MINNEAPOLIS – Wednesday afternoon, the Minnesota Timberwolves flew to Sacramento. They play there Thursday, then off to Phoenix late that night for a Friday game, then back home Friday night or Saturday morning to face the Bulls on Sunday.
From there, they'll head out again Monday afternoon for a quick trip to Detroit and then back home late Tuesday night after their game against the Pistons, only to face the Lakers the next day in Minneapolis. That'll be the start of a four-game homestand, which you'd think would be a welcome thing, except for the minor details that said trip involves those Lakers, and then two days later a back-to-back against the Thunder and Grizzlies, a day off, and then the Celtics.
Next comes a trip to Milwaukee, for which they'll leave the afternoon after playing the Celtics. That'll be a Wednesday game, then back home for a Friday-Saturday back-to-back against the Raptors and Pistons, and then they'll head back out to the West Coast.
Is the season over yet? Not quite, not until April 17. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if, 65 games in, maybe it shouldn't be just about wrapped up.
In that two-and-a-half week stretch for Minnesota, I count maybe three practices. That's eight flights before they end up out west on April 9, 11 games in the next 17 days.
They're going to be tired. They're already a little bit tired. I'm going to be bored. I'm already a little bit bored.
It's not just because watching the Timberwolves hasn't been the most stimulating of pursuits of late. In fact, it has nothing to do with the team's quality of play. It's not because I'm hotly anticipating covering a playoff race. (I won't be.) It's through no fault of any player or team, but rather due to the reality of scheduling.
I'm bored, and call me crazy, but if there were a discussion about shortening the 82-game NBA season, I'd listen.
The Timberwolves' upcoming schedule does not make them special. Many teams go through stretches like the one that's upcoming, in which coaches defer to joking about how their teams must have done something to anger the league's schedulers, when in reality, that's just the pace the game can take. Here's the thing, though: It's a ridiculous pace at times, and it hurts teams, and a shortened season would be an easy change that no one seems willing to make.
In having a lockout last season, the NBA proved it was willing to flush its vital TV revenue down the proverbial toilet. So that argument against the shortened season is weaker. Another argument could be that players couldn't accrue statistics at paces conducive to setting records, but seriously, ask anyone in the NBA, and there's no way he's not trading a whole lot fewer back-to-backs for some arbitrary records that only a few guys will ever reach.
I'll give you this, though. Fans might not like a shortened season, at least not a face value. But an appeal to memory and rational thought might remind them that all too often they get tired of a losing team as the season goes on or anxious for a winning one to just get to the playoffs already. There are too many upsides, if only people might take half a second to think about it.
First of all, thank goodness for the Nuggets and the Heat. The NBA has to agree with that statement because other than those teams' winning streaks, 13 and 23 games long, respectively, and the potential for the Lakers to rise to elitism or crash and burn, there's little that's compelling to follow right now in the league, apart from the interest generated by rabid, team-specific fandom.
As of March 20, there is exactly one playoff race going on among the 30 teams in the league. One playoff race for 16 spots, to be precise. The East, barring something apocalyptic transpiring, is set, and with an eight-game wedge between the eight-seed Milwaukee Bucks and the nine-seed Philadelphia 76ers and Andrew Bynum out for the season, apocalyptic seems unlikely. In the West, the Lakers have stuck their pernicious hold on the last playoff spot, with a one-game lead over the Jazz and 13 games remaining for Los Angeles, 15 for Utah. There's still some question there, maybe, but really, the Jazz have looked like pretenders all season and the Lakers seem to be ceasing to underperform, so things will likely be set, and soon. It's just the order that's left to shake out, and even there, the moves should be minor.
Realistically, by April 1 the playoff race could be over, with more than two weeks to go in the season. Realistically, those last two weeks could see the best players resting, losers getting weird wins over teams that could not care less and a whole lot of countdowns for the first day of the playoffs.
But remember last year? Sure, the lockout was unpleasant, as was the madcap pace of the season once it began, but I'll give it this: There was still a reason to care down to the final days of April. The Jazz clinched the last playoff spot in the West in their second-to-last game, sending Steve Nash and the Suns packing for the offseason, and damn if it wasn't compelling – or at least more compelling than this April will be.
So imagine this, 70 or so games in as many days as a regular, no-lockout season. More rest, perhaps fewer injuries, more practices to help struggling teams and young players. Fewer games each night, more ability to focus on the teams that are playing, fewer games missed over the course of an injury, no stretches like the Timberwolves' upcoming weeks or any other teams' similar ones.
A couple fewer games means more games that matter. It means a halfway compelling April. It means that the Heat don't have to pull off a 20-plus game winning streak every spring to hold our collective attention. It means that the quality of basketball is likely better. No, scratch that. It means that the quality of basketball would be better.
Instead, we're resigned to the status quo, because that's how it's been since 1967. Instead, Rick Adelman leaves Wednesday's practice, en route to the season's most brutal stretch, and has only this to say:
"But that's the way it is. The schedule's what it is, and if we're going to win games, we're going to earn it.”
That's the way it is.
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