Not everyone in the NBA loves the 82-game season. We asked them why.

Steve Kerr believes the NBA should play fewer games, and he’s not alone.

The Golden State Warriors’ longtime head coach, who has been promoting this idea since 2017, believes the league’s current 82-game schedule should be reduced to 72. “I know this will not be a popular opinion in the league office,” Kerr said earlier this month. “But I think it would be a more competitive and healthier league if we played fewer games.” This position was once so popular that, in 2014, even LeBron James endorsed it, saying, “If guys are being injured because there’s so many games, we can’t promote it at a high level.” James said then he’d liked the recent lockout-shortened season, which had 66 games, but for how densely it was packed.

League commissioner Adam Silver last addressed this idea at the 2025 NBA Finals, saying: “Money’s part of it, there’s no question about it. We’re a business. I don’t really see the benefit to reducing the number of games. People used to say you should reduce the number of games because it will lead to a reduction in the number of injuries. We have absolutely no data to suggest that. If that were the case, you would think you have more injuries in April than October. We don’t see that. Or you would think you’d see more injuries in the playoffs than you do in the regular season. We don’t see that either.”

“We’ll continue to look at it,” Silver concluded. “I would rather start (the season) earlier, maybe, or push a little bit later.”

These days, Kerr has become the leading and largely lone voice of public dissent. When asked privately, however, many more people within the NBA recognize how beneficial it would be to play less often than they do. “Everyone I’ve talked to,” said an Eastern Conference front office member, granted anonymity to speak freely, “thinks the basketball would be better.” Even if, right now, the idea does not, and may never, have serious momentum.

But what would happen if the NBA played fewer games? Why has basketball’s increasing injury frequency created such concern that some within the league have contemplated the impossible: making less money? ALLCITY Network spoke about this concept with executives, assistant coaches, scouts, trainers, and agents, all of whom acknowledged the league office’s stance. However, some were excited, others at least intrigued, to imagine how their jobs would change for the better and worse should this idea ever happen, and agreed to speculate on background.

One Western Conference executive also pointed out, given that the league’s two-team expansion has been set in motion and many regional sports networks are dying, there are more reasons working in this idea’s favor than ever before.

This specific idea we proposed was slightly more aggressive than Kerr’s: A 62-game schedule, paired with the league’s expansion, that would eliminate back-to-backs, keep the regular season’s start and end dates, and reduce the current 3.3-game weekly average to 2.5. We asked how routines and strategies would change. We asked them how it would affect them personally. We also interviewed several more people outside the league but in close proximity to it, who will be quoted on record.

“It’s something the league needs to consider,” says a Western Conference assistant coach, “more than it’s being considered.”

ARE INJURIES BECOMING A CRISIS?

The shortened season’s true believers overwhelmingly do so for one reason: The players, they feel, physically can’t keep up with 82 games.

This season, the league’s star players have participated in less than 60 percent of available games, as found by Yahoo’s Tom Haberstroh, a trend that has been both present the whole year and noticeably worse than past ones. Last season, 6,779 games were missed due to injury or illness, according to basketball’s leading injury analyst Jeff Stotts, only the second season to pass the 6,000-game mark since Stotts began tracking them in 2005. (In fairness to the league: they assign some causation to tanking, an issue they take more seriously.) This season passed that 6,000-game mark this week, and it could still surpass last year’s total lost games.

“Our medical staff believes that the wear and tear, the speed, the pace, the mileage,” Kerr said earlier this month, “is factoring into these injuries.”

Sure, two decades ago, “load management” was an unknown term. Stars often averaged 40 minutes each game; it wasn’t uncommon to see them play 82. Basketball has changed, however, and the physical demands along with it. The 3-point revolution demands players cover more ground, often asking more stop-start and lateral movement than past eras that some biomechanical studies suggest put more strain in the lower body. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, the league’s pace was more rapid. But never, in the tracking era, have players covered this much raw distance on the court.

“You’re asking the athletes to do more,” Stotts says. “The dimensions (of the court) have changed (due to 3s), the game has evolved faster than modern medicine and evolved faster than players’ (athleticism and skill). We’re already pushing the boundaries of what the human body can do.”

Stotts dislikes how the meaning of the term “load management” has been warped over the past decade. “It’s taken a sharp turn from what it used to mean,” Stotts says. In sports medicine, “load” refers specifically to the physical burden placed upon a player’s body, one which training staffs constantly monitor and reduce before it increases injury risks. That sometimes includes, if necessary, holding them out from games.

The San Antonio Spurs drove this term to popularity in the mid-2010s by resting older stars, sometimes on national TV, sparking the league’s first “load management” crisis. “But teams saw its success,” Stotts says. “Now everyone’s doing it.” It wasn’t that medical trainers hadn’t understood “uninjured” players might be helped, longterm, sitting out occasional games. It was that, once the seal had broken, the medical staff could now suggest it with precedent.

