As the NBA released the full schedule of the upcoming regular season, teams were glad to know that this year's slate will be the least strenuous in the history of the association in terms of back-to-back games.
Commissioner Adam Silver and the rest of the league's front office have taken yet another step in their commendable overall effort to try and make the 82-game season less demanding for players. They have achieved a small victory by bringing down the league average of back-to-back contests to the lowest it has ever been.
“The league average for back-to-back games dropped from 19.3 in 2015 to 14.4 last season, to now a record-low 13.3 for the upcoming campaign,” per Kevin Winter of The Score.
Back-to-back games are definitely one of the most challenging parts of an overly-demanding, eight-month-long regular season. This becomes even more difficult when teams are required to travel considerable distances — either via bus or plane — right after a hard-fought ballgame, to take part in another high-intensity contest less than 24 hours later.
This has become so much of a problem that NBA teams have responded by often resting their stars on back-to-back nights. What was once a frowned upon tactic has become a commonplace practice in the entire league.
With the NBA doing its share to try and address the issue at hand, it would only be fair if teams are able to respond gracefully by at least reducing the rest periods of their players, which quite frankly, has become out of hand in recent years.
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