In order to gain a deeper understanding of how the NBA develops the 82-game regular season schedule for all 30 teams, "Sportsman" magazine exclusively interviewed Evan Wasch, the NBA's vice president of basketball strategy analysis. Wasch explained the reason for the gradual reduction in the number of back-to-back games for the league's teams and elaborated on how the NBA selects the teams to participate in the Christmas game each season and the principles for arranging the nationally broadcast games against both sides.
If you think the schedule is boring, you are wrong. The following is the entire interview conversation, but you can think about a question first: Would you rather your home team play all away games at once? Or go out 41 times throughout the season, playing only one away game each time?
Q: When you need to create an 82-game schedule for all 30 teams, where do you start? Approximately when will you and the team tackle this task?
A: The entire work process basically takes nearly a year and requires considerable work intensity and concentration. Each year, we first begin to collect and sort out the availability of the 30 teams' home arenas for the coming season. This work usually starts in early autumn, around November. We sent a memo to all teams asking them to provide information on their home arena usage. Typically, most arenas have relatively loose schedules at that time. However, there are some exceptions, such as a possible rodeo in San Antonio and large events such as the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, although those events may not yet have dates set at that time. Over the subsequent winter, spring and summer, teams will continue to update their home arena usage for concerts, major events and the NFL schedule, allowing us to identify which dates must be avoided. In Philadelphia, for example, the 76ers and Hawks share the same arena parking lot, so home games for both teams cannot be scheduled on the same day. Therefore, the arena's schedule is actually an ever-changing process that sometimes requires processing a large amount of information and coordinated planning at certain critical points in time. In addition, the National Hockey League schedule will also affect our arrangements. We need to determine which dates are already used by local hockey teams, and which dates can be scheduled for NBA games, etc. We usually start this work after the finals of each season. After all, the ownership of the championship directly determines major events in the national live broadcast game, such as the opening game and awards ceremony. There is also an unwritten rule. According to tradition, the defending champion will always play at home on Christmas Day, so during the finals, this work has already begun.
League dynamics such as free agency and the trade market in early July will have a profound impact on our plans for live broadcast games across the United States. Around the second week of July every year, we will discuss with our game broadcast partners for the first time to finalize the new season broadcast plan. At this time, we can basically sort out the general framework of the entire season schedule, including about 170 live TV games. , and their broadcast order. Once the live broadcast games are confirmed, we start planning for away games, especially those that require teams to travel almost the entire country to participate. If it is decided that the Golden State Warriors will fly to Boston to play at some point and start a road trip in the Eastern Conference, then we need to simultaneously determine the next itinerary: Will there be a nationally broadcast game in New York? Or Miami? And so on.
We basically determine the main structure of the league's game schedule through live games across the United States and long-distance road trips. This part of the work is usually completed in early July, and then handed over to a team of data analysis experts led by Patrick Harrel. Input the game schedule information into specialized software. First, all important game schedules will be determined. Then, according to the established schedule framework, all limiting factors such as away games, back-to-back games, weekend selections, schedule difficulty balance, and opponent team dispersion will be fully considered. , gradually develop a schedule to complete all 1230 games. Maybe you will point out that it is impossible for us to make an extremely detailed and perfect schedule, but we have tried our best to do our best. After all, it is calculated and analyzed by computers. Based on various set constraints, the software will eliminate countless possibilities and calculate multiple different schedule plans. Our team will review them one by one to review which solutions are feasible and which ones do not meet the requirements. They may readjust some of the plans, saying, for example, "This version of the plan looks good, but there are a few problems that need to be solved." This part of the work will last until about early August. Once we have a draft that we are generally satisfied with, we will continue to review it manually to find and resolve minor flaws.
At the same time, we will also send the draft to each team and give them one to two days to provide feedback and suggestions, mainly to confirm whether the arena schedule is available. If the feedback provided by the team is not substantive, such as "I think this away trip is not suitable. The back-to-back games are too hard. Do you think this game can be changed to our home court?" We usually Can't satisfy them all. Because at this stage, changing the schedule of a certain game may not only affect one team or both participating parties, but will cause a domino effect, affecting all other teams, so there is very little that can be done about it. . However, we will try our best to arrange it properly and will announce the complete event schedule later.