When asked our hypothetical scenario, Stotts and the sports medicine staffers we spoke to within the league feel eliminating back-to-backs would be one of the most deeply beneficial structural change of a shortened season. There’s debate whether back-to-backs increase injury risks; the NBA believes it does not. (Specifically, in 2024, the league sent teams a 57-page report claiming no link between load management and reduced injury risk; clearly, many teams and medical staffs do not agree.) What indisputable effect that a shorter, back-to-backless season would have, however, would be in the routine.

One Western Conference team’s trainer called a back-to-back’s post-game frenzy his job’s most frustrating night. “You go immediately, after games, to recovery,” said this trainer, where there’s often not enough time for as much recovery treatment as needed before the buses leave for the airport. Even when trainers cram with players before the ensuing day’s game, it can still come on an accelerated timeline.

This can lead to an “injury death spiral,” says Stotts, where trainers often feel they can only play defense. That they can only be reactive to injuries that happen rather than proactively work to reduce that risk.

“If there are fewer injuries,” Stotts says, “now you’re not using your resources for rehabilitative care. You can focus even more on preventative care. Once one big injury occurs, (players) are more likely to have a second one.”

With fewer games, teams would supplement these newly free days with more practice. “There are teams who have to evaluate the risks they’re willing to take in those environments,” the Western Conference coach says, and five-on-five scrimmages would become more common. For most trainers, that would still offer relief.

“One of the number one complaints from (trainers) is that teams don’t practice anymore because you can control what players do in a practice setting,” Stotts says. “There’s more time, (and) it would just allow them to keep up more so with the pace of what we’re asking the players to do.”

Players wouldn’t become immune to injury, of course. The league doesn’t currently believe the current injury rate constitute a crisis. It’s also a multifarious problem beyond games alone: that players have learned to skillfully strain their bodies to their limits; that some young players enter the league already having irreversible damage due to sports specialization; that there are more “unicorns” and “aliens” whose push the human body’s limits. This has, however, often pushed trainers to their own limits.

If this does turn crisis, there are other solutions. It’s just they, too, would be seismic. The league could move to a 40-minute game, like in Europe and college basketball, but that would affect revenue. The rules could be changed — no corner 3s? 30-second shot clocks? — to artificially reduce the court’s dimensions, just as the 3-point has increased them, or roll back the game’s pace. That, too, would fundamentally alter the sport.

As long as the league feels there is no crisis, which currently may be an excessive description, we’ll likely see only smaller tweaks, like the abolishment of the 65-game rule that has put this spotlight on star health and continued attempts to maximally optimize schedules to reduce travel and back-to-backs.

“(The shortened season) probably doesn’t happen,” says one Western Conference executive, “without something big changing.”

Expansion, this executive says, wouldn’t qualify as that in his eyes. However, increasing injury rates could be if they, and let’s hope not, continue to worsen.

WOULD GAMES BE BIGGER EVENTS?

Fewer games would change what we watch on the court. When considering this, executives and coaches most commonly speculated that the following things would happen in our 62-game thought experiment:

• Stars would average more minutes each game.
• Rotations would be shorter, perhaps some as small as “seven-man ones”, an assistant says.
• Rosters could be built with slightly more specialization.
• Each game would have slightly more preparation and game planning.
• Shootarounds might disappear as a result of that.
• The quality of play would hopefully increase as fatigue decreased.

In our hypothetical, stars would still play fewer minutes overall minutes, and have that more consistent recovery treatment trainers crave, even if they played nearer 40 minutes per night. (Trainers we spoke to don’t feel it would offset those benefits.) Several team employees pointed out how great the product was in the NBA’s 2020 bubble, an obviously unreplicable event, but also during and after this season’s NBA Cup Tournament, when gave most teams more consecutive days off than any other point this year.

Not everyone is certain this happens. “I don’t know if I agree guys would necessarily play harder,” one Eastern Conference scout says. “I think that’s just the mindset now.” But most executives agree that would be the proposal’s hope: That superstars would more predictably play and the nightly entertainment would rise, too.

“We’re a star-driven league,” a former general manager says. “You would hope for fewer injuries and higher quality games. That would be the biggest argument for why.”

When deciding how to fill his roster’s finals spots, this executive often debated whether trusted depth or younger players with upside made more sense. “You might be able to have your cake and eat it, too,” he speculates. Some teams, a Western Conference assistant says, never want prospects to miss nights with the varsity team. If the league played 62 games, he believes, there could be more robust G-League assignments that wouldn’t overlap with regular season games.

That assistant also believes there could be room for more specialized players, specifically naming score-first guards who lately have fewer opportunities in the league. “Does that guy have a little bit more value when your star’s out?” this coach wonders. Because there would be fewer injuries and shorter rotations, it’s hoped, a front office executive could ponder these choices more easily without such concern for in-season attrition and nights where deep benches, not just a one-player replacement, are musts.

Game-to-game strategies would be at least somewhat more robust. “Shootarounds might disappear,” the Eastern Conference executive says, because teams could trust consistently they could install them at practices. Another suggestion: Coaches would more willingly experiment beyond their base schemes vs. certain opponents. As Steve Kerr said earlier this season: “We literally haven’t had a single practice on this road trip.” That was mid-November before the season was even one month old.

