For the annual all-star weekend, the NBA usually shuts down from Thursday to Tuesday. For guys who aren’t all-stars, that’s enough time for them to rest up and recharge their batteries. But for the guys who make the game perennially, there’s zero down time for them. The actual game aside, they are busy with all of the things the league asks them do.
Well, they’ve spoken and the NBA has listened. The NBA All-Star break has been extended to a week. Great for players, but probably not so for fans. Good decision, nonetheless.
The move, which would give players seven days off between games in mid-February, would result in an increase of one or two back-to-back sets per team for the coming season, a party familiar with the process said.
“That’s the model they’re using right now while they’re filling in the schedule,” an NBA source familiar with the process told the Sun Sentinel Friday. “Could they go back and use some of those dates if needed? That’s possible. But the week off looks like what’s going to happen.”
The release of the 2014-15 NBA schedule has been pushed back into August to allow the league’s television partners to adjust for the dramatic shakeup created by free agency, including the shift of LeBron James from the Miami Heat to Cleveland Cavaliers.
With the elongated All-Star break, the possibility of then starting the 2015-16 season a week earlier also has been deliberated recently, although that dynamic has yet to gain traction, according to an NBA source familiar with the situation, with such a move potentially requiring an adjustment in the collective-bargaining agreement.
“And then,” the NBA source said, “we’d have to look at dates already committed to on the [2015] preseason schedule.”
H/T: Sun-Sentinel
