The Weekside: Phoenix Suns continue to lose by treating players like assets
By Jared Wade
Behind Schedule
As a fan, I love the volume. The more games the better, and 82 is a great, traditional number than ensures a full slate of contests nearly every night.
As a coverer of the sport, however, 82 is way too many. Every night of the season seemingly features an unwatchable smorgasbord of games that makes following all 30 teams something of a fool’s errand.
It’s beyond clear: There are too many games in the NBA season. And probably waaaay too many. We don’t need 82 contests to decide which 16 teams teams — a full 53% of the league — deserve to be in the playoffs. Everything would be better if there were fewer games.
Players would be more well rested. Teams wouldn’t phone in efforts on the second night of a back-to-back in the dog days of January. Each game would matter more. The regular season results, on any given night, would have a lasting significance if two teams later met in the postseason. Fans could reasonably keep track of everything happening across the league, getting to know storylines in Milwaukee and New Orleans rather than just being force fed the same talk about LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant and whatever ring of the decade-long Knicks’ circus we’re currently in.
Something that would make almost too much sense would be having every team play each other twice, once at home and once on the road. That is 58 games, a drastic 24-game drop from 82, but a number that just works. Teams could play twice per week, and each evening there would be four or five contests on the NBA docket. It’s a semi-manageable number to cover. The regular season would last 29 weeks. Add in two weeks off for the All-Star break and a nine-week playoffs, and that’s exactly 40 weeks. That leaves a 12-week offseason for the draft, free agency, summer league, and training camp before real games start again.
Everything about the NBA would be better in that world — except the revenue. To be sure, it isn’t just the owners who would lose out on profits, but the players’ take would shrink if each franchise got 12 fewer home dates to sell tickets, beer, popcorn, and jerseys. There is an argument that game scarcity could allow for higher ticket prices and other ancillary benefits that would lessen the loss, all while improving the product enough that it could be sold for more later — in negotiations for the next television deal, for example — but that is a big risk that few would want to take.
Instead, the league is putting on Band-Aids. It was more “mindful of player rest” while creating this year’s schedule, according to league VP Kiki VanDeWeghe as told to USA Today. In response to all the injuries in recent years and the growing understanding that the old way of scheduling is too grueling, the NBA has reduced the number of games held on a back-to-back nights for teams, as well as the infamously terrible “four games in five nights,” which always leads to terrible basketball being played.
Overall, per USA Today figures, the league reduced back-to-backs from 19.3 last year to 17.8 per team. Four-in-fives have dropped to 0.9 per team from 2.3.
Hooray. Incremental progress.
More change may be ahead, too, according to commissioner Adam Silver and VanDeWeghe.
"The league will continue to explore ways to improve the schedule, and Silver said in April the NBA was discussing extending the season by a week at the end of the regular season. That won’t happen in 2015-16, but it could happen in the future. “We’re leaving no stone unturned, and everything is one the table,” VanDeWeghe said. “Adam is certainly open to looking at everything and is very sensitive to our players’ needs.”"
You heard it here first.
“No stone unturned.” “Everything is on the table.” The league is doing everything conceivable — as long as it falls pretty closely in line with the status quo.