If I was the Spurs, I’d be really angry that a guy I pay an incredible amount of money continues to spend his summers playing in international competitions instead of resting and getting fully healthy for the NBA season.
Ginobili wasn’t fully healthy much of last season, especially in the playoffs. So what does he do this summer? Play in the Olympics, and get injured. This makes me want to look into contracts a bit more and find out how many players have control of whether they play summer international ball vs. how many have to get the OK from the team. Obviously insurance money is a factor, but I don’t know how much of one and now I want to find out.
In the ideal world, if a player participates in non-NBA activity like summer international competitions, and gets injured, his NBA team shouldn’t have to pay him while he heals.
