While Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James is in favor of playing fewer games, the NBA's new TV deals would likely prevent the league from ever seriously considering it. Basketball Insiders' Steve Kyler believes the loss of income would be too great for the owners to justify shortening the number of games per season.
With the league testing out playing a 44-minute game Sunday, James made it clear: minutes aren't the problem, the number of games are.
"It's not the minutes, it's the games," James said Wednesday, via ESPN. "The minutes doesn't mean anything. We can play 50-minute games if we had to. It's just the games. We all as players think it's too many games. In our season, 82 games is a lot. But it's not the minutes. Taking away minutes from the game is not going to shorten the game at all.
"Once you go out and play on the floor, it don't matter if you play 22 minutes - like I may be playing tonight (against Indiana) - or you're playing 40 minutes. Once you play, it takes a toll on your body. So it's not lessening the minutes, I think it's the games."
Dallas Mavericks veteran Dirk Nowitzki made similar remarks on Wednesday, suggesting the league shorten the number of games from 82 to somewhere in the "mid-60s" in an effort to keep players healthy.
James said he knew the decrease in games would hurt revenues, but he stood firm on the idea that the players come first.
"We have to continue to promote the game, and if guys are being injured because there are so many games, we can't promote it at a high level," he said.
He also indicated it'd be a subject the players would discuss, likely in 2017 when they can opt out of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Kyler, though, doesn't believe fewer games would be something the owners would ever concede.
"The NBA just inked a new $24.4 billion broadcasting deal. That deal didn't include less games for broadcast, it included more," Kyler wrote Thursday. "... It's easy to say less games. The problem is less games means less tickets sold. Less events staged, less advertising. Less games to be sold to television and radio, so there would be less there too."
