Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, who has advocated in the past for shorter regular seasons, is beating that drum again this fall with soft tissue injuries on the rise around the NBA, writes Nick Friedell of ESPN. Kerr said he’s “very concerned” about the increase in injuries, pointing to an increased pace of play and a relentless schedule as two factors he believes are contributing to the trend.
“The pace difference is dramatic,” Kerr said after Tuesday’s game vs. Orlando. “This team tonight has really upped their pace compared to last year. I think across the league everybody understands now it’s just easier to score now if you can beat (the other team) down the floor, get out in transition. But when everybody’s doing that, the game’s are much faster paced, and everyone has to cover out to 25 feet because everyone can shoot threes.
“… We have all the data,” Kerr continued. “Players are running faster and further than ever before, so we’re trying to do the best we can to protect them, but basically have a game every other night and it’s not an easy thing to do … (The medical staff) believe that the wear and tear, the speed, the pace, the mileage, it’s all factoring into these injuries.”
Kerr said the NBA has done a commendable job of trying to reduce back-to-backs and instances of four games in five days, but points out that it has resulted in teams rarely getting more than one day off between games, which results in little recovery time and almost no opportunities for practices.
“We literally have not had a single practice on this road trip. Not one,” Kerr said after the fifth game of a six-game trip. “We’ve gone a week, or longer, eight days, not one practice. It’s just game, game, game. So not only is there no recovery time, there’s no practice time. What was different back in the day — you did have four in five nights, which was not great, but then you’d have four days before your next game. So you’d take a day off, and you’d actually have a couple good practices and scrimmage. So there’s no easy answer here.”
Kerr isn’t alone in believing that playing fewer regular season games would benefit the players — Knicks forward Josh Hart agreed with that sentiment on Thursday, as Stefan Bondy of The New York Post relays. However, both Kerr and Hart acknowledged that it would be very difficult to actually implement that change due to the loss of revenue that would occur..
“Do I think there’s too many games? Yeah,” Hart said. “Conversely, will (team owners) and the league and players take a pay cut to not do that? I don’t know. It’s easy to sit there and say that we play too many games — which we do — but conversely, we’re also blessed to be able to benefit greatly from it.”
Here are a few more odds and ends from around the NBA:
- In a pair of stories for The Athletic, Fred Katz takes a look at some of the NBA’s most improved players so far this season, while John Hollinger zeros in on several of the league’s breakout players. Heat forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Pistons center Jalen Duren show up on both lists, with Hollinger suggesting Duren appears to be on track for max or near-max money when he reaches restricted free agency next summer.
- Previewing the salary cap landscape for the 2026 offseason, Keith Smith of Spotrac projects that six teams will operate with cap room, led by the Wizards with over $80MM in space. We conducted a similar exercise earlier this month, noting that the Wizards, Jazz, Nets, and Bulls are best positioned to go under the cap, while several other teams – like the Lakers and Clippers – are in the “maybe” category depending on what happens with certain free agents and player options.
- A panel of ESPN’s NBA insiders takes an early look at potential trade-deadline needs for eight NBA teams hoping to contend this season, including the Pistons, Lakers, Warriors, Timberwolves, and Knicks. In the view of Bobby Marks, the Pistons are better positioned than any other Eastern Conference playoff team to make an in-season move, given their cap flexibility, movable contracts, and extra draft picks.
17 games in 30 days in 14 different cities shows the NBA schedule is horrible. Its not that hard with AI to come up with better schedules. So why does the NBA do such a bad jobs on schedules?
Oddly, it was Steve Kerr’s teams that originated the West Coast offense of run-and-gun and zero defense. Nothing’s changed, he currently uses the same system. Now he opposes the system that he helped create says all we need to know why Kerr’s lack of contract extension and removal from Team USA may have merit.. might be time to hop off Curry’s coattails and fade away.
You have the wrong coach that did run and gun with no defense. That was Nelson who did it. Kerr always been about defense. When they won they had good defense. look at Iggy who was a defense first player. Green a defense first player. Thompson a 2 way player. Nelson was the coach way before Kerr and run TMC.
Kerr blames injuries on the relentless schedule but then admits the schedule isn’t as relentless as it was when we had less injuries in the NBA.
There’s former players talking about this all over podcasts and they say injuries are up because modern players aren’t practicing as much as past eras. I’ve heard many mention how modern players all have their personal trainers who say they should condition less vs what team trainers used to push these players to do.
It’s a tough situation for teams because they don’t want to make players practice or run all the time but that conditioning prevents injuries during games.
Don’t forget Devi Avdija and Keyonte George for MIP and breakout players. Both are on teams nobody cares to remember or watch but they have been hooping since the start of the season. Very exciting to watch a NBA fan.
This is Ryan Rollins award to lose, he is the definition of an MIP
Deni was a top 10 pick btw
Devi is averaging 26/6/5. It doesn’t matter if he’s a top 10 pick, Coby was a top 10 pick and he finished 2nd for MIP a few years ago. It’s early, but there’s some nice seasons some guys are having that are being barely talked about.
No way you think Deni improved more than Ryan Rollins
Ja Morant was MIP, it is not because they got it wrong in the past that they should keep on getting it wrong
The Warriors schedule has been insane, there was a point they had played like 6 more games than Houston for example