Tim Legler (c) will call his first NBA Finals when the Spurs and Knicks tip off on Wednesday night.
ESPN's Mike Breen (r) thinks cutting back from 82 games is "never going to happen."
The “A” team for ESPN’s NBA coverage doesn’t believe fewer games in the regular season will be happening anytime soon.
ESPN analyst Richard Jefferson chafed at the notion that players should be playing fewer games, and believes the integrity and history of the game shouldn’t be messed with.
“We play the same schedule that they’ve played [since the 1967-68 season], so what is going on? We’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars in sports science, so what’s going on?” Jefferson said. “The players have more resources, more trainers, more planes, more equipment, all of the stuff. The quality of the product is how players are taking care of themselves, how they’re doing things. There are not as many back-to-backs, [and] less practice days, so that ‘Ferrari’ stays in the garage until race day. … You are disrespecting the older players that were doing back-to-backs on commercial planes with one equipment manager. It’s like, how easy do we want to make this?”
Tim Legler agreed with much of what Jefferson, and noted that even if the schedule was reduced, key players would find time to sit and rest for the start of the playoffs, and exposure of top players on national TV would take a hit.
“In an 82-game season, our expectations right now of how much we’re going to see guys has changed. You’re not expecting 82. You’re praying for 70 and realistically you’re going to get 65,” Legler said. “Say you played a 70-game season. I don’t think you then see guys play 65, 70 games. You’re going to have a lot of guys play 60 games. Maybe 58 becomes the number. Now there’s even fewer nights when you’re seeing the top guys. … You’re just hoping you can get the top guys upright and healthy on April 15 for a two-month playoff run because it still will be the salvation of the NBA season.”
Longtime play-by-play voice Mike Breen took a different angle based on the economics of the league, but came to the same conclusion that his two analysts did.
“It’s never going to happen,” Breen said. “Everyone is going to have to take less money. Ten games away to make it 72. That’s a lot of revenue over 10 games, and not just players, coaches, owners. How about all the peripheral people that work those games? Whether you work in the arena, whether you have businesses around the arena that rely on those 41 home games to make sure they pay their bills, etc. I think it impacts so many people in so many different ways financially that I don’t ever see it happening.”