lop 20 games off the schedule and do away with back to backs altogether. However since the NBA won’t ever do the smartest thing, increase the number of division games to reduce the number of games played outside a teams geographical area. Play 8 games vs division opponents and 2 games each against the rest of the league.

 and stretch the games out over a longer period of time.

they never should have split us from the pacific division with the last reallignment, but since Seattle was still Seattle, either both of us had to split from the Cali team, or one of them would have had to go to the SW or something, so at the time it made at least some sense, other than Minnesota.

with Sac moving to Anaheim, the time is due for another realignment. given that they don’t want to split up the texas teams, easiest thing is to shift us back to the pacific divison, move phoenix in with utah/den/okc/no, and have minny join texas and memphis

yet Calkins concludes with “maybe next year the Blazers will lobby for more.” Somebody needs to teach Calkins about percentages 11/20=0.550 < 43/74 = 0.581. Meaning yes the Blazers lose more on the second night of a back to back than total winning percentage indicates; and if one looks only at games not including the second night of a bcak to back, blazers are 32/50 = 0.640. So is Lma statement that the bcak to backs cost 5-6 wins correct? No at a 0.64 winning percentage, the Blazers should be expected to win 12.8 or 13 of the 20 games on the second noight of a back to back. Those two games do put us in the 6th place rather the 5th in the west however, so Lma point is true if not exaggerated. And lets not forget, other teams play back to backs too which somewhat mutes the disparity to maybe a one game difference between any two teams.