The NBA adopted its 82-game schedule for the 1967-68 season and, aside from a few labor disputes and a pandemic interruption, has maintained it ever since. It is one of the very few constants in all of professional basketball, but if Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr has his way, it would be a whole lot shorter.
Kerr has been railing against the length of the NBA’s regular season for quite some time now. He first broached the subject publicly back in 2017, but it’s become a more frequent talking point this season. Less than a week ago, after a loss to the Utah Jazz, Kerr argued that a shorter schedule would create “a more competitive and healthier league.” He said then that he thought the schedule should be reduced from 82 to 72 games.
And before Sunday’s game against the New York Knicks, Kerr was at it again. According to SNY’s Ian Begley, he said NBA stakeholders should have a “meaningful discussion” about shortening the season. In the process, he brought up the financial reality that will probably prevent that from ever happening.
“I’m well aware fewer games would mean less revenue, which means everybody takes a pay cut and I’m willing to stick my neck out and say I’m all for that because I think the quality of the product is the most important thing,” Kerr argued. “So I don’t say these things flippantly. I say these things because I mean them.”
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The NBA is, first and foremost, a business. Fewer games, at least initially, means less television revenue and fewer tickets sold, which means less money for everybody involved. Both the players and owners would likely object to any proposed change that takes money out of their pockets. Proponents of a shortened schedule — myself included — have argued that while this would indeed be the case in the short term, the hope would be that reducing the supply of NBA games would increase demand, allowing the NBA to charge more for tickets and media rights on the remaining pool of games because, aside from being scarcer, each game would be more significant. This is, of course, theoretical, and any schedule reduction would bring immediate reductions in revenue and, therefore, salary. It’s hard to imagine anyone agreeing to that, even if Kerr believes they should.
Kerr has consistently argued that the modern NBA’s playing style is too hard on the human body to expect players to play 82 games. NBA games are significantly faster and require more movement than they once did. When Kerr took over the Warriors for the 2014-15 season, the NBA’s league average pace was 93.9 possessions per game. It’s up to 99.3 this season.
That’s not quite as high as pace was in the 70s and 80s, but the sport has changed drastically since then. With more shooters and ball-handlers on the floor, defenders need to cover significantly more space than they once did. There’s much more lateral movement, much more starting and stopping, and many, including Kerr, believe that this has contributed to the league’s problems with soft-tissue injuries. We only have publicly available tracking data going back to the 2013-14 season, but in that time, we have broadly seen the amount of movement and the speed at which players have moved increase. The San Antonio Spurs led the NBA by traveling a cumulative 17.8 miles per game during the 2013-14 season. That figure would rank 17th in the NBA this season.
There’s also the matter of practices. During a lengthy road trip in November, Kerr bemoaned his team’s inability to practice simply because it didn’t have the time or energy.
“We literally haven’t had a single practice on this road trip. Not one,” he said. “We’ve been gone a week or longer. Eight days, not one practice. It’s just game, game, game. So not only is there no recovery time, there’s no practice time.”
Taking games off the schedule would open up more days for teams to practice and theoretically improve the quality of the on-court product. This was the point Kerr emphasized on Sunday.
“We have incredible people in this league and great fans. I just want to make sure we give our fans the very, very best product we can and try to satisfy all of our corporate partners,” Kerr said. “And I just think there’s probably a way to do that without just completely — I don’t know, ignoring some of the obvious (schedule-related injury) issues we’ve established.”
At least as far as is publicly known, there is no momentum toward shortening the schedule. It has become a somewhat popular opinion among media, but Kerr is by far the most significant stakeholder within the league pushing the idea publicly. But he’s fighting an uphill battle. He may be willing to take a pay cut for the sake of the product, but it’s hard to imagine many more players and owners are eager to do the same.