“Games wouldn’t necessarily look more like the playoffs,” another West assistant says. “But you’ll have at least gone through preparation the day before.”

Front offices could have more time to meet with their coaches, specifically those in lower-level positions like scouts. Currently, most teams designate assistant general managers to serve as the middle man between them. The Eastern Conference scout recalls how one head coach often complained, “I don’t know who he is,” whenever some players on other teams were brought up. “That’s our job,” the scout laughs. Perhaps fewer games would change communication in that way.

Basketball would still be basketball. It just could be, on a nightly basis, slightly better basketball than before.

HOW DIFFERENTLY WOULD WE TALK ABOUT HOOPS?

Howard Beck, a senior staff writer for The Ringer, has covered basketball since 1997. While he doesn’t believe the shortened season is feasible, he acknowledges how many benefits, were this hypothetical to ever happen, it could have on but also beyond the basketball court.

“First, it would increase the importance and drama for every single game,” Beck says. “It just would. You can’t really argue otherwise.”

Beck believes more practices would change what the media writes and talks about. While there are more media availabilities on game days, the players are “busier and have their routines,” Beck explains, ones they’re often and understandably unwilling to interrupt for more than a few minutes. “Practices have always been the time where it’s the most relaxed environment,” says Beck. It’s where human interest and more granular questions are typically asked. And there are fewer than ever before.

“The beat writer’s job would be exactly the same in the broad strokes,” Beck believes, “but (more time for in-depth stories) would probably be more gratifying.”

Executives often cite the season’s 20-game mark as the appropriate time to assess their team, which the West assistant doesn’t believe would change even if there were fewer games. (It might help tanking, too.) “We need fewer games relative to what we currently play to determine the standings,” says the recent general manager, who suggests most teams don’t dramatically rise or fall from where they stand 30 games in. 

He’s right: This season, among both conference’s top-seven seeds, only two teams have risen or fallen more than two spots in the standings since, roughly, the league’s 30-game mark. That was Dec. 23. A reduced schedule wouldn’t change that, necessarily, but the suspense would be drawn out further into the calendar.

This hypothetical would mean team employees work fewer hours with more free nights. It’s a champagne problem, those who brought this up acknowledged, but this league does drive some otherwise capable employees to burnout. One person we spoke to even said he’s considering the switch to college basketball in large part due to its less relentless schedule. He would be far from the first.

Asked if more nights off meant more games watched, the West executive laughed, saying, “Hopefully, people would spend more time with their families.” It could also mean game nights, which front office employees have occasional leeway to not attend, would become all-hands-on-deck situation. It would still create more work-life balance, especially for trainers, who are every team’s “first responder” and often have tasks, such as travel arrangements, that go beyond player health.

These still are dream jobs, ones handed out to a very special few. No one, though, would turn down a few more free evenings.

IS THIS WHATSOEVER POSSIBLE?

If the league shortened its season, it would likely mean fewer of these dream jobs exist.

“I’m well aware fewer games would mean less revenue, which means everybody takes a pay cut, and I’m willing to stick my neck out and say I’m all for that because I think the quality of the product is the most important thing,” Kerr said earlier this month. “So I don’t say these things flippantly. I say these things because I mean them.”

If the shortened season did mean stars stayed healthier and basketball’s quality rose, as its proponents believe, that could drive ratings and revenue over time. It could mesh well with the league’s proposed two-team expansion, which would add 164 more games to the 350 that would be cut. If the league reduced rosters size by one or two players, even temporarily, the expansion rosters could help offset that. But it would likely also lead to smaller staffs, the assistant coach speculated, which would be painful. If the product was more compelling, the league could regain its lost revenue over time thanks to the scarcity effect. And, Kerr believes, the league would be a healthier one in every sense.

But “the players would never universally agree to lose money,” says one agent with several NBA clients, dismissing this hypothetical before it even begins.

The league’s national television contract wouldn’t be affected in this scenario; all those games would still be played. But the league earns about 25 to 30 percent of its revenue from ticket sales and other in-arena purchases. Even increased ticket prices, setting aside the moral question if it would be fair to the fan, wouldn’t necessary recoup lost revenue no matter how much they were raised. That’s basic economics, says Victor Matheson, a College of the Holy Cross economics professor specializing in sports economics.

“It’s what’s called an economics-revealed preference: The revealed actions of what the NBA has actually done suggest that they don’t think that they could make more money by playing fewer games, even if that meant more stars on the court at any given time,” Matheson says. “If the owners could charge more, they would already be charging more.”

Some within the league, specifically those most pessimistic that players physically can’t handle the schedule’s grind, still feel this is that problem’s cleanest solution no matter the cost. That it should be considered more seriously, at least, than it has been.

“We obviously have a lot of inertia around 82 games,” the West executive says. “There’s history, there are television contracts, there’s more. But if you were starting from scratch, what would be the optimal number?”

“My guess is,” he concluded, “it would be less than 82.”

Tim Cato is ALLCITY’s national NBA writer currently based in Dallas. He can be reached at tcato@alldlls.com or on X at @tim_cato.