So there was a league conspiracy against the Hawks

[HawkItus]

Face it: NBA schedule can never be totally fair

2011-12 Season | Comments

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The Spurs' annual 'rodeo' had them on the road for nine straight games before the All-Star break last season. (Dennis Wierzbicki/US PRESSWIRE)

The NBA schedule is a mind-boggling thing to construct and something that will never be fair to every team. Each team plays 10 of its intra-conference foes (including all four divisional mates) four times apiece, but plays the other four teams in its conference just three times each. The identity of those four teams changes each season based on a set rotation, but this could in theory give a very small advantage to one team over another in a close playoff race.

Most fans don’t even realize that, and the rest don’t really care. But fans do care about the number of back-to-backs their team plays, with conspiracy theorists looking for evidence of bias in every corner of the schedule. The Lakers played a league-low 15 back-to-backs last season (the league average was about 20). Conspiracy! The league favors its darlings in Los Angeles!

To truly assess the fairness of a team’s schedule, you have to look deeper than the raw number of back-to-backs and factor in other variables. That sounds burdensome, but NBAStuffer.com has done all the work for you. The site tracks back-to-backs, stretches of three games in four nights, the dreaded four-in-five-nights endurance tests, how many times a team plays after three or more days off and how many of those games at the second end of a back-to-back come on the road. It’s all there, in an easily sortable format.

Even better: The site tracks the same data for each of a team’s opponents, and this is where you can see that a lot of the alleged conspiracies don’t hold up. Sure, the Lakers played the fewest back-to-backs in the league last season – eight fewer than Chicago, Atlanta and Milwaukee, each of whom played a league-high 23 of those suckers. But the league punished the Lakers — and rewarded the Bucks and Bulls — in other ways. The Lakers, for instance, played 14 of their 15 second-night back-to-back games on the road, an unusually high number. And those unlucky Bulls and Bucks? They each faced 26 tired opponents playing on the second end of a back-to-back, the third-highest number in the league, behind only Charlotte and Cleveland. The Lakers faced just 10 such teams, the lowest number in the league.

Atlanta appears to have gotten no such scheduling luck, but perhaps the league evened things out for the Hawks in ways that are less easily tracked, such as giving them a higher-than-usual percentage of back-to-backs against teams expected to be pretty bad,or making sure they face teams on the second end of a back-to-back.

Or take the Spurs, who seemed to have received a favorable schedule last season — just 18 back-to-backs, an above-average number of games (21) against teams on the second end of a back-to-back and only one stretch of four games in five nights. But the Spurs always have their brutal rodeo road trip (nine games last season), and if dig a bit deeper into their schedule you’ll find 14 of their 18 back-to-backs came on the road — and against a pretty strong slate. The Spurs were also one of just five teams (along with the Lakers) who didn’t get a single chance to beat on a patsy playing its fourth game in five nights.

The point is, with all the complexities that must be factored into the schedule, is never going to be fair, and a larger number of back-to-backs is probably a disadvantage in the long haul, especially for older teams. (It should be said, though, that the Spurs, Lakers and Mavericks put up three of the league’s five best records last season in the second games of back-to-backs. The Celtics, another graybeard team, struggled to post an 8-11 mark in such games.) The most detailed studies I’ve found indicate that teams win, on average, just 43 percent of second-enders, so having fewer is probably better if all else is equal.

There’s a reason the league ditches back-to-backs in the postseason. They want everyone playing their best, and that doesn’t happen when a team has played the night before. It’s fair to ask whether the league should shorten the season by 10 to 20 games to either cut its overall length or give teams more rest.

[Trueblood]

I will say this. With an extra 41 open dates due to having no NHL team, future Hawk schedules should be more favorable.

[Randy]

I recall at some point last year Bob and Nique were bragging about how well the Hawks played on the second night of back to back games, so maybe it didn't hurt that much.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

2011 - 12 Hawks schedule at a glance

Back to backs: 20

4 games in 5 nights: 3

Longest stretch of consecutive home games: 4 games

Longest stretch of home games in a month: 7 out of 9 ( Dec 14 - Dec 30 )

Longest stretch of consecutive road games: 6

Longest stretch of road games in a month: 10 out of 13 ( March 2 - March 26 )

Toughest month ( in my opinion ): November . . . 9 of the 13 games that month are against 2011 playoff teams, which includes the world champion Mavericks, and the top 4 teams in the East ( Miami, Chicago, Boston, Orlando )

[Trueblood]

The schedule definitely doesn't favor the Hawks this year but I wouldn't go so far as to say that there's a conspiracy. It's going to happen. It's impossible for the league to even it out for everyone. With so many dates being locked due to other events going on, some teams just don't get the luck of the draw.

Now, if this starts happening on a yearly basis then I may start questioning things but not until then. I'll give the schedule makers the benefit of the doubt.