One of NBA’s biggest problems on full display in Celtics’ loss to Nuggets

For all the talk about tanking, load management, salary-cap circumvention, and every other highly dramatic scandal plaguing the NBA, there are some much bigger problems that could easily be fixed, and would improve the league on a nightly basis. Adam Silver and the league love to show how much they care about player safety, but they refuse to address the lowest-hanging fruit there is: the ridiculous schedule.

If they truly want players and teams to start taking the regular season more seriously, they need to address the schedule. Playing back-to-backs and three games in four nights is just not tenable for a team, and to expect them to survive a stretch like that with all of your players going full bore is a little ridiculous.

This was fully evident on Wednesday night as ESPN had the Celtics’ trip to Ball Arena in the national spotlight, a standalone game for the entire world to watch. The Celtics and Nuggets are two of the best teams in the league; they are two of the last three title winners, and they only play each other twice a season.

This should have been a marquee event for the league, and instead, thanks to an insane stretch of schedule, the Cs had to play at the Lakers on Sunday, at the Suns on Tuesday, then at altitude in Denver on Wednesday night. The league obviously knew this – or should have – when they made the schedule, and yet, they did it anyway.

Boston fought hard, and the Nuggets deserve credit, but it was clear early on that the Celtics didn’t have their legs, and they predictably ran out of gas in the third quarter, spoiling what could have been an outstanding game for a national audience.

The NBA needs to fix the schedule

The night was ruined for the league, and they have nobody to blame but themselves. Shorten the season. Stretch it out. Curb some of the travel. I don’t know what the answer is (it’s definitely shortening the schedule), but there are a lot of much more highly-paid people than me whose jobs it is to figure this out.

Games like what we saw on Wednesday night have become far too common across the NBA, and this is one issue that is completely preventable. The league needs to get out of its own way and make a no-brainer decision. It will result in better, more competitive games and an overall, much more watchable and enjoyable regular season.

Instead of focusing on make-believe issues that might play on social media, how about focusing on the actual games, and making sure they deliver the viewing experience that fans deserve. Because sadly, this game turned into a joke, and unless these teams square off in the Finals, we’ll be robbed of seeing this great matchup this season (Jokic missed the first matchup in Boston with a knee injury).