According to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the NBA will likely extend the All-Star break to a full week in 2014-2015.
Miami Heat beat writer Ira Winderman was first to report the news.
The NBA is poised to turn the All-Star break into All-Star week this coming season, the Sun Sentinel has learned, providing teams with a full week off at midseason.
The move, which would give players seven days off between games in mid-February, would result in an increase of one or two back-to-back sets per team for the coming season, a party familiar with the process said.
“That’s the model they’re using right now while they’re filling in the schedule,” an NBA source familiar with the process told the Sun Sentinel Friday. “Could they go back and use some of those dates if needed? That’s possible. But the week off looks like what’s going to happen.”
Citing a conversation he had with LeBron James, commissioner Adam Silver told ESPN last February that a longer All-Star break was something the league would consider in the future.
“One of the issues LeBron raised is a break during All-Star [Weekend],” Silver said during a radio interview with ESPN. “[For] a guy like LeBron, All-Star Weekend is not a break for him in any way. He’s going around the clock with a combination of things the league is asking him to do, personal commitments, and I think it makes sense if we can work in the schedule a few days so the All-Stars can get a break as well.”
The All-Star break has never been a helpful rest period to superstars like James, and the Portland Trailblazers’ Damian Lillard made history in New Orleans last year by competing in events on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
While basketball junkies will surely suffer without meaningful games on the docket for a full week under this new proposal, the level of play during the doldrums of late February and March would surely improve as a result. The 82-game regular season is a notorious grind; a week-long All-Star break would certainly help make it more physically and mentally tolerable for the league’s players, and that should take precedent over anything else.
Do you like the idea of a week-long All-Star break?
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