A week or so ago, I saw an article that really bugged me. It was from either an NBA team executive or head coach complaining about this season's condensed schedule. Now, as you know, I'm not a fan of the NBA, but I generally try to keep from piling on. That article, though, was too much for me to ignore. Because it's ridiculous!
The crux of the argument being made was that teams can't really use their full lineups this season for various reasons, including injuries and "load management." It seemed like his issue was that top teams may not be at full strength until the playoffs and he was worried about a lack of cohesion when the best players aren't on the floor together. That's a somewhat valid point. However, if they want to complain about it, they should take it up with the owners, the players and the league office.
It was the NBA's choice to play 72 games. It was the NBA's choice to start the season seven weeks after last season ended. It was the NBA that decided to have a completely unnecessary All-Star Game, but everyone else went along with it. So, if you have a problem with this season's schedule, it's a problem of your own making!
There was absolutely no reason for the NBA to try and squeeze in 72 games. Especially when last season didn't end until mid-October. They also knew that while this season didn't have to end by mid-July so it would be done in time for the Olympics, it would be an incredibly bad look if it didn't. As it is, by scheduling Game 7 of the NBA Finals for the day before the Opening Ceremony in Tokyo, they've already made it so most of the top players won't be able to play for their countries this summer.
So, they had a limited time to work with. And, considering they aren't just having a full playoffs, they're actually adding that play-in round (which Mark Cuban said probably should've waited a year), that basically gave them roughly four months in which to play the regular season. Yet they somehow determined that they'd be able to play 72 games in that time frame when a normal NBA season is 82 games in six months?! (Incidentally, every team that qualified for the bubble last season played roughly 72 games, which is probably how they came up with the number.)
Simply put, 72 games in that short a span is too many! There really wasn't much of a reason for the NBA season to be that long, either. They made do with 50-something games in each of the lockout seasons, both of which started right around the time this season did. And, frankly, 50-something games is all they needed, especially in a pandemic!
That's really the part about the NBA schedule that blows my mind the most. We're still in the middle of a pandemic, yet they've got these teams flying all across the country. The NBA knows as well as anybody why the Orlando bubble to conclude last season was necessary. One of the reasons why the bubble was so successful is because they had everybody in the same place! So, knowing that, why are you taking the increased risk of having all the back-and-forth travel?
I'll also never understand why the NBA thinks interconference games are so important. The 10 games that they eliminated this season were conference games (and division games at that!). Everybody still plays a home-and-away series with every team from the other conference. Why?!
They can rightly point to the back-to-back games between teams in the same city as a measure they've taken to limit travel and reduce risk. That's true. But, if you're trying to reduce travel, why are you having everybody play a single game in everybody else's arena? It just seems silly. And for what? The playoffs are still conference-based, so it makes even less sense to play nearly as many interconference games as intraconference games.
By comparison, look at how the NHL did it. You're only playing the teams in your own division, and you're limiting travel even more by playing back-to-back in the same city. Meanwhile, the NHL, which finished two weeks earlier than the NBA, started three weeks later and is playing 56 games, a much more reasonable number in that time frame that's still a representative schedule. With no All-Star Break!
Taking a page out of the NHL's start and eliminating the 30 interconference games would've been a good start. Then they could've done four games against each of the other 14 teams in their conference for a 56-game schedule. Or, if they wanted to make it 60 and add a fifth game against each division opponent, that would work, too. And it'd be a whole lot easier to cram 56 or 60 games into four months than 72 plus an All-Star Break!
We all know the reason why the NBA started the 2020-21 season less than two months after the 2019-20 season concluded. Christmas is their holiday, and they didn't want to lose their full slate of Christmas games. As a result, the best teams--those who were gonna end up getting scheduled on Christmas--had a ridiculously short offseason, followed by a ridiculously condensed season! So, of course, stars were gonna sit out more games than they typically would!
Likewise, it was almost certainly because of TV that they decided to (A) play so many games and (B) play the same number of interconference games as usual. We know that's definitely the reason why they had an All-Star Game. And it's fine if that's why. But that also means you've got very little reason to complain about it. Since this is what you signed up for!
Regardless, we've nearly reached the end of the NBA season, which is a remarkable achievement if you think about it. They took a big risk cramming so many games into such a short amount of time while also needing the flexibility to make up postponements. And it looks like that risk will pay off. So, the argument about whether 72 games was too many or just right will turn out to be irrelevant.
No comments:
Post a Comment