The nba is as popular as it is because since the early 80s they’ve marketed star players over teams. David stern openly said that. And because of that, there’s TONS of people out there who will tell you “I’m not a lakers fan, I’m a lebron fan”, and it’s always been like that.

Baseball has always done the complete opposite of that and not marketed their stars well at all and just rely on teams to capture their local fan base, so it makes sense to hold them to a different standard.

Plus hurting your oblique and missing a month straight is completely different than a star basketball player taking a rest day. No one gets mad at basketball players when they sprain their ankle and miss multiple weeks because that’s an actual injury that you can’t or at least shouldn’t play through. It just pisses people off to see “rest” on the injury report. It’s just like how if you called into work because you had covid they’d understand and tell you get well soon but if you call in and just say “I’m in the mood for a rest day” they’d look at you crazy.