Steve Kerr said the Golden State Warriors have had the “toughest early schedule I’ve ever been a part of in my entire NBA life.” He isn’t wrong about the first month of the season, which almost feels designed to torment a veteran team like the Dubs.
Wednesday night’s game against the Miami Heat will be Golden State’s fifth back-to-back of the 2025-26 season, in only 17 games. They’ll play 16 for the entire season, which still isn’t ideal, but at least the next 11 will be spread out over 65 games. Four of those back-to-backs have come on the road, with two of them on their current road trip, which features six games in nine days with over 3,000 miles of air travel.
That’s a tough schedule for any team, but especially one relying on four players on the wrong side of 35. Wednesday night is the Dubs’ 12th road game. They’ve had as many road trips — five — as home games.
Of course, retired NBA players have no sympathy for the tough travel schedule, since they had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to get to arenas in the 1980’s, eating bowls of cold gruel and washing their uniforms by beating them against rocks in icy rivers.
For the record, Kerr played in the NBA concurrently with Eddie Johnson for 11 seasons. It’s not clear whether Kerr or Johnson used to shower in their uniforms, like Charles Barkley.
Thankfully, the schedule eases up after this week. After Friday’s home matchup with the Portland Trail Blazers, the Warriors get the weekend off, and get to stay home for a while. On their five-game home stand, the Warriors play zero back-to-backs and get two days off after three of the games.
The question is why the NBA can’t arrange a less brutal schedule. Sure, schedule-making has a lot of complicating factors, like adjusting for national TV telecasts with three different broadcast partners and making sure certain nights are loaded up for in-season tournament games. There’s also commissioner Adam Silver’s deep-seated fear of the NFL, which keeps the Thursday night NBA schedule light until January.
But if shortening the 82-game schedule is, as it seems, off the table, then why can’t the NBA simply start the season earlier? Trust us, no one will miss a reduction in the number of preseason games. If that means that the NBA can’t play September exhibition games in Abu Dhabi, that’s a sacrifice that would only bother Silver and the House of Nahyan.
Golden State hits the road again Dec. 4. but won’t have another road trip of comparable difficulty this season until mid-March, when they’ll play six road games in nine days again, with the worst back-to-back featuring a plane ride from Detroit to Atlanta March 21 that you can go ahead and pencil in as a P.T.O. day for Draymond Green, Steph Curry, and Al Horford right now.
The one upside? The Warriors were probably too tired to go out in South Beach Tuesday night. They may be tired and they may be the victims of a taxing schedule, but the Dubs won’t be suffering from the “Miami Flu.”
