We talked about this before but no more 4 games in 5 nights is the biggest change I think. I think the number of back to backs will continue to go down the next couple seasons--maybe getting as low as 10 per season.


Opening night
Bos vs Cle
Hou vs GS

Christmas
Philly at NY
Cle at GS
Wiz at Cs
Hou at OKC
Minn at LAL

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2017/08/14/nbas-scheduling-changes-should-give-players-more-rest-and-fans-a-better-product/?utm_term=.8ad05b975c85


One of the biggest surprises is that Lakers have 35 national TV games which I think is 4th in the league. If that doesnt tell you about the power of Lonzo Ball (as a marketing asset), I dont know what does.

-If youre on National TV you wont have a game the night before or after.

-They are also giving National TV some flex

-Another cool thing is leveling playing field by not having Team A be on a back to back while Team B is rested.

The added rest days will also further level the playing field for all 30 NBA teams. How so? By trying to make sure as many games as possible come with both teams having the same amount of rest using what the league calls a “Free/Tired/Even” metric. If the two teams playing in a game have the same amount of rest, they are even. If one team played the night before and the other didn’t, the team that didn’t play is “free” and gains a point, and the team that did is “tired” and loses one.

As recent as the 2014-15 season, the disparity between the most and least rested teams over the course of a season was plus-nine and minus-nine, meaning one team could theoretically have 18 extra days of rest by season’s end. This year, Milwaukee is the most rested team at plus-four, while Atlanta and Chicago are the least at minus-five.


- Oh and the NBA is also adding a "Week" classification for games like NFL:

In an effort to try to break up the monotony of a six-month schedule, the NBA is taking a page out of the books of both the NFL and English Premier League and labeling their season by individual weeks on the league’s website, and it will be promoting the league that way, too. In doing so, the NBA is hoping to increase interest in the regular season by better highlighting smaller patches of the schedule. There’s little doubt this also is an attempt to try to make basketball more appealing from a fantasy perspective, where the sport lags far behind football.

It will take a long time for this to catch on, and there is no guarantee that it will. But it’s an intriguing idea to try to add some variety to a regular season that even the most diehard of NBA fans would agree can drag on at times due to the sheer length of it, as well as the volume of games.

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"though time has passed, im still the future" (c) black thought