The NBA released its full 2017-18 regular season schedule on Monday. Breaking news: each team plays 82 games again, about half at home and about half on the road. (Those pesky international games and the two L.A. teams sharing an arena makes the “about” necessary.)
How did the NBA schedule makers screw your team this year?
Good morning. We have that and more in Tuesday’s NBA newsletter.
Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
The subject line above is a joke: no one truly gets screwed. The Blazers always end up traveling more than other teams because of their relative geographic isolation. Some teams have a tough month early, which is unfair because it means you spend the season playing from behind. Some teams have a tough month in the middle, which is unfair because it grinds the team down. Some teams have tough month at the end, which is unfair because it gives you a slim margin for error at season’s end.
There are few surprises in terms of who will be getting national TV games: plenty of action on ABC, ESPN, and TNT for the Warriors, Cavaliers, Rockets, Thunder, Celtics, and, uh, Lakers. Y’all really have to stop being surprised the Lakers are on TV so much: they draw, and as a Pacific Time Zone team they have the advantage of scarcity. Some West Coast team has to host late games. You can only give the Warriors, Clippers, and Blazers so many of them.
More interesting for the liberated fan’s purposes are the key individual matchups. Paul George goes back to Indiana on Dec. 13, and Gordon Hayward revisits Utah on March 28. Chris Paul will make his return to L.A. to face the Clippers on MLK Day. There’s nothing quite like Kevin Durant’s return to OKC to look forward to this season, though you think they would have moved Hayward-in-SLC up to the early part. Ah well.
The most important schedule news is something we’ve known for weeks: opening night is Oct. 17. Get hyped.
A number of people have brought up Kobe Bryant’s 2007 trade demand in discussing how the Cavaliers should approach Kyrie Irving. I wrote about how the situations are much different.
The world celebrated lefties over the weekend. Here are Whitney Medworth and Tim Cato on their favorite left-handed NBA players. Lamar Odom and Michael Redd were the most left-handed players ever. They just screamed leftihood!
Last week I wrote about three rule changes to prevent future iterations of the Brooklyn Nets from coming to be.
Giannis Antetokounmpo is about to land a fat sneaker deal. I’m just here for the Giannis ads.
Kate Knibbs digs deep on Gunnar Peterson, new strength and training director for the Lakers and trainer to the stars.
Marvin Bagley III is the best high school prospect out there. He was supposed to play his senior year in 2017-18. Instead, he’s committed to Duke, where he’ll try to play this year, all to get eligible for the 2018 NBA draft.
Speaking of Bagley, Kevin O’Connor has the five draft prospects you need to pay attention to.
Kyrie is reportedly interested in Miami, so Dion Waiters warned him that the Heat already have an alpha male.
The schedulemakers eliminated the dreaded 4-in-5 and reduced each team’s number of back-to-backs. Will it improve player health? Tim Reynolds explains how the schedulemakers use metrics to sort it all out.
Hassan Whiteside will not rest until he learns why there was a dead parrot in his yard.
And finally: over the weekend, the Mystics and Fever had to sit through a delay due to a leak in the arena. So they had a dance-off. This is how all basketball delays must be handled henceforth.
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