Some NBA teams are going to have longer-than-usual road trips to certain cities this season.The league released the schedule for the first half of its truncated 72-game season on Friday.
The schedule includes something that hardly ever would have been the case in recent years — teams taking a trip someplace and playing two games there before moving on to another city or heading back home.It’s by design, with the NBA doing so to limit the amount of actual travel this season as teams look for any edge in the quest to stay healthy during the coronavirus pandemic.
Teams still play half of their games on the road, of course. But the mileage that teams save by playing twice in one place adds up quickly — examples included the Los Angeles Lakers.