A tumultuous regular season for Adam Silver and the NBA concludes Sunday night. And it is ending on a further questionable note. One NBA legend and media personality, Charles Barkley, has vocally spoken out about the number of players sitting out the final game of the regular season, marring the product for NBA fans.
This is especially true, given that at least 168 players across the NBA missed Game 81 of the regular season for various reasons, including illness, injury, rest, or otherwise. Barkley described it as “disrespectful.”
His point further highlights the NBA’s major problem this season: the extraordinary lack of competitive games due to load management or tanking.
Charles Barkley Demands Adam Silver Fix NBA Tanking, Calls Rested Players ‘Disrespectful’
The issue that has taken center stage at the top of the NBA’s to-do list: the sheer number of teams that are, for lack of a better word, tanking for the draft lottery this year. The lack of competitive games for large portions of this season has been quite extraordinary, reaching epidemic levels. Now we see Game 82, normally a huge day on the NBA calendar, is a mere afterthought due to the vast number of starters sitting out for various reasons.
According to Underdog on X, an unbelievable 155 players are listed as out for the final game of the regular season on Sunday due to illness or injury. This coincides with ESPN reporting that Friday’s slate of games saw 168 players miss out.
Furthermore, NBA writer Tim Reynolds calculated that a combined player salary of $2,526,031,083 will miss Sunday’s games.
This is unsustainable as a product moving forward and is an issue that needs to be addressed. To that point, Barkley let his feelings be known about it all prior to ESPN’s televised games with the “Inside the NBA” crew.
Chuck on tanking:
“As much as I love Adam Silver we’ve got to do something man. We can’t have 170 starters basically not playing in games. All these dudes just sitting out that’s just disrespectful man” pic.twitter.com/DJBiujG0L5
— Oh No He Didn’t (@ohnohedidnt24) April 12, 2026
“As much as I love Adam Silver, we’ve got to do something, man. We can’t have 170 starters basically not playing in games.” While that’s not the exact number, it’s close, and that makes his point even more valid.
“All these dudes just sitting out, that’s just disrespectful, man.”
His point echoes what many fans feel. However, playoff teams that have already secured their status would counter that they are merely protecting their players from injury before the playoffs and have earned the right to rest players for the challenges ahead.
Injuries are also up considerably around the league due to the faster pace of games. There is a duty of care involved due to the sheer number of games being played, including the NBA Cup and the forthcoming Play-In Tournament, which are contributing to the sitting issue and the lack of competitive final games on the NBA calendar.
It’s therefore hard for Silver to police which teams are sitting players for legitimate reasons. Furthermore, consider a hypothetical scenario in which a playoff-bound team picks up a key injury in a meaningless game.
Yet it’s not just the playoff teams that are sitting all their starters; the lottery-bound ones are, too, and that’s part of the bigger problem. One thing Silver and the league must do is find a way to stop so many teams from “tanking” and refusing to compete in favor of draft lottery positions. It’s an epidemic that will likely consume the upcoming NBA offseason.