Q: So when teams and fans complain about the schedule being improperly arranged, you actually already understood their opinions in the early planning stages, right?
Answer: Yes. The most interesting thing is that there is no airtight wall in the world, and there will always be teams that leak the draft schedule. This is slightly different from the official version of the schedule, because we will make some slight adjustments before announcing it to the public. For example, the complete version of the Pelicans schedule I saw online some time ago is different from the official version. It is hoped that fans will not take the wrong schedule seriously and confuse the time and place of the game. We do know the team's input in advance and will review it carefully during the employee review phase. If we send a draft schedule to the team, it means that we believe that the draft can basically be released and that the arrangements in it are fair and equitable. It's normal for the team to have opinions, but it never happens that the team raises an issue and we're like, "Damn, I didn't think about that." We will take every suggestion seriously, and this is actually a link for feedback on ideas. Sometimes the team's feedback may be beyond our expectations, and they will understand that we are formulating this plan from a fair perspective. However, last year, a team from the Midwest proposed that they first go to the East for a road trip, then return to their home court to play a game, and then fly to the East again to continue the campaign. We also re-examined that schedule and understood that it was really hard for the team to travel so hard. But our final response was: "We have no way to adjust so many away games to re-plan the schedule." So we stuck to the original plan.
However, that team contacted us again during the draft review stage and expressed their understanding that we may not be able to change this schedule, but they hope to play all away games in two consecutive weeks instead of flying all the way back to the south of the Midwest after playing away games. home game before heading east to continue their road trip. So we later adjusted that schedule because, in our opinion, it was what we should do for the team. Originally, we considered that this road trip was too long. Yet that's exactly what they want, saying it's easier to accept. So we agreed, "Okay, we'll look into it." And it turned out we were able to fix that and adjust everything. So this was a perfect example of knowing that our schedule might be open to question and the team's input gave us a whole new angle to think about.
Question: Among all the opinions and suggestions, which ones do you think are acceptable? And which suggestions can you only say to the team, "I know you don't like it, but you have to accept the reality"?
A: For example, there is one type of opinion that we usually ignore. For example, the average number of back-to-back games played by each team this season is 13.3. The lowest team has 12 times and the most is 15 times. About 6 or 7 teams need to participate in 15 back-to-back games. Some of the teams made comments after seeing the draft: "We don't want to have so many back-to-backs, please adjust it." However, there must be back-to-back games for the teams. You have competed more often than others, why do you have to change yours? Or do we have to revise all teams' schedules? Then you will no longer be the most numerous. These are opinions that would be ignored without much thought. There are also more humble suggestions, like "You may not have considered this, but we prefer to play on the road this way." If we can adjust, then no problem; if not, as I said , I think the schedule we have made is fair enough.
Q: The schedule for the Christmas game was planned first by you, and other games are arranged based on this, right?
Answer: The Christmas game and the opening week games are jointly planned because the participating teams and matchups need to be considered.
Question: All things considered, the Christmas Day game is undoubtedly one of the most important events in the NBA. How do you decide which teams will play on Christmas Day? What did you look for when choosing these 10 teams?
Answer: There are many reasons for this. The first is which teams' venues can be used; the second is which teams have participated in the past; the third is which team the audience and fans want to see. You can understand this information through the statistical results of previous years. But sometimes it may be a young and energetic team, or a team that has just undergone a major lineup change. Our media research team also has many excellent data analysis experts who will collect the results of audience preferences for different teams, matchups and scenarios.
This year our task has become more difficult, as we need to avoid NFL game time. Not only do they have 3 games that overlap, but the teams involved in these games are all very good, so we will try to avoid "crash", for example, knowing that the Rams will have a game on Christmas Day, but still scheduling the Lakers 's home field. You definitely wouldn't schedule the Cardinals and Suns games on Christmas Day, or anything like that. This made our job more complicated, so once again we had to come up with hundreds of draft plans for the Christmas fight. Arranging different teams means there are more possible matchups, and the time schedule must also be changed accordingly. So we discussed with ESPN, solicited their opinions and ideas, and tried to find a compromise. Usually we agree on the overall structure of the plan, but we may disagree on the details, but we can always work through these small issues.
