebuttal.

At the end of the day, the lowest common denominator between us and professional athletes is that we all have bodies that need to rest.