In their effort to lower the amount of games that stars sit out to rest, Adam Silver and the NBA have released a memo outlining some schedule changes.
The NBA has had an issue on their hands for the past few seasons with superstars taking nights off to rest their bodies. It’s an 82-game season in the NBA, with a lot of back-to-back games and weeks with four games in five nights.
It started with the San Antonio Spurs and Gregg Popovich resting his Big Three, but LeBron James and other stars followed and it became a big issue for the league.
In an effort to lower the amount of games that these stars miss due to rest, Adam Silver and the NBA is taking a lot of precaution. The league released a memo this past week that outlined some changes to the schedule for the upcoming 2017-18 NBA season.
ESPN’s Brian Windhorst added that there will no longer be stretches with four games in five nights, single-game road trips and back-to-back games will be reduced. The league will also make sure that nationally televised games will be geared to encourage the players to play, rather than rest with excuses of too many games in a short span.
In order to make this possible, the NBA is adding a week to the regular season — meaning the season will actually start earlier than normal.
Next: 5 reasons the Cavaliers should take the Suns’ offer for Kyrie
The NBA schedule still hasn’t been released for this upcoming season, but it should be announced shortly. The first thing that fans will look to after the opening day and Christmas games are these new changes that the NBA is implementing.
I’m sure teams will continue to find ways to give their stars the night off with reduced pushback from the league and its fans. It’ll be an issue that will be heavily discussed at the next negotiations of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). But for now, this is all the NBA can do.