"If players only love you when they're playing, imagine how tough they are on themselves for deciding against suiting up.

The pressure from within to play, no matter how hurt, is far more demanding than the subtle suggestions of a team's medical staff, behind-the-back criticism of coaches and teammates, or mindless indictments by the media.

As a result, ailing athletes must be rescued from their self-destructive competitive spirit.

The renowned and repulsive illustrations of athletes who have made time for the pain are incalculable. That's the trouble — their occasionally imprudent reasoning is celebrated from sea to shining shore by people who live paycheck to paycheck and regularly must get out of sick beds to do actual work.

Such adulation, of course, additionally inspires athletes to mute injuries with pain killers or ignore their damage claims beyond the call of cogency, and the twisted cycle nearly never discontinues.

So, when a player of Carmelo Anthony's magnitude chose to sit out Friday in Miami and last night in Houston in order to rest and rehabilitate assorted wounded vital parts he might have to use in later life, naturally observers reacted, well, rather recklessly."