Last week, John Hollinger wondered in an article for The Athletic whether the crunch of the early-season schedule, which has been tweaked in recent years to designate several days in December exclusively for NBA Cup knockout games, was having a material impact on teams and leading to an uptick in soft-tissue injuries.
Nine days after that story was published, the NBA has responded via its official communications account on Twitter, referring to Hollinger’s suggestion as “inaccurate and misleading.”
“John Hollinger’s premise that the NBA Cup has led to a denser schedule resulting in more player injuries is simply not supported by the data,” league spokesperson Mike Bass said in a statement. “Hollinger wonders if ‘the league turned the early-season travel dial a little too high’ and posits that teams are facing ‘an unnaturally heavy schedule cycle.’ The reality is the NBA played roughly the same number of games through 42 days this season (308) as last season (307).
“Further, those numbers are consistent with pre-Cup years (308 games in 2022 and 313 games in 2021). The Cup has objectively not led to a denser league-wide schedule in the early part of the season.
“Hollinger additionally claims the NBA is seeing an ‘uptick in early-season soft-tissue injuries’ and that ‘the league keeps getting worse at keeping those stars healthy.’ Through the season’s first six weeks, the number of injuries forcing star players to miss games is the lowest in the past six seasons, down more than 25 percent year-over-year. While several star players have not played this season due to injuries sustained last season, the suggestion that any increase in games missed this season is related to the schedule’s first six weeks is patently misleading.”
While the NBA accused Hollinger of a “misleading” narrative, it’s worth noting that the league’s own statement doesn’t address all aspects of his story. Hollinger also pointed out that several teams have been repeatedly forced to play one-game home stands before going back on the road due in part to the need to accommodate Cup matchups. A simple analysis of games played through a certain number of days doesn’t tell us anything about potentially heavier travel schedules.
Additionally, while the NBA said that the number of injuries affecting stars are down this season, the league didn’t specifically cite data regarding the sort of soft-tissue injuries (affecting the calf, hamstring, quad, etc.) that Hollinger was referring to.
Either way, it’s unusual to see the NBA use its official PR platform to publish a lengthy counter-point to a specific article that most of its fans likely didn’t read when it was published (“Big win for the Streisand Effect today,” Hollinger quipped on Bluesky). The NBA’s response suggests the league is sensitive to criticism regarding to the NBA Cup and the way in which the schedule has been adjusted to fit the in-season tournament.
The NBA cup is likely the single stupidest thing ever created by any sports league. No one cares and is nothing other than a money grab by the NBA to sell ads for Emirates.
It also limits their ability to schedule interesting games when there’s no other major sports on bc they’re focusing on cuck games
Agreed. It feels like a game mode on a video game and not something a league would actually do
They are also all dictatorships with horrible civil rights histories.
At least UAE doesn’t bonesaw journalists….that we know of.
I hate the bright NBA Cup floor decals. The whole thing is so stupid. We are supposed to get excited by the prospect of NBA Players getting prize money!? If there is one thing the league could adopt from the big soccer leagues it would not be their in-season tournaments, but RELEGATION and promotion. How many years will Utah be allowed to skate along the bottom while they “rebuild”? I realize that relegation/promotion will never happen but the NBA Cup should go the way of that whacked our improved ball they unveiled that nobody asked for or wanted.
A lot of the courts are obscene. They also never ever talk to the TV production people about it ahead of time, or they would know you can never get good digital image with a bright court behind the action. The picture quality on the neon type courts has been abysmal since the first season, and they just keep doing it.
Silver and his banking buddies do-not care about your objections—they wake up in suits and think about revenue, revenue, and making more revenue. Without any creative brain cells, they were forced to steal NHL’s all star format. If you have a problem.. go to the merch store and buy something.
I wont watch games on red or blue floors ever. I want a discount on my league pass since the NBA decided to make so many games unwatchable. Also its obvious how bad the product is with so many back to backs, I dont care what their statement says.
You want to do a cup do it at the start of the season to kick off the season. It mess up the schedule big time like what the warriors had to play to start the season. It also caused more injuries with players playing back to back games. Not a hard decision to make having the tournament start off the season. Now the schedule is not so bad with back to backs. Was that so hard to come up with abetter solution??
