Steve Kerr says NBA doesn’t ‘care about rest or player health’
from Sai Mohan, with YardBarker.com/www.yardbarker.com
The “no rest for the weary” expression is appropriate when describing the life of NBA teams.
After enduring a 111-107 road loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday, the Golden State Warriors have only a few hours to prepare for the Rockets on Thursday in their last game before the All-Star break. Ordinarily, a back-to-back slate against Texas-based franchises is the norm, but Warriors head coach Steve Kerr believes the NBA’s scheduling is cruel to his team.
“It’s a tough back-to-back,” Kerr told reporters, via The Athletic’s Anthony Slater. “That’s what makes this loss even more frustrating is that, we get into Houston at 3 o’clock or whatever it is because the NBA, in its infinite wisdom, makes us play an 8:45 game. They clearly don’t care about rest or player health. It’s just ratings and all that stuff, so I get it. Everyone has got to do it. The whole league has got to do it. It is what it is. We gotta strap it up and get ready for tomorrow.”
On the surface, Kerr’s comments come across as whiny but he makes a fair point. The Warriors-Rockets game is slotted for a 8 pm ET start — nearly two hours earlier than Wednesday’s tip-off against the Mavericks. The game in Dallas was slotted for a late start as it was part of ESPN’s doubleheader following the Celtics versus Spurs contest.
As Kerr alluded, the Warriors will have only a few hours to check into their hotel in Houston, travel to the Toyota Center, warm up in a shootaround and then face one of the best teams in the conference. Surely, that sounds like a ruthless schedule.
It’s also fair to suggest that Kerr wasn’t in the best of moods on Wednesday. His criticism of the NBA’s scheduling came after he was nearly ejected for arguing with a referee about a missed foul call.
The one silver lining for the Warriors is they return home for at least a week on Friday, with the NBA All-Star weekend scheduled in San Francisco. The Warriors won’t go back on the road until the Feb. 21 contest against the Kings.