George Karl says he prefers the condensed NBA season they played last year – NBA News
The lockout forced the NBA season to commence later than usual, end of December to be exact. That resulted in the number of games each team plays being shrunk down to 66, and teams playing a condensed schedule filled with back
to back games and lesser rest.
Although the schedule was rough on the players and resulted in many injuries, there were still many former players, coaches and other personnel affiliated with NBA franchises that said at the time that they liked the idea of starting
the season late and playing fewer games.
Steve Aschburner recently shed light about how happy coaches are to get a full training camp this year before the seasons actually begins. In relation to that, he talked to Denver Nuggets head coach George Karl and he had some
interesting points to make about the NBA season.
“I’m sure Commissioner Stern won’t like this, but I think the product would be better if we shortened the season. When we start playing in late October, the people are thinking football. If you could just get us less fatigue [in
a shorter season], I think you’d have a better product. When they started on Christmas Day, I thought, ‘This is not a bad idea. This should be the start of NBA basketball … Maybe start Dec. 1 and play 62 games, whatever number they’d come to,” said Karl.
Although there is no denying the fact that the NBA season was much more interesting last season because with fewer number of games, more teams actually had a chance at the playoffs. We saw an exciting race for the last playoff
spot in the Western Conference as three teams fought to keep their season alive. However, it can not be ruled out that the past season was very tough on the players, and many of them went down with injuries due to the fact that they were not getting the desired
rest between games. Karl’s idea of reducing the games and starting on December 1st is a good one, since it would keep the schedule more or less at the same level of severity.
However, another factor that cannot be ruled out is the fact that a condensed NBA season would mean less revenues for teams in terms of ticket sales, less advertising revenue as well as less revenue earned from telecast rights.
And neither the NBA team owners want that, nor do the players since it will directly affect them. Hence, seeing this becoming a reality is a farfetched idea in the current circumstances.
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