Wait 3 back to backs in the first 7 games isnt normal? For the team that has the most B2B every single season, because silver has to torture there sched to get his biggest draw on national TV all the time.
Half of GSW trouble is catching every team on one of there few national games when theyre trying to ball out super hard. It sucks still being the leagues measuring stick despite being an slightly above avg older team that the league actively screws over with sched and rest every single season. But we dont know why Curry runs out of gas and isnt able to get the deep playoff runs that really bring in the audiences. The league suuuuuuucccckkkkssssss…..
Correct the schedule is why the warriors got off on a .500 start. I do not remember so many teams having so many injuries at the start of the season. Silver only cares about ratings and why he puts the warriors on national TV so much to give them a terrible schedule.
Every season for years most national games, and most back to backs.
This is why the Warriors always get killed by some Grymes type balling out of his mind. They catch most teams in the regular year going with playoff intensity for the one game with GSW. Its one of the 3 times they actually get eyeballs on their players that season. Everyone plays harder than any other time when the Warriors come to town.
When the hell are you guys going to accept the schedule? Are we going to hear about this until the next schedule comes out?
Coming from a fan whose team had 1/2 the amount of back to back I understand why you don’t care.
They should honestly adopt the NFL’s strength of schedule formula for the beginning of the season (maybe the first month) for teams. Especially for National televised games.
Eliminate back to backs. Eliminate nba cup. Make the all star game back to just east vs west (the only way all star game gets better is if the players want to make it better and compete and I think this new generation will do that). Get rid of NBA summer league. Lengthen the season a little bit and make preseason longer.
Get rid of the all star game…and all star games in every sport. They are no longer relevant.
The NBA will always be about making wealthy owners more wealthy. Players need to cut back on games in the next CBA or strike. I can live with losing an NBA season if the next ones don’t have nearly every game with injuries to major stars. Watching OKC beat up on the B-squad of the Suns was not good basketball.
It’s a league where all you need to win is have a healthy squad.
That was embarrassing. Having your cup semi finals be a 50 pt laugher shows just how dumb the cup is.
OKC is just that good. Didn’t they win a playoff game by 50 last year?
The NBA Cup is a failure.
No way!
GSW played opening night and then 3 in 4 days to start the season. The NBA league people are dip****s. The early sch is sooooo stupid because of the cup. It should be in like JAN with way longer to get the matchups in organically.
I’m just waiting for a player to suffer a major injury in the meaningless championship game (which doesn’t count in the standings), maybe by slipping on a stupid colored floor. Until then, the silly NBA Cup is here to stay.
Not only are they mostly ugly, but 3 years in they cant figure out how to make them not slippy.
Kill the cup. Kill the cup. Kill the cup. Kill the cup…
The Cup sucks and is pointless. Stop scheduling B2Bs, period. Stop playing favorites with scheduling based off who lined your pockets the most.
Give this era of players an inch and they’ll take a mile. The shedule, the pace blah blah blah. Training or practice these days consisting of pedicures, walk throughs and or mostly recovery must be tough. A bump or tweak is two weeks out.
They’re richer and more athletic than you are. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!
The solution to schedule and travel woes is minimizing travel. There is no reason for, say, the Nuggets to go to Minnesota twice. Go once and play a back to back.
Do this league-wide. Never visit an arena twice; go once and play a back-to-back. That’ll be more than enough back-to-backs for the rest of the schedule to fall into place. No team will ever travel on a back-to-back, and no team will have a rest disadvantage. The total number of travel days per team will be minimized. The series aspect might even create a little extra playoff-like game-to-game strategizing.
Why not?
Now you’re talking sense. Minor league baseball adopted this travel schedule since COVID and it’s worked out.
I like the idea, but I’ll play devil’s advocate and argue that having both games between opponents back to back augments the impact of any injuries at that particular moment. For instance, say Jokic happens to be hurt during the week that Minnesota and Denver play a back to back. Then Jokic’s injury would affect both games, rather than just one, which can have a huge impact on tiebreakers
Fair objection. The only one I’d thought of was fans of visiting teams only getting one shot to see them but yours is a competitive issue.
It just shows the lack of talent in the NBA right now