For many teams, the preseason is an opportunity for players to shake off the dust from off-season training, and for coaches to experiment with new, state-of-the-art line-ups that would even bring a smile to Gregg Popovich’s face. However, over the past few years many high-profile athletes such as LeBron James and Jason Kidd have come to criticize the value of preseason games in basketball, due to the length of the games players are often forced to participate in that would otherwise be deemed pointless.
The Carleton University Ravens men’s basketball team is about to become very familiar with this feeling over the next few months.
The Ravens are currently in the beginning stages of playing an unprecedented 19 preseason games in preparation for their first game on the road against Algoma University on Nov. 19. That date is not a typo. Not only is this an absolute head scratcher of a move, but it could also turn out to be more detrimental than beneficial to players during the second half of the season.
To open things up, starters are more prone to suffering an injury due to the lack of rest time between games. Over the next month, the Ravens will be playing two tournaments, and will play three games in three days on three separate occasions.
To put this into another perspective, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) usually schedules about one to two tournaments per team, which acts as a preseason in itself. Players in the National Basketball Association have even associated back-to-back night games as reasons for them developing symptoms of fatigue and ligament soreness. Furthermore, knee, ankle, and foot injuries have quietly become a larger issue in basketball, with many believing there should be a decrease in games to accommodate the health of players.
Carleton’s basketball team has won the last 12 out of 14 national championships, further elevating their status as one of the true sports dynasties in Canadian Interuniversity Sports history. One must question whether it’s a smart decision to try and change something that was never broken in the first place.
A longer preseason means players and coaches will be able to devote more time to fixing smaller issues in order for their team to be in “midseason form” when opening day shows up. In addition, many of the Ravens’ preseason games are against Division 1 and 2 teams competing in the NCAA such as Providence University, University of Massachusetts, and Colgate University, which can offer a great opportunity for Carleton to play against higher calibre programs than they face in the regular season.
However, anyone who has ever played competitively in high school or post-secondary knows that a season is more of a test of a player’s endurance and mental toughness than anything else. Sure, everybody is forced to play through bumps and bruises in order to keep themselves in the game, and a longer preseason does have some benefits. But is it truly worth all the punishment for a game that means absolutely nothing on the stat sheet?
