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NBA: Quality Over Quantity Debate Utterly Pointless

By Phil Watson

Dirk Nowitzki and LeBron James have each spoken out recently about their wish for a shorter NBA schedule. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
Dirk Nowitzki and LeBron James have each spoken out recently about their wish for a shorter NBA schedule. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports /
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LeBron James is on board. So is Dirk Nowitzki. Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra is all for it.

The debate over shortening the NBA season has kicked up again, with James, Nowitzki, Spoelstra and others sounding off with their opinions that 82 games is just too long.

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The one salient question that no one in the Fourth Estate has seemed to want to ask, however, and none of the players who want a shorter season have volunteered is this: Are you willing to take less money?

If the answer to that question is no, then I have a small, simple piece of advice.

Shut up.

Carmelo Anthony led the NBA last season, averaging 38.7 minutes per game. In 1967-68, the first year of the 82-game schedule, four players averaged more than 40 minutes a night. Mandatory Credit: Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports
Carmelo Anthony led the NBA last season, averaging 38.7 minutes per game. In 1967-68, the first year of the 82-game schedule, four players averaged more than 40 minutes a night. Mandatory Credit: Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports /

Players wanted a longer break for the All-Star festivities this year and got it, knowing in advance that it would mean more back-to-back games in order to keep the schedule within the same timeframe it’s been confined to for the past couple of decades.

So when schedules came out with teams looking at 19 or 20 sets of back-to-back games this year, of course there were concerns.

And many fans are all on board with it, because of what I like to refer to as the video-game mentality—every game should be a pristine event, played with perfect conditions, with perfectly rested players and perfectly honed skills and perfectly executed play.

You know, like you get in NBA 2K.

News flash: Life is not a video game. Part of the test of the regular season is battling through fatigue and obstacles and all of those other awful, terrible real world things.

Wilt Chamberlain (13) averaged 46.8 minutes per game in 1967-68, leading the league. (This work is in the public domain in that it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1977 and without a copyright notice.)
Wilt Chamberlain (13) averaged 46.8 minutes per game in 1967-68, leading the league. (This work is in the public domain in that it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1977 and without a copyright notice.) /

It makes me wonder, in all honesty, if all the declarations of the modern athlete being so much better than his predecessors are as truthful as we’d like to believe.

Bigger? Unquestionably. Stronger? Without a doubt. Faster? Absolutely true.

Better? I’m not so ready to pull that particular lever because there seems to be a mental toughness lacking in today’s athlete.

This isn’t to say everything was better way back when because (a) that’s not true and (b) it’s too convenient an answer for what is a very complex question.

The NBA has played 82 games a regular season since the 1967-68 campaign, coming up on a half-century.

A quick look at that season’s schedule finds that the team with the best record that year, the Philadelphia 76ers, played a positively brutal schedule.

  • The 76ers played 82 games in 159 days.
  • Four different times during the season, the 76ers played games on three consecutive days.
  • Once, late in the season, the 76ers played a back-to-back-to-back-to-back—four games in four days.
  • They did all of this while flying coach on commercial flights.

This season, teams will play 82 games in 169 days, with no team being asked to play more than two days in a row. Teams fly chartered flights scheduled to allow them a maximum of comfort.

Jerry Lucas was one of four players in 1967-68 who averaged more than 40 minutes a game. (This work is in the public domain in that it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1977 and without a copyright notice.)
Jerry Lucas was one of four players in 1967-68 who averaged more than 40 minutes a game. (This work is in the public domain in that it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1977 and without a copyright notice.) /

It’s also worth pointing out that while today’s athlete is hailed as the finest in physical specimens, conditioned to a fine edge, trained by personal trainers and expert nutritionists, his predecessor did not enjoy those luxuries.

No, these guys who played on four straight nights showed up at training camp with the goal of getting into shape after a few months off. Many of the players were quick to get to the locker room at halftime so they could light up a cigarette—it’s hard to make free throws when one is jonesing for a cig, apparently.

Either the players of yesteryear weren’t as terrible athletically as we have been led to believe by modern dogma, or they just weren’t as artistically inclined as today’s maestros who want perfection.

In 1967-68, there were 12 teams in the NBA and rosters were capped at 12 players, with only 11 allowed to travel with the team for road games.

That season, 26 players appeared in all 82 of their teams’ games.

Last season, with a 30-team league and 15-man rosters, 29 players were in every game.

Oscar Robertson (left) logged 42.5 minutes per game in 1967-68. (This work is in the public domain in that it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1977 and without a copyright notice.)
Oscar Robertson (left) logged 42.5 minutes per game in 1967-68. (This work is in the public domain in that it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1977 and without a copyright notice.) /

Almost four times as many players, and a difference of three players total worked every night.

Additionally, in 1967-68, four players averaged at least 40 minutes per game and a fifth logged 39.9 a night.

Last season, Carmelo Anthony led the league at 38.7 minutes per game.

This isn’t an indictment of the modern player—far from it. Better working conditions are a good thing and the players are better for it.

But the bottom line is, in fact, the bottom line. Fewer games mean less basketball-related income for teams. Less BRI means a lower salary cap and, ultimately, lower salaries.

That’s the one thing I have yet to hear a player say they’d accept in exchange for reducing the length of the schedule from 82 games to something more acceptable to them.

Just for argument’s sake, let’s say the schedule was reduced to the number Nowitzki threw out there—66 games.

Sixteen fewer games would shorten the schedule by 19.5 percent.

For players at the top end of the pay scale, that really wouldn’t be that big a hit: A $20 million salary would be $16.1 million.

But the guys on the other end of the pay scale, your guys on minimum contracts, would take a big bite. A rookie on a minimum deal this season will make $507,336. That would become $408,405. A 10-year veteran at the bottom of the scale would lose $282,455, dropping the rate to a bit less than $1.17 million.

My colleague, Maxwell Ogden, suggested that the problem could be solved by extending the length of the regular season in terms of the calendar.

But are we truly ready to celebrate our Independence Day by watching an NBA playoff game? What would an extended season do to events such as the draft combine or the draft itself?

If the choice were instead to pull the beginning of the season back into September, what effect might that have on attendance and national attention? There is still a perception among many casual fans that the NBA season doesn’t really start until Christmas—so what effect would having more games played prior to that date have on revenues?

It’s a worthy discussion. But at the end of the day, it’s just white noise unless the players are willing to put their money where their overbooked schedule is.