Before the Golden State Warriors take on a hellacious schedule, head coach Steve Kerr voiced his support on moving the start of the NBA regular season. The talk of making the Opening Week earlier than October 25 has heated up with the deadline for a new CBA ends in less than two weeks.
The proposed Opening Week for the 2017-18 NBA season is 10 days earlier than the usual date. The league would need to shorten the preseason schedule to accommodate the proposed changes. The preseason will be affected since the usual eight-game schedule will be reduced to five or six games.
"The preseason is too long. We don't need eight games. I think three weeks of camp or so, with four or five exhibition games is perfect. I'm assuming we'll spread the schedule out and cut back on a lot of the back-to-backs and four-in-five-nights, that stuff," Kerr told SFGate in an interview.
The Warriors have one of the highest numbers of back-to-back games this season with 17. They also have a set of four games in five nights which is during a five-game road trip in seven nights.
So far this season, the schedule and fatigue have not affected Golden State as they have the best record in the NBA at 18-3. Nevertheless, Steve Kerr made it clear that he is not against back-to-back games but he does not want several games put together in one week.
"I'm not actually totally opposed to back-to-backs. Five in seven, that's rough. That's tough. It's the accumulative effect of a group of games bunched together in a week, 10 days. Hopefully, that's what the league can kind of alleviate with this new schedule," Kerr said.
According to NBA.com, the Warriors start their road trip with games against the Los Angeles Clippers and Utah Jazz on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. After a one day break, they head out to Memphis and Minnesota before ending the trip in New Orleans on Tuesday.
