NBA Schedule Released As Teams Discover Pain Of Compressed Slate

From Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic:

If only there were a way that NBA owners like Sarver could have guaranteed that every marquee team would visit every NBA city like in a normal 82-game season ...

And you wonder why NBA stars would rather play in New York than New Orleans?

This is only part of the issue, of course, and we can’t ignore that the networks themselves have a huge say in what teams land on TV. The league is trying to make money after all, and delivering a solid share of New York’s population to ABC is much more lucrative in the long-term than delivering a big share of New Orleans’ population.

All throughout the NBA lockout, the comments would flood sites all around the internet. You could write pretty much anything about the lockout, and like clockwork, somebody would chime in with, “WHO CARES? If the NBA’s gone, I’m sure nobody is gonna miss it.”

But it’s not just random internet commenters raining on everyone’s parade. Everybody has friends who hate the NBA no matter what happens, and then there’s the mainstream columnists who like to remind us how little anyone cares about the NBA. Like this, from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, which posted a day after this year’s lockout resolution. The lede:

The 2011-12 NBA schedule features 15 games on broadcast network ABC, with a Christmas Day doubleheader starting off the campaign followed by an absence for most of January. In those 15 games, only eight teams -- the best of the best in the league -- will be featured.

The revamped NBA scheduled for the shortened 2011-12 season was officially released on Tuesday as the league turned to NBA TV for a release show. We’ve known the opening slate scheduled for December 25 for a week now, but there are some other items of interest.

The NBA lockout forced the league to shorten the season from 82 games to 66. In a normal season, every team visits every other team at least once, and usually twice if the teams share a conference. But the NBA elected to remove some interconference games from the schedule to focus on regional and intraconference rivalries. That means that some cities will be locked out of the traditionally major draws.

For more on the Suns, visit Bright Side Of The Sun and SB Nation Arizona.

Because of the lockout-shortened schedule, teams will miss scheduled stops in a number of cities whose teams play in the opposite conference.

For more on the Lakers, visit Silver Screen And Roll.

The NBA won’t unveil its full revamped 2011-12 schedule until Tuesday, but the league did formally announce its opening day slate. The 2011 NBA Christmas schedule includes five national TV games featuring many of the biggest stars in the game.

Stay tuned for full schedule analysis on Tuesday.

The NBA schedule release date typically isn’t the most newsworthy event. Considering basketball fans have been waiting to watch basketball since the NBA Finals ended last season, and then it was delayed by the lockout, this year’s announcement is rather highly-anticipated.

The schedule will be released at 7 p.m. on Tuesday night in a special being aired on NBA TV, according to the station’s schedule. It will be discussed on the program NBA GameTime.

NBA teams will likely play two preseason games each, reports John Schuhmann of NBA.com. Teams normally play 7-8 exhibition games over a three-week period, but the NBA lockout has forced everything to scrunch up in order to maximize the length of the season that actually makes money.

The NBA originally had 202 games scheduled for the preseason before they were claimed by the lockout. Many were scheduled for non-NBA cities, a league tradition. But it’s likely the new 30-game slate will be held in teams’ home arenas.

The NBA schedule will be released within days, and it’s unlikely it will at all resemble the version that the league presented in August. Cutting 18 games from every team will tend to do that.

In the interim, the league has announced what form that schedule will take, confirming reports from the New York Times Sunday that indicated the NBA would shrink the interconference slate in favor of more games against in-conference opponents.