I think it is a very lucky thing to have so many excellent teams participating in the Christmas game. The past few years have been a completely different story. Only 10 teams can be allowed in this Christmas game, which is 5 games. I or anyone can easily name 13 or 14 teams that are qualified to participate in this important event, and we have to make some difficult choices. Choice is not necessarily a bad thing, it may be a happy annoyance, because it means that the league has many talented teams and fans love to watch them play.
Q: There's something I'm curious about. The teams participating in the Christmas game on this schedule include the 76ers, Knicks, and Lakers. I feel that these teams are selected every year. If nothing else, the Knicks and Lakers may be due to the thriving local media market. But you said that you will do a lot of analysis and research to predict the ratings. I feel that there are many key factors that we are not familiar with. So each year you need to determine which teams, especially those that cannot regularly participate in the Christmas game, how much information do you need to research and collect before you can make a decision?
Answer: The amount of information required is immeasurable. Like I said, it's not just about predicting ratings, it's not just these traditional factors. You also mentioned market size, which I hardly considered. I don't think market size is a particularly important condition.
Q: It feels like the Knicks and Lakers can compete in the Christmas Day game every year, regardless of the team's quality level. What else could be the decisive factor in this?
A: Until last year, they had not participated in the Christmas game for two consecutive years, or it had not been broadcast nationally. So the idea that they can participate every year does not exist. However, the Lakers and Knicks are indeed the teams that have participated in the most Christmas games. The 76ers and Knicks have the most Christmas Day games in NBA history, and there is a certain historical origin in this. But I don't think market size is more important than historical reasons, that's just a condition, one of many reasons we consider. The research you asked requires an extremely large and tedious workload. Many times you have to rely on these models that are flawed in some sense to complete computational analysis work.
Let's take the Memphis Grizzlies as an example. This is a new force with many games broadcast on national television. However, looking back on the past, this team does not have a deep historical background. We can look at their playoff broadcast ratings, which are pretty amazing, especially in the series against the Golden State Warriors, there's no doubt about that. So we can roughly infer the Grizzlies' ratings and game performance. Our team is thinking about research with Joe Dumars, Byron Spruell, and the league office to analyze how the performance of these participating teams will be from a basketball perspective. How competitive it is. What are the potential risks for a certain team? This couldn't be more obvious. Trades are likely to occur with these teams, and you have to determine which ones are more likely to happen. We are good at stimulating the audience's interest in watching games, as well as building momentum and creating highlights for both sides of the game. The only thing we worry about is the possibility of trades, free signings of players, or injuries. These all need to be taken into consideration.
Q: Since you mentioned it, I wanted to ask you a little more. You only arranged one live broadcast on ESPN or TNT for the Jazz, and the number of nationally broadcast games for the Nets was cut in half. Does this send some message? Or let’s ask, what happened in the NBA?
A: We certainly don’t know more than you, nor do we know more than the majority of fans. But we will read every report like everyone else. I think our starting point is still to work out the best plan for live television and try to reduce all kinds of risks. The last thing we want to happen is to arrange a large broadcast plan for a certain team throughout the year. As a result, the team has undergone earth-shaking roster changes and the roster is completely different from the original. Therefore, we always reserve the right to adjust the live broadcast plan, so that if any team performs beyond expectations, or suddenly strengthens significantly, we can increase the number of broadcasts for it in the second half of the season. The general idea this year, however, is to adopt more compromises to prevent too many surprises.
Q: Okay, so you do take into account changes in team personnel and the possible consequences when you make your schedule.
Answer: Yes, that’s right. Every year the situation is different. As the summer offseason draws to a close, it's rare to see so many high-level stars whose whereabouts remain unknown. But we can't wait until everything is settled and the players have reported to their new clubs before announcing the schedule, because we can't be sure whether this will actually happen. We must continue to advance the work progress and make the best judgment based on the information available at hand.
