A Shorter NBA Season? Rick Carlisle And Steve Kerr State The Case
· Yahoo Sports
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS - MAY 21: Head coach Rick Carlisle of the Indiana Pacers looks on during the first quarter against the Boston Celtics in Game One of the Eastern Conference Finals at TD Garden on May 21, 2024 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
Getty ImagesINDIANAPOLIS – Do NBA teams play too many games? Outside of lockout-abbreviated seasons, the league has played 82 regular season games every year since 1967-68. But Indiana Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle and Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr believe that the 82 number should be reduced.
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Kerr has commented on the matter multiple times. His Warriors started the ongoing season with a hectic schedule — they played their 12th road game on November 19, the same day the Houston Rockets played for the 13th time total. Every team goes through a demanding stretch like that at some point, but Golden State’s was early and particularly difficult.
“I know this will not be a popular opinion in the league office, but I will continue to say it because it’s obvious we need to play fewer games – we need to take 10 games off the schedule. I think it would be a more competitive and healthier league if we played fewer games,” Kerr said earlier this month, per ESPN. His Warriors team has been hit hard by injuries across the last few months.
Is the NBA schedule too long?
Commentary on the length of the season has increased in volume in recent years, but it has been a topic for decades. Jeff Van Gundy, a former head coach who is now an assistant with the Los Angeles Clippers, previously said that “Seventy [games] would be great,” in an interview with the New York Times. Van Gundy’s point: the season needed to stretch across the same length on the calendar but with fewer games. It would reduce, if not eliminate, the need for teams to play on back-to-back nights. In turn, more practice time for teams and fewer injuries.
The hope would be that more time practicing makes each individual team, and game, better. Healthier players, particularly stars who play the most often and draw more fans into arenas, would play a higher percentage of the time. If fewer games created those benefits, it would be a win. But it would come at the cost of revenue for the NBA and its teams, perhaps significantly so if 10-plus games are removed as some head coaches have suggested.
“I get it, it’s revenue, and you’d have to agree to let everyone get a little less money, and that’s really hard to do,” Kerr said. “But what I know about the league and coaching and how hard it is to play with the pace and the space – I think it would be a more competitive and healthier league if we played fewer games.”
Kerr shared that during the aforementioned busy stretch his team went through to open the season, they had little practice time. That’s something the Pacers and Carlisle went through last week.
Golden State Warriors' Stephen Curry (30), coaches Jarron Collins, Ron Adam, head coach Steve Kerr and Luke Walton watch from the bench Marreese Speights (5) dribbling against Indiana Pacers' Myles Turner (33) in the second half of an NBA game at Oracle Arena in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, Jan. 22, 2016. Kerr retuned to coach his first season game with a win after missing all the previous games due to back surgery complications. (Photo by RAY CHAVEZ/MediaNews Group/Bay Area News via Getty Images)
MediaNews Group via Getty ImagesIndiana played five games in seven days from March 12 to March 18. The end of that stretch featured consecutive games in which the Pacers traveled from New York to Indianapolis to play on back-to-back nights. Carlisle explained that his team broke their normal gameday schedule and planned their pregame walkthrough to be at a different time. He wanted to give his players as much rest as possible during a busy period in which they had little practice opportunities.
During that same timeframe, the Pacers were dealing with several injuries. Multiple starters missed games, and the demands of the schedule forced the Pacers to be strategic. Carlisle laid out the injury reporting process that the franchise executes every day in order to keep the NBA up to date on the health of Indiana’s players.
Due to the frequency of games, and the challenges the Pacers were facing as a result, Carlisle was asked if he agrees with Kerr that the NBA would be better with a shorter schedule. “Yeah, it would definitely be better,” he began. “I really think Steve is right on the money here.”
In Carlisle’s eyes, an important reason for the decrease would be that the NBA product on the court has changed. It’s faster and more abrupt in terms of play style. That is a factor in the rise in injuries, particularly of the soft tissue variety, the league has seen in recent years.
“The question is, do the parties involved have the wherewithal to come up with a solution to minimize games without significantly upsetting the financial ecosystem? That’s really the heart of the matter,” Carlisle said. “[Commissioner] Adam (Silver) has talked about shortening the season at times in recent years. I believe he’s mentioned the possibility of reducing it to 78 games. A four-game difference would feel pretty significant, probably. 10 would be great… But, can the parties involved reconcile the finances along with the reasons it would be good?”
Carlisle also touched on practice time impacts, but he did so by looking at the front end of the league calendar: training camp. “The league has adjusted the schedule to reduce back-to-backs. In doing so, we had to eliminate essentially a week of training camp. And so there is a school of thought that the lack of that fourth week of training camp may affect base building for the season,” he said. The veteran head coach, who received a contract extension before the season, then touched on back-to-backs. “When there were more back-to-backs, there were more quality practice days. It’s just a math equation. These are all parts of a bigger conversation about it. But the game has changed a lot since the early 2000s, and it’s evolved to this. And so we’re all working to do our best under this system to make it work.”
Pacers players Tyrese Haliburton and Johnny Furphy have both suffered lengthy, season-ending injuries for the Pacers across the last 12 months. 27 players have suited up for the blue and gold this season, yet it’s possible that only four of them – Jay Huff, Jarace Walker, Pascal Siakam, and Ben Sheppard – reach 65 games played. Siakam and Sheppard still have work to do. The other 23 players can’t achieve that mark, which is just under 80% of a full season.
The Pacers have been hit hard by player absences this season, maybe more than any team in the NBA. They also play an active style, one that more and more teams are applying. As the league evolves on the court, perhaps the schedule needs to catch up.