ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 As the rise in soft tissue injuries continues to become a troubling trend for the NBA, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr says he\u2019s \u201cvery concerned\u201d about the issue for the league moving forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s dramatic,\u201d Kerr said prior to Tuesday\u2019s game against the Orlando Magic. \u201cThe pace difference is dramatic. This team tonight has really upped their pace compared to last year. I think across the league everybody understands now it\u2019s just easier to score now if you can beat (the other team) down the floor, get out in transition. But when everybody\u2019s doing that, the game\u2019s are much faster paced, and everyone has to cover out to 25 feet because everyone can shoot 3s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerr said the Warriors\u2019 medical staff has continued to show him all the numbers that back up the trend. Over the last few days star players Giannis Antetokounmpo, Victor Wembanyama and several other players have been sidelined for prolonged stretches because of various soft tissue injuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have all the data,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cPlayers are running faster and further than ever before, so we\u2019re trying to do the best we can to protect them, but basically have a game every other night and it\u2019s not an easy thing to do \u2026 (The medical staff) believe that the wear and tear, the speed, the pace, the mileage, it\u2019s all factoring into these injuries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerr has been outspoken about his belief that the NBA should cut down the number of games in the regular season. He said he has personally brought up cutting down the number of games in meetings with the league but doesn\u2019t expect it to happen because of the revenue that would be lost.<\/p>\n
\u201cI bring it up,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cI bring it up a lot. And I just think if we\u2019re actually focused on the product, it would be great. We literally have not had a single practice on this road trip. Not one. We\u2019ve gone a week, or longer, eight days, not one practice. It\u2019s just game, game, game. So not only is there no recovery time, there\u2019s no practice time. What was different back in the day \u2014 you did have four in five nights, which was not great, but then you\u2019d have four days before your next game. So you\u2019d take a day off, and you\u2019d actually have a couple good practices and scrimmage. So there\u2019s no easy answer here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerr said the league \u201chas done a great job of trying to protect players by not overloading the schedule with four in five nights,\u201d but he\u2019s noted several times during the year that now it feels like teams play basically every other night. He estimated that the Warriors have had \u201cmaybe three or four\u201d actual practices since the regular season began in late October. The Warriors have started off with a brutal schedule to begin the year, one that Kerr has tried not to use as an excuse for his team\u2019s up and down start, but is hard to ignore given the sheer volume of games.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Wednesday) night will be our 17th game in 29 days,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cThirteen cities. So between rest time and travel, there\u2019s very little opening for a practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerr was asked if he felt there was a specific number of games that would work for the league if it ever did decide to reduce the number in the season. He didn\u2019t have an exact number, but he did have an idea of what he felt would work.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything has to be based on a formula that involves two conferences and how many games you\u2019re playing against other teams and all that, but 72, 75, somewhere in there, would make a dramatic difference for the players,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cI think the revenue is so high and I don\u2019t think it would affect the national TV money because you\u2019d still get all the national games. It would affect home game gate receipts, local TV, so for sure there would be some revenue lost. But I can\u2019t really prove that the product would be better if we had 10 fewer games, but I would bet on it. Sorry, I can\u2019t say that. I would guess that that would be the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerr laughed as he said the last part, but the league has an issue with these injuries that is bad for the product. When asked if he felt he had some support for his belief in taking games out of the schedule, Kerr offered a realistic response: He doesn\u2019t believe the number of games will change, but that won\u2019t stop him from trying.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tricky part is all the constituents would have to agree to take less revenue,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cAnd 2025 in America, good luck in any industry. Imagine some big company saying, \u2018You know what? We\u2019re not as concerned about our stock price. We\u2019re actually concerned with employing people and giving people a stable job and making our product better.\u2019 Come on, that\u2019s not happening. We know that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 As the rise in soft tissue injuries continues to become a troubling trend for the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":388841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3140,1260,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-388840","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-golden-state-warriors","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115573787481530973","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}