Q: A few years ago, you arranged a lot of live broadcasts of the Pelicans in your schedule. However, they were not a particularly good team that year. Zion Williamson missed part of the season due to injury. This arrangement gives these civilian teams in small markets and lacking superstar players an excellent opportunity for exposure. I think this is also one of your original intentions. I'm wondering if you're going to take a page from that season and be willing to take a chance on having some unpopular teams play in the big televised games of the season in terms of planning a national telecast?
Answer: I think there are indeed some teams that already have mature brand effects in terms of national TV broadcasts. Considering the ratings of their games, sometimes there is no need to pay too much attention to the actual performance of these teams on the field. But I think the current concept of big and small ball markets in the league is gradually blurring. If you look at the teams that have achieved great success in the past ten years, whether in terms of on-field performance or broadcast ratings, there are the Oklahoma City Thunder, Milwaukee Bucks, and even the Golden State Warriors. San Francisco is indeed a big ball market, but in the Warriors Before the team established a dynasty, they were not regarded as a powerful team with outstanding brand effect. Therefore, there are many non-traditional giant teams that gradually come to the forefront and become the focus of the entire league by virtue of their excellent on-field performance or the unique charm and influence of their stars.
We are trying hard to adjust in this direction. I think a lot of the conflict comes from how to balance the degree and speed of adjustment, right? If there was a rising potential superstar leading a team with a bright future, would you immediately arrange 20 nationally televised games for this team and see how it works? Or is it to gradually cultivate the team's audience, create eye-catching storylines, and create a positive and enterprising atmosphere?
If the team can reach the playoffs, the team's image will be significantly improved, because the audience in the playoffs will be larger than in the regular season. When a young and outstanding star leads a dynamic team into the playoffs, he will undoubtedly get more opportunities to show his strength in front of the national audience. Compared with regular season broadcasts, the effect is more significant, so everything is logical. You can look at the arrangements we have made for the Mavericks in recent years, which has steadily increased the team's exposure. At the same time, Luka Doncic has continued to improve his star level in the NBA. And this year's Grizzlies, 18 nationally broadcast games should be unprecedented in team history. This is the balancing effect we strive to achieve. You mentioned Zion Williamson. He does have certain injury risks, and this is only part of the reason. The serious injury history of the stars will indeed affect the decisions we make, and we will give due consideration to reducing the number of live broadcasts purely to reduce the risk of injuries. But it is not difficult to see that our ultimate goal is still to present as many of the fans’ favorite stars as possible in front of them.
Q: How do you coordinate with ESPN and TNT to decide who will broadcast specific games?
A: It's a pretty long process, but we have a lot of games to choose from. Typically, we feature the most high-profile matchups. The mirror principle is followed here. If it is a confrontation between the Eastern and Western teams, then the two teams will only meet twice a season, and both TV stations hope to get the broadcast rights. Take this year's Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics as an example. We will ensure that one game is broadcast live on TNT and the other is broadcast live on ESPN or ABC. The matchup within the division is also a similar situation, with the relevant teams playing three to four games. For a matchup that every TV station is craving, we will ensure that one of them will broadcast two live broadcasts, and the other two will be given to another TV station. Fortunately, each matchup has more than one matchup, which allows us to be as fair and equitable as possible in allocating live broadcast rights.
Q: Are there any teams lobbying you for the opportunity to participate in the Christmas Day game or more nationally televised games? Might the team not only complain, but also demand more frequent exposure?
Answer: Yes.
Q: Will you consider these opinions raised by the team? Even with the Memphis Grizzlies last year, I remember multiple players publicly stating that the team participated in fewer nationally televised games, and Ja Morant also tweeted about how to get more broadcast opportunities. I understand that this work is mainly done by computers based on specific models, but ultimately it is still people who make the final decision.
A: We will carefully study the suggestions and opinions from each team, whether they are public or private. I don’t think the lobbying of these teams can make us change our minds, because that will cause all teams to spend their minds on lobbying, and everything will evolve into a chasing game between each team. However, we will listen carefully to the ideas of the team, players, and live broadcast platform partners, take them into consideration, and make overall plans and try our best to make the best arrangements. Lobbying will not have a direct impact, but we are happy to hear from all parties.
