Big deal? Or not so much?

[Squishypoo [enjin:6648839]]

The Timberwolves will lead the league in one category in this upcoming season: Travel.



The NBA schedules were released Tuesday, and NBA stat fanatic Ed Kupfer has calculated how many miles each team will travel.

No. 1 on that list: The Timberwolves. According to Kupfer the Wolves - who will play one "home" game against San Antonio in Mexico City - will log well over 50,000 miles of travel. Second on the list is Portland, followed by Golden State, Phoenix and the Lakers.

Not surprisingly, the top five travel teams and eight of the top ten are all in the Western Conference teams.



Here is Kupfer's graph showing the travel for each team during the upcoming season:

[Squishypoo [enjin:6648839]]

https://twitter.com/EdKupfer/status/364901523689451521/photo/1

[khans2k5 [enjin:6608728]]

Flip brought in depth, so I'm not worried about the schedule even though it is just stupid that the league doesn't take into account that we were the most injured team in the league last year to lessen the blow by an easier travel schedule.

[worldK]

Not so much....

[Riverside_Viking [enjin:6662498]]

Can someone tell me why we are the home team in Mexico against a team from Texas.... Wtf lets give the spurs another home says the nba jeez....

[Monster]

They have led in this catagory for years and if you look at a map its pretty easy to see why. Is it a big deal? Probably not but the fact that the Wolves travel farther than any other team is a tiny factor to consider. Travel these days for NBA teams is pretty easy but we all know it takes a little out of you and the farther you have to go the more it does. Its something to consider but I wouldn't worry about it much.

[Leado01]

Yeah - we've always lead the league in travel and that was one of the factors the NBA was looking at about 5 years ago when there were rumors that they considered moving us to the Eastern Conference.

But monster is right that the travel is pretty easy these days - chartered buses and chartered planes. It's slightly different than Southwest or Spirit airlines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htFx58_ytWg

[petecorcoran [enjin:6658618]]

I don't think miles is the big factor... after all, 10,000 more miles in the air is only 20 more hours in the air over the season. You've got the same time to the airport, getting ready to fly, landing and from the airport to a hotel or home.

A bigger factor, I think, is number of back-to-back's in different cities and total number of flights.