This has become an annual tradition with the Portland Trail Blazers.
As the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL and the Vancouver Canucks of the NHL know all too well, playing in the Pacific Northwest, while having many perks, also has its downsides.
First, let's look at the positives. The weather never gets too hot or way too cold, the fans are incredibly loyal and passionate, the markets sizes are vast, and the lifestyle is relaxed. One of these actually feeds into the one glaring negative, though.
The market sizes for these teams are so large because no other franchise, in each respective league, plays close by. Their games are aired for fans all over the region, and specifically for the Blazers over the last decade as a result of the Seattle SuperSonics‘ move to Oklahoma City.
But, as a consequence, these teams have to fly incredible distances for each road trip, even against their Western Conference foes. And because of the NBA's divisional alignment, Portland isn't even in the same division as the rest of the teams on the West Coast, instead being grouped up with teams stretching as far away as Minnesota and OKC.
With the NBA officially releasing the 2016-17 schedule yesterday, Casey Holdahl reported that, not surprisingly, the Blazers will travel more miles than any other team in the association next season at 56,584.
Holdahl also notes that this is 4,000 more miles than Portland had to fly last year.
The only other team that's really close is Golden State, trailing the Blazers by a little over 2,000 miles:
The Dubs will travel a total distance of 54,436 miles throughout the 2016-17 season ✈
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— GoldenStateWarriors (@warriors) August 12, 2016
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