Q: Let me switch to a completely new topic. I note that there are no games scheduled for Election Day this year because the league is focusing more on civic awareness and promoting voting, which is very much appreciated. What is the original intention of this? So from a scheduling standpoint, how do you adjust to the demands of having a specific day in November?
A: Again, this was something that was first considered about a year ago. The 2020 general election had just ended, and many team venues were being used as polling stations. This approach was possible purely because the new NBA season had not yet started at the time, but that was due to the COVID-19 epidemic causing the postponement of all games in 2021. So we started talking about how the team could actively participate in the 2022 midterm elections, primarily with the Social Justice Coalition, which is a coalition of league executives, team owners, team executives and players in 2020. , aimed at advancing social equality and justice events—discussing this year’s plans. The original intention is that if we are serious about supporting citizens to actively participate in voting and exercise their right to vote, then the practice of arranging multiple games on election day-from the past, there have often been 4 to 8 games on election day- It seems contradictory. From the perspective of players, fans and stadium staff participating in the election, this is also inconsistent with the message we want to convey. That's why we have this idea, that is, if everyone takes a truce on Election Day so that every NBA fan, including family members, can successfully participate in the election voting, what will everything be like?
Then we thought more deeply: If we decide to have a one-day bye on Election Day, and because in principle we try to avoid letting the team play back-to-back games, this means that the team will almost have to play two games in three days, which means that we have to play on Monday and Wednesday. Arrange quite a few games. So we extended a concept, which is to have 30 teams play games on Monday as a major celebration to promote citizens' active participation in decision-making. So we have designated Monday, November 7th as Civic Engagement Day this season, and all teams will participate. 15 teams play at home and the other 15 teams play on the road. However, from a national perspective, this is a more responsible performance of the NBA league. We hope to amplify and convey the message we want to express, that is, citizens Participate in the awareness and actively exercise your right to vote, so that everyone can go out and cast a sacred vote before the end of the election day.
We think this is a great opportunity for the NBA family to show some positive energy. From the perspective of scheduling, this is not difficult, because we have often used two games in three days to reduce the number of back-to-back games for the team. If you look carefully at the remaining schedule, you will find that the ratio of two games in three days is quite high. For example, there are no games scheduled on Thanksgiving, so there are many games on the Wednesdays and Fridays before and after Thanksgiving; the NCAA tournament finals are scheduled on Monday, and there are no NBA games on that day, but there are also many games on Sunday and Tuesday. In the second half of the league's schedule, there are not many games scheduled every Thursday. Generally speaking, there will be 2 games on that day and a small number of candidate games, which is far less than usual. You can tell there's a higher number of games on Wednesday and Friday, so it won't be a stretch for us to intersperse individual bye days and have a few more games on the two nights before and after.
Q: Whether it’s looking at the model or calculating it iteratively. How many games in total did you end up reviewing the schedule?
Answer: I am going to tell you a number. People always say it sounds fake, but I can guarantee that it is true. When you are facing 30 teams playing a total of 1,230 games in 177 days, the number of different schedule combinations may be as vast as the number of atoms in the universe, which is simply an astronomical number that is unimaginable. We simply cannot evaluate all permutations.
Q: I wonder how you find the time to do all this?
Even if our computer tries its best to calculate, it is difficult to calculate clearly because its speed is limited and it performs calculations through tree search. For example, as you said, "I selected a set of schedules through tree search and discarded all other possibilities." There are about a trillion possibilities that have been discarded, perhaps because the original arrangement was slightly unreasonable. But schedule-making software can efficiently evaluate billions of options. We can't review them all ourselves, but we can compare by scoring them. Each solution is assigned a score based on the constraints we add. We will only review the plans with the highest scores, but it is quite difficult to watch 1230 games carefully.
Therefore, we only consider the most critical factor indicators at the initial stage of the evaluation. How many back-to-back games are there in the schedule? How many miles are there on away games? How many times can each team have the opportunity to play at home on the weekend? What are the scope criteria for these questions? Is this standard too stringent or too loose? How many excruciating road trips have you had? We have our own method to test the rationality of away trips. For example, we will not let an Eastern Conference team travel to Los Angeles, Houston, Portland, Orlando and other places to play consecutive games. Therefore, most options can be eliminated quickly.
