There are many voices around the NBA who think the league’s regular season is just too long.
With 82 games for each team, not counting the seven-game playoff series, it’s a common opinion that the regular season should be shortened.
Andre Iguodala, however, is not one of them. In fact, he thinks the NBA should continue to have 82-game regular seasons. He thinks that’s what separates the men from the boys in basketball.
“We will continue to play 82 games until 3005,” Iguodala said on the ‘Point Forward’ podcast. “There’s a mental side to it. That’s why we talk about a rookie wall. Records are made to be broken, and as we get better over time, we’ll break more records. But I think it’s there is a basis in all sports, you have to carry on this tradition… 82 games, I think you know that separates the men from the boys.”
It’s perhaps an ironic statement coming from an Iguodala who limped through the regular season, playing just 31 regular season games. But in 18 years of playing in the NBA, he knows firsthand what the regular season means for the league from a historical perspective.
“The bottom of our league is the bare minimum that the NBA player has lowered,” Iguodala said. “I think that has to change and part of that is the mental side. We’re getting younger and younger but we had grown men playing in the league. I mean John Stockton misses what 15 out of 20 games years.”
While rumors have swirled around the possibility of the NBA cutting games from its schedule – even taking the number of regular season games to as low as 78 games, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski – there is no no sign of change yet.
That should be music to the ears of Iguodala, who always wants to see who can pay the toll the regular season takes on the way to an NBA championship.
