An earlier start date and the elimination of four games in five nights for all teams are among the highlights of the 2017/18 season schedule, which was released on Monday night by the league.
At the urging of the NBA Players Association, the league has tried to stretch out the regular-season schedule to allow players more rest in between games. There were 20 instances last season where a team had to play four games in five nights. No team will have to go through such a rugged stretch this year, since the regular season will start two weeks earlier than in previous years. The beginning of the regular season will be Tuesday, October 17.
Back-to-backs have also been trimmed down somewhat from an average of 16.3 per team to 14.4. The league hopes that this will also reduce the number of times that teams rest players during the course of the season.
Last season, there were numerous instances of nationally-televised games where prominent players were wearing street clothes as coaches tried to keep them fresh for the postseason. As Tim Bontemps of the Washington Post tweets, no team playing in an ABC game during the upcoming season has a game the day before or after, which should ensure that healthy players will suit up for those games.
Listed below are links to the full 2017/18 season schedules for each NBA team, organized by Conference and Division:
EASTERN CONFERENCE
Atlantic Division
Central Division
Southeast Division
WESTERN CONFERENCE
Northwest Division
Pacific Division
Southwest Division
Finally. See i knew this could be done. Hopefully teams still don’t use the “rest” excuse to rob us of the few marquee NBA regular season games worth watching
This pretty much solves the resting crisis.
Good decision starting the season earlier.
Now we hopefully won’t have to sit through Warriors-Spurs without Aldridge, Curry, Durant, Leonard, Thompson, or Green.