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There is no denying how grueling an 82-game NBA season can be for players, both physically and mentally. The challenges range from constant wear and tear on their bodies to rigorous travel schedules and the adjustment to different time zones. Not to mention dealing with the constant media scrutiny and public opinion.
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While players remain at the center of all the action, one cannot overlook how the 82-game schedule also takes a toll on a team’s coaching, medical and other operational staff. And the introduction of the NBA Cup and Play-In tournament in recent years has only added to it.
Though there have been discussions about shortening the season, it remains a distant possibility, given the financial implications, even more so now with talks of adding two new teams. Additionally, those working behind the scenes to map out this 82-game schedule are also not immune to mental strain and fatigue.
Providing further insight into this was NBA Executive Vice President and head of Basketball Strategy & Growth, Evan Wasch, who shared some interesting analogies as well.
“You can think of it as effectively the world’s largest math problem. We had someone run the numbers once… There are more possible combinations of an NBA schedule, meaning how to place the 1,230 games across the roughly 180 nights over the course of the season, than there are atoms in the universe. And it’s a sort of mind-blowing statement that proves out mathematically true,” stated Wasch.
The NBA executive also highlighted the challenges of striking a balance among player health, density, back-to-backs, network considerations, team business considerations and travel miles.
Partnering with a software company
From the looks of it, one could say that the human brain wasn’t enough for structuring the 82-game timetable, which is where technology, such as artificial intelligence, comes in handy. Elaborating on this, Wasch discussed partnering with the software company Fast Break and using constraint-based optimization.
The process involved writing a constraint for everything you do or do not wish to see in the schedule. The writing process is then followed by applying penalties to those constraints to provide the system with guidance based on the level of importance of each.
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“For example, avoiding back-to-backs is maybe more important than saving 10 miles of travel from City A to City B. And once you have that, you run it through the optimization and iterate through that,” explained the NBA head of strategy and growth, adding they ended up writing over 3,000 constraints every year.
Planning the national television schedule
Like most major sporting leagues around the world, the NBA has its important dates and events marked on the calendar, as well. These include “Opening Night, Opening Week, Christmas Day, MLK Day, Sunday Night Basketball, ABC, NBA Cup.”
According to Wasch, there are roughly 60 windows during the regular season when traction will be relatively high. To capitalize on it, the league takes into account the popular faces, teams, rivalries and storylines from both the past and the present.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver says he doesn’t see the benefit of shortening the number of games in the NBA’s regular season. pic.twitter.com/19doXz1jUO
— Michael Martin (@MichaelOnSports) June 5, 2025
When allocating these dates, those responsible need to ensure equitable distribution between popular and non-popular teams to support the league’s overall prosperity and growth. While this is a good problem to have, it comes with its share of pain and aches, too.
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This story was originally published August 26, 2026 at 2:32 PM.