During the entire process, we will personally review hundreds of plans, and then we will reduce them to dozens. Near the end of the review, there should be only a few candidate options left. As I said, it basically means picking out a set that you find most pleasing to the eye at first glance, then studying it carefully and carefully, and then making appropriate adjustments. In fact, the process of reducing from billions of sets to hundreds of sets takes a short time, but from hundreds of sets to the final selected set, it takes a lot of time.
Question: I am now beginning to wonder what is the order of magnitude of "the number of atoms in the universe"?
Answer: The total number of atoms in the universe is approximately 10 to the 80th power, that is, there are 80 zeros after 1. However, the number of all schedule plans has reached 10 to the power of 1,200, which is so high that I can’t tell clearly. I can't even calculate 10 to the 80th power, let alone 10 to the 1,200th power.
Question: I may not even understand what 10 raised to the power means, but you are already very powerful. I have two more questions, both of which revolve around your efforts to reduce players’ travel distance and alleviate player fatigue. I know teams will play back-to-back away games more frequently this year, and more teams will stay in Los Angeles or New York for a few more nights and play back-to-back games. This will relatively reduce their air miles. Do you take this as a constraint and intentionally make such arrangements to reduce the fatigue of players traveling long distances?
Answer: Yes. It's hard to say anything about this, because for many years, one of the focuses of people's attention has been back-to-back games, and the topic can never be separated from canceling back-to-backs, reducing back-to-backs, having fewer back-to-backs, etc. First of all, it is not yet clear whether this approach can achieve what we want, including reducing the frequency of injuries, protecting player health, ensuring team rest, and maintaining competitive levels. Data has shown that this continuous rush to reduce back-to-backs is the only way for us to achieve our goals. Having fewer back-to-back games is definitely beneficial, but we have reduced the average number of games per team from 19 to 13. There's no way of knowing how much, or even if, reducing the number of games will benefit the team, as it will become the norm for teams to play a game every other day. From a mathematical point of view, it is no longer possible to significantly reduce the number of back-to-back games again.
The team's opinion on the above approach is that although the frequency of back-to-back games has been reduced, the "rest days" of two to three consecutive days in the past have also been reduced. Because before when you played on Monday, Thursday and Friday, there would naturally be a two-day gap for rest. Now the team's game time is Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It is true that there is no need to attend back-to-back games, but it also loses the opportunity to rest for two consecutive days, and this is undoubtedly an excellent opportunity for the team to relax without traveling or organizing. Training, which is really rare for an NBA team.
Q: What I want to ask is, will the team really do this?
Answer: Yes, in order to reduce back-to-back games, this is a forced exchange of interests. What we're learning, especially from our injury investigations and discussions with teams, is that long-distance travel is another key factor in the physical strain on players in addition to back-to-backs. There are only three ways to reduce travel fatigue. After all, every team has to play 41 away games, right? The most convenient way is to play all 41 away games at once. Players leave home and play all away games in each city they visit. Then they go to the next city and can only go home after playing 41 away games. This is bound to be the smallest total number of journeys. It is equivalent to an extremely long journey around the United States and individual cities in Canada, and the least trouble is experienced. The highest total number of trips was 41 outings throughout the season, with only one away game each time. Players kept going out and coming back, repeated 41 times. What each team is pursuing must be a compromise between the two.
There are only three ways to reduce the level of travel fatigue on the traditional schedule. One is to try to avoid the situation where the team only plays one away game and then goes home, because this is the least efficient; the other is to increase the number of trips as long as the team travels increase the number of away games, increase the frequency of 4 or even 5 consecutive away games, and reduce the number of 2 or 3 consecutive away games; thirdly, if you want to play multiple games in the same city, play them all at once, not twice. Go out and fly to the same places. So the last point is what we really adopted, and it focused on the 2 teams in Los Angeles and the 2 teams in New York and Brooklyn. We have had this happen 33 times on our schedule this year. Whenever an Eastern Conference team arrives in Los Angeles, it will challenge two local teams in succession, so there is no need to fly to Los Angeles multiple times. Similarly, Western teams, and even some Eastern teams, had the same arrangement when they came to New York.
