The theoretically exhausted Washington Wizards will play their third game in three days when they host the Detroit Pistons at the Verizon Center tonight. If past practice is any indication of future performance — and it so rarely is in today's NBA — it could be a long game for the Pistons. Just ask the Utah Jazz.
Yesterday, the Jazz went into Atlanta, where the Hawks looked to wrap up their own back-to-back-to-back run. Atlanta had beaten the Nets by 9 on Friday, then exerted a lot of energy in overcoming a 16-point deficit in Washington on Saturday. In a league notorious for teams taking unscheduled nights off even in seasons not shortened by lockouts and the ensuing panic to recoup as much lost revenue as possible through overloaded dance cards, this figured to be a proverbial lay-up for the Jazz. Instead, they got 68 minutes of Hawk Hell.
Atlanta opened up a 17-point second quarter lead on the Jazz only to lose it all and then some, trailing by as many as 4 in the fourth quarter and 5 in the second overtime. But the Hawks never folded. In a game that featured 14 lead changes and 19 ties, Joe Johnson hit a trey with 7.5 seconds remaining in that second overtime to give his team a third chance. He then added 8 points in the fourth overtime, two coming on a 20-footer with 16.9 seconds remaining that put away Al Jefferson (28 points, 17 rebounds), Paul Millsap (25 points, 13 rebounds, 2 buzzer misses), and the Jazz.
It was the kind of team effort the NBA has not been known for in the post-Jordan era, and is a refreshing glimpse of the mental toughness that has been more the rule than the exception this season. Players have picked up the gauntlet thrown down by the NBA schedule-makers, responding to back-to-back-to-back games with a fury they lacked during the last lockout.
Today, B2B2Bs are a unique phenomenon of NBA labor unrest, a way of greedy owners sticking it to greedy players. But they were once a commonplace occurrence in the NBA. In fact, during the Association's first two decades, teams often played on four or more consecutive days. Hall-of-Famer Dolph Schayes did it 28 times in 14 seasons with the Syracuse Nationals. When the Nationals moved to Philadelphia in 1963, he retired in mid-season, but stayed on to coach the 76ers through an eight-games-in-eight-days stretch that March. The historic run of consecutive game days, believed to be the longest in NBA history, started in St. Louis, went east for "home" games in two Pennsylvania cities not named Philadelphia, then ended on the Left Coast. Eight cities, six road games, albeit only three wins. Of the 42 B2B2Bs this season, 22 are in only two cities and 20 span as many as three cities. Only 10 require three road games.
It should come as no surprise to hear Schayes telling FOX Sports last month that "three in a row was nothing" in his day. He's even called today's players babies who don't know what hardship is. What Schayes regards as "a piece of cake" has seemingly translated into far more of a burden by today's standards, to the point where they should become an effective deterrent to labor unrest to come.
Back-to-back-to-backs were reintroduced in 1999 season, when every team crammed 50 games into a 90-day regular season. So this year, when NBA VP Matt Winick and his cadre of schedulers had 124 days to accommodate 66 games for everyone, the players knew what was coming. Nevertheless, the topic remained a bone of contention in the preseason, and there's been belly-aching in every city leading up to the home team's three-game set. "You've talked about how tough the back-to-backs are," Miami Heat forward Mike Miller told The Sports Xchange during Miami's only three-in-three stretch in mid-February. "Now back-to-back-to-back is just going to make it that much tougher."
Despite the griping, teams have responded. In 1999, 64 B2B2Bs were played, with only 8 teams sweeping all three games. Of the 33 concluded in 2012 to date, there have already been 6 sweeps, including one by Miller's Heat. Not only did the Hawks do it yesterday, but the San Antonio Spurs did, as well. Through last night, teams playing for the third time in three nights are 18-15. Compare that to1999, when third-nighters went only 28-36.
Part of this improvement is that the NBA is a kinder, gentler — make that softer — league than it was 13 years ago. Only 42 B2B2Bs are scheduled this year. That's a third less than in 1999, despite similar demands on time. (Both lockout-shortened seasons required an average of 8 games scheduled per day, up from 7 during normal-length seasons.) Of the 30 teams today, only 12 have more than one back-to-back-to-back stretch, including the Hawks, who played their first in January. In 1999, 22 teams played two or more, with 13 even playing three. Consider the plight of the 1999 Milwaukee Bucks, who played three B2B2Bs in a three-week span between March 8 and 22. They went a respectable 5-4 in those games.
Another part of this year's success is the mail-in factor, which dilutes the competitive factor across the Association and gives the back-to-back-to-backers a much lower fence to hurdle. If you're not familiar with the mail-in factor, just look at San Antonio'a performance against New Orleans on Friday, or the Heat against the Thunder last night.
The Jazz, however, set their Compete Level to '10' yesterday, which makes the Hawks' accomplishment the most stunning and ideological of this entire season, if not of the post-Michael Jordan era. Who knew that something so good could be born of the over-saturated effects of players and owners rescuing every last dollar of revenue in a shortened season that started as a giant middle finger extended to fans?
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