Not to panic yet. There is no time to scheme up and prepare for a young athletic team like the buzzsaw the Clippers ran into in New Orleans. According to Dan Woike in Sunday's Times, the Clippers have had only 7 practices all year. Two consecutive games in Dallas tonight and Wednesday will be a rare chance for some continuity in this bizarre COVID season.
Why the pandemic has virtually killed practices in the NBA
- The Clippers have held only seven formal practices this season, like so many other teams in the NBA, saving their best for later.
“We use the games as practice,” Brooklyn’s James Harden said before the All-Star game. “The most important thing is being ready once the postseason starts.”
While coaches would almost unanimously agree that practice is the best way to ensure that a team is at peak functionality come playoff time, there are too many other factors that organizations value. The goal is to make it to the end of the season healthy. Practices, especially the full-contact ones, might not be worth the injury risk.
There’s a cost. Some in the NBA point to the decrease in practice as a reason why games sometimes look so rocky, and to an extent look so individual. Defensive schemes that can become increasingly sophisticated in the postseason don’t get the same attention without frequent on-court team workouts in the regular season.
“We play every other day,” Bradley Beal said. “You have to ask yourself, ‘When do we have time to practice?’”
With schedules crunched even tighter because of the pandemic-compressed offseason and 72-game schedule, teams have been forced to re-evaluate how they handle their time.
Former coach Jeff Van Gundy has seen how practices have changed since he led the New York Knicks 25 years ago.
“More time spent on the floor, more time, with more contact, and more repetitions. And it was more competitive,” Van Gundy said of the old way to practice. “It wasn’t just five-on-zero. It was more drill work and more physical competition, you know? Yeah, I mean, it was just more. More would be the word. More often. Longer. More competitive.”
“It’s shifted big time from when I came into the league, practicing pretty much every day,” Paul George said. “… Now, I’m on a veteran team, a team that has a chance to win. We can’t have any injuries, any setbacks. It’s definitely a different league from the one I came in at.”
“I always felt good practicing because I felt I was conditioning my body and my mind during practices to go hard and put my body through a lot of stuff. So when it came to the game, it was easy. I always felt games were easier because we practiced so hard,” George said. “I would see every coverage, see everything unfold in practice so when it came into the game, I knew how to play through stuff and manipulate offenses and manipulate defenses. There are some pros and cons to it.
“It’s a fine line. I think teams should still have practices. But there’s a fine line of how much you want to practice throughout a year.”
https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2021-03-14/end-of-nba-practice-covid-19-pandemic