The more important question is how to introduce this "series model", which is like a baseball series, playing two consecutive games against the opposing team on the road. This method is actually the approach during the epidemic, because after all, flying out has certain epidemic risks. This is what our player health experts recommended, especially when fans were not allowed to enter the stadium. The reason why this "small series" model is not adopted is that the league is worried that if the same team challenges local teams twice in a row, the box office of the game may be greatly affected. This problem does not exist in the season when the epidemic is severe. . So we thought this was a great opportunity to test, "Is this series format feasible?", "Can we have a team travel to the home team twice in a row?"
From what we know, this approach is entirely feasible. First, the flight plan can be met; second, the team will like this kind of travel, because after all, it reduces one unnecessary trip; third, back-to-back games must be played at some point. However, although it is a back-to-back schedule, the team does not need to travel now. A back-to-back without traveling is far better than having to catch a flight to other cities at 3 a.m. in the middle of back-to-back games. This is really beneficial in terms of avoiding player strain injuries. One thing we didn't expect was that many teams said that from a strategic perspective, such a series format would be helpful to them, especially as they approach the playoffs. Playing against the same team twice in a row, and having to make adjustments within a short period of time after the first game, will help the team adapt to the mentality and rhythm of the playoffs, because they are playing multiple games in a row against the same team. So most teams support such a plan.
In 2022, we have set up 23 such "mini-series" in the schedule to initially test how effective it will be in a normal season. Since fans can now attend the games, we want to see what impact this will have on the local box office economy. Influence. Although it was only a small sample test, we found that there was no fluctuation in the related revenue, just like other normal competitions. We think we can be bolder and expand the scope of testing. So this season we have set 55, plus 33 games between Los Angeles and New York and Brooklyn, which means that this year the two teams will play against each other twice in a row in the same city a total of 88 times.
Since there is no need to take flights for these consecutive away games, we have greatly reduced the team’s travel length. The average flight mileage of each team this season has dropped to approximately 41,000 kilometers. This is a routine for the league to establish 30 teams and 82 games. The lowest value since the Sai Sai system. From the perspective of the entire alliance, a total of about 50,000 kilometers of travel distance has been saved, which is enough to circle the earth twice. Therefore, it involves not only the quality of basketball games and the health of players, but also the requirements of sustainable development. After all, such a huge number of flight miles are saved in the schedule.
This is really interesting. But it also got me thinking, and here's my remaining question, is that you scheduled these games in LA and New York to seem to have minimized the number of back-to-back games for each team, while adding this 2-in-a-row Away arrangements. Are there other ways to reduce travel fatigue for teams? Do you think that through the above methods, at the league management level, trying to reduce the fatigue of players and teams has reached a limit?
Answer: I don't know. Three years ago, I might have said that we have reached our limits in terms of controlling the number of back-to-backs and protecting the health of players. The epidemic has given us the opportunity to experiment with methods that have never been done before. This is also a brand new opportunity for us. Therefore, I am not sure whether there will be new ideas in the next few years to create newer practice space? What if one day we were to change the 82-game system? It may significantly reduce the burden of schedule development and may also reduce the number of player injuries. This will be an important means of control for us.
Compared with the season 4 or 5 years ago, the new collective bargaining agreement has extended the regular season schedule by about a week. The number of games remains at 82, but the overall time is one week longer, which also allows us to appropriately lengthen the interval between games. This is one of the important methods we use to reduce the number of back-to-backs. So you can always explore new things, it just depends on what your top priority is at a given time.
We still haven't taken full advantage of the "series model". This year we have scheduled 55 times, an average of less than 2 per team. So each team needs to play 2 road games each against 12 opponents, right? You will play 4 teams in the same conference 4 times, and 8 other teams in the same conference. You will go to the home courts of these 12 opponents at some time during the season to play 2 consecutive games, and each team will play 2 games in a row on average. There are only 2 such opportunities. So if this "series model" proves to be feasible, we will definitely further deepen its application. There is still a lot of room to implement this solution to reduce the distance traveled by the team. But as you said, each team has to play 41 away games, and the required travel distance does have a theoretical minimum.
