It’s no secret that the NBA regular season is a grind for those involved. Campaigns span 82 games and numerous months, and it takes a lot out of the players and coaches.
Cleveland Cavaliers head coach Kenny Atkinson is just one prominent NBA figure who’s in favor of the league shortening its “hellacious” regular-season schedule. He lobbied for the league to follow Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr’s idea and shorten the campaign from 82 games to 70 or 72 contests.
“I think part of an NBA coach’s job is to manage this hellacious schedule,” Atkinson said. “And I’ll just echo what Steve Kerr always says, if we go to 70 games, 72 games, the league will be more spectacular, more phenomenal. I think about that all the time.”
Atkinson seems to be of the belief that a truncated schedule will have a positive impact on player performance.
“Guys would just be able to perform at a higher level,” he said. “Donovan Mitchell, you’re getting his best three games in four nights. Are you getting the best version of him? I think the fans look at it like, ‘Oh yeah, easy to say, 34 minutes, 34 minutes, 34 minutes.’ But what are we getting that last night?”
The hectic reality of the NBA schedule has already hit the Cavaliers pretty hard. After all, Cleveland has played in three games in the last four nights, as it played the Brooklyn Nets on Oct. 24, Milwaukee Bucks on Oct. 26 and Detroit Pistons just recently on Monday night.
For as intense as Cleveland’s schedule has been of late, it weathered the storm about as well as a team possibly can. The Cavaliers won every contest during that three-game stretch and are undefeated ever since they fell to the New York Knicks to start their 82-game odyssey.
Cleveland finished a hectic stretch of games with a 3-0 record in large part because of scoring contributions from Mitchell, who’s long been one of the premier bucket-getters in the league. The guard is averaging a whopping 31.3 points per game so far in his fourth season as a Cavalier, and he scored 35 points in two of his past three contests. He was particularly outstanding against the Pistons just recently, considering he converted all but five of his 18 shots from the floor.
But unfortunately, the NBA schedule doesn’t allow for much respite, and Mitchell and the Cavaliers don’t have much time to rest before they’re back in action again. The Cavaliers have a game against the Boston Celtics scheduled for Wednesday night, and that stands out as a winnable contest for them. The Celtics just recently won their first game of the season, and they have been one of the worst teams in all of basketball up to this point at 1-3.