NBA Travel: The Pioneers Had It Rough

During the summer of 2017, the National Basketball Association decided to extend the number of calendar days in the regular season in an effort to reduce the wear and tear on its athletes, and hopefully lessen the need for teams to rest its top players on game nights. This is a good thing; tired players result in a diminished product. Contemporary NBA travel, which requires stops in 29 different cities and includes several more than once, only adds to the roster attrition we see towards the end of a typical 82-game season.

“But We Were Thankful For What We Had.”

Even though today’s player benefits from customized team transportation, they’ll likely look at how their successors get around 40 years from now with envy. Surely, the players from the early years of the NBA, who scrambled to get to their destinations via commercial flights, trains and buses not designed for tall folks, probably aren’t feeling much empathy for the current players’ need for rest and friendlier schedules.

In the early days of the NBA, most of the franchises were concentrated in the Eastern and Central time zones. The league’s gradual westward expansion only added to the travel and scheduling challenges.

A quick comparison of the randomly chosen 1969-70 and 2017-18 NBA schedules  reveals the following:

• The 1969-70 regular season began October 17, 1969 and ended March 22, 1970 (156 days).
• The 2017-18 season began October 17, 2017 and will end April 11, 2018 (176 days).
• Decades ago, teams routinely played three games in three nights, especially on West Coast trips. With the 2017-18 schedule, the league has gone though great pains to eliminate the number of games on back-to-back nights.

The Old School Schedule Maker With A Mean Streak

• The 1969-70 Knicks had a four-games-in-four-nights stretch, beginning with a Christmas Day game in New York and followed by a game in Los Angeles the very next evening. Merry Christmas. The final two games were in Vancouver and Phoenix.

Imagine having to chase Dave Bing around Madison Square Garden for a couple of hours,  then hopping a flight to Los Angeles right after the game, and on the very next night getting banged around by Wilt Chamberlain and trying to keep Jerry West under control knowing you still have games in other cities the next two nights.

• In March of 1970, the San Diego Rockets played in Houston (a neutral site game against Philadelphia), Chicago, Atlanta and Cincinnati (in that order) on four consecutive nights.
• In December of 1969, The Seattle SuperSonics endured a five-day, five game Eastern road trip that took them to New York, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Philadelphia on consecutive nights. In a cruel twist. the final game went to overtime, but they actually won the game.
• The 1969-70 Los Angeles Lakers played six games in seven nights TWICE, including a stretch that required travel to all six games with the last two on the East Coast.
• In March of 1970, the Chicago Bulls played on five consecutive nights, with the first two games at home followed by neutral site games in Madison, Wisconsin and Omaha, Nebraska before returning home for the fifth game. The game in Madison went to overtime.
• February 19-27, 1970 saw the Detroit Pistons play eight games in nine days, including four games on consecutive nights, a day off, then four more in a row. Although each of the games were played in the Central or Eastern time zones, there was travel involved for all eight. They won three of the eight games, giving up over 130 points in the last two. Think they might have been a little tired?

“YOU Try Guarding Jerry West on Two Hours Sleep, Coach.”

Several decades ago, without the benefit of the 3-point shot and with hand-checking rules on defense still in effect, there were many games where the two teams combined for between 230 and 250 points. During the 1969-70 season, for example, the average NBA team scored 116.7 points per night compared to 105.6 in 2016-17.  In those days, with the challenges involved just to get to games combined with the tightness of the schedule, it’s understandable if the defensive intensity was lacking.

Tough Times, Tough Guys

Jerry West once talked about having to play a Saturday night game in Cincinnati, then having to board a train for a Sunday afternoon game in Chicago.

Al Attles once talked about having to share a bus with a playoff opponent.

Tom Heinsohn once talked about having to hitchhike a ride to a game in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Many of us have rolled our eyes when the elders talk about the hard times they’ve had to endure, but these guys had it rough, and they were tough. And they certainly didn’t make the kind of money being tossed around now.

On a recent trip to New York City, the Cleveland Cavaliers recently took the subway to their hotel from their morning shootaround at Madison Square Garden to beat traffic, and it was considered newsworthy, but there will come a time when that, too, will be considered a hard knocks story.

Just not yet.