After the release of the Cavs’ NBA Cup schedule, fans can now get a basic idea of how hard the upcoming season will be for the team. With or without load management, the NBA regular season is a long and arduous ordeal in itself, and it only becomes harder when you account for the number of back-to-backs in a team’s schedule. For the 2024-2025 season, the burden falls on the Cavaliers, who will have the most back-to-backs of all 30 teams in the association.
The Cavs will play 16 back to back games in their next season schedule, per a report from Brett Siegel on X, formerly Twitter. Besides the Cavs, other teams with 16 back to back games are the Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Clippers, Oklahoma City Thunder, the Sacramento Kings, and the Washington Wizards.
Why so many back to backs for the Cavs?
© Clare Grant/Courier Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK
Amid the NBA’s efforts to stop load management, it seems counterintuitive and counterproductive for the league to ignore the probable additive effects of back to backs to players’ fatigue levels and physical wear and tear. Fans might think that limiting back to back games would help curb load management by actually allowing players to rest and recover for longer, but the league remains stubborn.
Fewer back to back games wouldn’t also be as concerning to the NBA as a business compared to cutting down the number of games from 82, as some people have also suggested.
However, the NBA did commission a study that eventually found no link between load management and a decrease in player injury risk. At this point, it falls upon the Cavs’ medical staff to make sure Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, Jarrett Allen, and Evan Mobley remain in top shape throughout the regular season grind, especially if the Cavs want to advance past the second round of the playoffs.
Besides the back to backs, the Cavaliers still have to play in the NBA Cup, an in-season tournament designed to add some flavor to a long season that might get tedious in the middle. Last season, the Los Angeles Lakers won the inaugural tournament.
Still, fans have many reasons to be optimistic. The Cavs just signed Jarrett Allen to a three-year, $91 million max contract extension, while also signing Evan Mobley to a five-year, $224 million extension. Likewise, they’ve also locked in Donovan Mitchell to a three-year extension worth $150.3 million. With their contract situations settled, it’s up to the Cavaliers core to keep delivering postseason success to The Land.