With this in mind you would think they would forego giving 4in5 day trips to teams like Portland and Miami - who already have the highest flying mileage in the league. The league turns around and gives us three of them!
I helped schedule the CYO basketball season a few years ago and since then I will never criticize schedule makers again. That is a very difficult, thankless job and no matter what you do someone is going to get screwed. Just sucks that we are farther from every other nba city than anyone else. The biggest and easiest thing the NBA could do to alleviate some of these problems is swap Phoenix into the Northwest division (rename it mountain division or something) and Portland into the Pacific.
The W doesn't go to the team that shoots the best FG%. The W goes to the team that scores the most points.
Yes the team was tired but I'm struggling to understand why the Blazers are so much more tired than other teams. The Clippers have played 3 more games than the Blazers and have been with out CP3 for quite a while so if Portland is tired, they must be exhausted....yet they sit tied with Portland in wins. Yes Portland has to fly the most but 2nd on that list is the Miami Heat and they seem to have done OK the last couple of years. It's not like they are traveling coach on SouthWest. Private plane with sleeping arrangements, the best of food, trainers, treatment...not exactly a rough flight. So they are on the plane an extra hour on a trip back east or a trip home. That is not exactly cause for one team to be so much more exhausted than another. I'm not taking away the 'tired' aspect, just that every team goes through it and every team plays the same number of games. Portland just came off a nice rest against a Raptors team on the 2nd of a back-to-back and barely squeaked out a win. Not exactly back to playing like they were yet. I hope it gets there but there are come tweaks that need to be made. The bench putting up a grand total of 11 points on 3-9 shooting is one place that needs to be addressed in a big way. I can much more easily accept the starters having mental fatigue from having to carry the team every single night because they know they are going to have to pick up a big deficit from the bench almost every night.
To use an automotive metaphor, I think you're confusing mileage with gas level. All NBA teams have played about the same number of games and so have about the same mileage. Playing 8 games in 12 nights drained the gas tank and they needed to refuel.
Understandable....but it's not like other teams don't go through this as well or Portland would have played a lot more games than other teams. They haven't. I'm not denying the fatigue but just saying it isn't unique to the Blazers. Every team plays the same amount of games in the same amount of time. The Blazers just have to stay on their private jet a little bit longer on the first leg of their road trip and on the way home.
Jeez, I'm not saying that the schedule is an excuse over an entire season, I'm saying that 8 games in 12 nights explains a couple of losses and some crappy play at the end of that particular section of the season. The Blazers have had a few days off and that compressed section of the schedule can't be used as an excuse or explanation going forward.
