OAKLAND – Nearly a month before his players would feel the fatigue stemmed from cross-country flights, sleep deprivation and a compressed schedule, Warriors coach Steve Kerr called Spurs coach Gregg Popovich.
The Warriors would play in San Antonio on March 11, marking their eighth game in 13 days and on the second night of a back-to-back after being in Minnesota. Kerr said he thought that portion of the schedule “made no sense.” So, he alerted Popovich he would rest his star players that night a month in advance.
“I learned from you,” Kerr said. “Look at this schedule.”
“Yeah, I’ll do the same thing,” Popovich answered.
A month later, both followed through on their plans. While Kevin Durant nursed an injury, Kerr also sat his other stars in Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala. Popovich rested Kawhi Leonard and LaMarcus Aldridge. An uproar ensued over players resting during a nationally televised game.
Since then, TNT analyst and former NBA player Charles Barkley recently called the current players “poor babies” that “can’t play back-to-back games.”
“We’re trying to present a good product,” said Kerr, citing the Warriors playing in Dallas and then Houston in early January. “We’re going to play way better if our back-to-back is Houston and Dallas than if it is Minnesota to San Antonio before we get to bed at 5 o’clock in the morning. I know Charles would have been perfect in that situation when he played. That back-to-back wouldn’t have bothered him. His conditioning was so good, anyway. Nothing mattered.”
The schedule mattered enough to the Warriors that they were one of several teams that advised the NBA about adjusting its schedule. The league listened. After playing in 17 sets of back-to-back games this year, the Warriors will play in 14. After playing as many as eight games in 13 days last season, the Warriors’ toughest stretch will entail playing six games in nine days.
“I will rest guys every once in a while, but not en masse,” he said. “I’ll do it individually if they’re banged up. If they’re wiped out, we may give a guy a night off. But we’ll work with the league as we do.”
Though Kerr did not mind the back-to-back games, he liked the NBA pushed the regular season up from late to mid-October to minimize lengthy trips.
“We don’t have any stretches of insanity that we had last year. The league really listened to us,” Kerr said. “The league has gotten really smart. The reason it’s smart is because it affects performance. But I know there are going to be people complaining about it.”
That already has happened.
At a recent appearance at Southern Methodist University, Barkley said, “I am so angry – angry – at the NBA for [not] telling these guys, ‘Wait a minute, we’re paying you guys, $30-40 million and you can’t play basketball two days in a row?”
“That’s the same reason when your Grandpa said, ‘When I was your age, I had to walk five miles in the snow to school, uphill both ways,’” Kerr said. “Life was much tougher for the old guys. It’s much easier for the young guys. We’re all soft. This generation is soft. If only we could go back to the old days when everybody was tough.”
No one disputes the upgraded travel accommodations current NBA teams enjoy with charter flights and five-star hotels. But the Warriors cited various studies that show such schedule adjustments will allow for longer sleep and recovery time, which will lengthen players’ careers.
“I think it’s great. You want your best product on the floor,” Green said. “With reducing the four [games] in five nights and back-to -backs and all those things, you see more of your best product out there.”
Incidentally, the Warriors will likely field a better product in training camp than in past seasons.
After playing seven preseason games last year, the Warriors will only play four beginning Saturday against the Denver Nuggets at the Oracle. They then have a week-long trip in China for games against Minnesota in Shenzhen (Oct. 4) and in Shanghai (Oct. 8). The Warriors then end the exhibition season against Sacramento on Oct. 13 at the Oracle.
“It’s a little different. You can’t get the young guys minutes,” Kerr said. “You usually take one or two exhibition games to give big minutes to the young guys. We’re not going to be able to that this year.”
Instead, the Warriors’ rotation players will likely play more minutes in fewer games, something that Green found more beneficial.
“Now you take the preseason more seriously,” Green said. “If you got eight games, you can jack around for two or three of them. You can sit two or one of them. As opposed to now, you got four games. You have to use them to get into shape a little bit and into rhythm.”
Because of that compressed schedule, Kerr will give his players the day off on Tuesday. The Warriors have not scheduled any two-a-day sessions during training camp, something that is customary for most teams. And when the Warriors return from China, they will likely rest for two more days.
“What we want to do is present the best possible product every night that we can,” Kerr said. “That’s why it’s really important for the league to figure out the scheduling, travel and rest. That’s why we’re working with them and they’ve done a great job of it.”
