On the eve of his team’s trip to Memphis for Wednesday’s game against the Grizzlies, Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue announced Cleveland’s All-Star trio of LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love would not be traveling with the team, and a discussion centered around rest has been going in circles ever since.

Within minutes, Tracy McGrady, Chauncey Billups and Jalen Rose — three ex-players who amassed a grand total of three 82-game campaigns over the course of 45 combined seasons — were chastising the Cavs on ESPN, especially 24-year-old Irving, for following coach’s orders and sitting out a game.

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The bodies of McGrady, Billups and Rose all broke down eventually, and yet none of them offered any insight into how some well-placed rest might have helped them meet the demands of season after season crammed into four-and-a-half months. And as our own Kelly Dwyer reminded us, McGrady certainly did not mention how he wanted to sit out his rookie training camp because of sore feet.

As you might have guessed, two talking heads were on TV screaming at each other about whether or not players should rest at home, where their fans get 41 opportunities to see them play in person, or on the road, where opposing fanbases may have just one chance. There is, of course, no right answer, since one way or the other somebody will be disappointed. On Wednesday, it was folks from Memphis:

It is not immediately apparent whether this fan holding a “Traveled 4 hours and spent $800 to see LeBron and he’s at HOME” sign is the grown son of the the man who called NBA.com’s Steve Aschburner complaining about how he’d spent $125 per ticket, booked a hotel room and took time off work to drive from St. Louis to Memphis, just so they could see LeBron play for his son’s birthday.

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When you buy tickets for a basketball game to watch one player, you run the risk of that player not playing, whether it is because of injury, rest, suspension or any number of circumstances. This same thing happened to me a decade ago, when I was a fan trying to go see a 21-year-old LeBron play the Celtics in Boston at the end of the 2005-06 season, only to witness the Cavs rest him with their first playoff appearance in eight years already clinched. I understand the frustration, but this is not a new phenomenon, no matter how many ex-players prefer to think they were game to play every night.

Over the past 20 years, the league has seen a drop in players who played all 82 games of five percent — from 9.2 percent in 1995-96 to 4.2 in 2015-16 — but that has less to do with toughness than it does franchises smartening up and hiring doctors to help determine when rest might best benefit a team.

It’s been four years since Gregg Popovich left Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili at home for a nationally televised game against LeBron’s Miami Heat in 2012, resulting in a $250,000 fine for what then-commissioner David Stern termed “a disservice to the league and our fans.” Since then, no Spurs player has appeared in all 82 games. Why? For the simple reason scientists have suggested time and again that the NBA schedule puts an extraordinary amount of stress on the body, and resting players at key points can benefit their health in the long run. (Like Wednesday, when the Cavs were scheduled to play the second night of a back-to-back and a fourth game in six nights.) And for this reason, too:

Yet, the debate rages on. When San Antonio Spurs star LaMarcus Aldridge and Sacramento Kings standout DeMarcus Cousins also received “DNP-rest” designations for Wednesday’s respective tilts against the Boston Celtics and Houston Rockets, everyone around the NBA was asked about it.

Players, coaches, general managers and owners all had different takes on the issue. Grizzlies center Marc Gasol, who rested for a Tuesday game against the same Cavaliers in Cleveland, told The Memphis Commercial Appeal, “I don’t like it.” And Memphis coach David Fizdale countered, “I get it from a fan’s standpoint. You pay money to see these guys play. But at the same time, I don’t think individual teams are going to take into account the fan’s feelings. They’re going to always put what’s best for their team first to give them the best chance to be healthy and to give them a chance to win a title.”

Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni told ESPN.com, “I’m not really for it. You think of the kid that travels three hours to see somebody and they don’t show up, it’s tough.” And Kings coach Dave Joerger came back with, “Sometimes it’s just good to get a break. When you have the opportunity, in this case, three days of rest. There are opportunities to do it when you can maximize the number of days of rest and give guys a chance to recharge mentally and physically.”

Then, Celtics GM Danny Ainge took to Twitter in praise of Karl Malone and John Stockton’s stamina:

And Mavericks owner Mark Cuban offered a different take to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “The science is all there that says guys need rest. The one thing worse than a visiting team not getting to see a star player is the home team’s fans missing a lot of games from that star player. As we get more scientifically driven you’ll see teams trying to play guys fewer minutes and fewer games because it protects their body. If you protect a guy’s body fans get to see them in more games overall.”

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We can argue about whether Lue should have rested all three of his players on the same night — after all, they lost to the Grizzlies on Wednesday — if resting Cousins for a game in which he already had the previous and following nights off was the best time for a break, whether teams fighting for a playoff spot have less of a luxury to rest guys than star-driven super teams, as C’s coach Brad Stevens suggested, or if fans should be given added advanced warning about a team’s scheduled rest days.

One thing we should not do is roll out the tired argument that coal miners working 60-hour weeks is tougher than playing pro basketball, as if anybody is arguing otherwise — and as if those people don’t deserve rest, too. Yet, someone is always bound to do it, no matter how many times we shoot it down:

This isn’t about some radio talk show host in Indiana, an ironworker in your favorite NBA city or the fan traveling four hours to watch LeBron James. It’s about teams trying to do right by their players. And if it’s not you missing out, it’s some other fan somewhere else. It’s frustrating, yes, but any frustration should be focused on the league that forces its players to travel thousands of miles to play two games in less than 24 hours or four games in five nights. Under new commissioner Adam Silver, the NBA just took a step toward alleviating that problem, adding a week to the regular season to reduce such instances in the new collective bargaining agreement. And players will probably still rest.

So, next time you think about spending $800 to go to a basketball game, just keep all that in mind.

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Ben Rohrbach is a contributor for Ball Don’t Lie and Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach