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Reducing Travelling Costs and Player Fatigue in the National Basketball Association

Author

Listed:
  • James C. Bean

    (Department of Operations Research, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305)

  • John R. Birge

    (Department of Operations Research, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305)

Abstract

The costs of the current National Basketball Association (NBA) schedule have had deleterious effects on the financial position of the league. The 22 teams travel an unnecessary number of airline miles, resulting in increased fatigue for the players and dollar losses to the owners. We have considered several optimization methods to lower the total number of passenger miles the league travels. We have succeeded in developing efficient schedules, by a combination of these techniques, for the 1978--1979 and 1979--1980 seasons. These schedules satisfy the league's constraints and would have led to savings of $757,000 or 20.4% over the NBA's current schedule. The NBA is considering our proposal to schedule the 1980--1981 and 1981--1982 seasons.

Suggested Citation

  • James C. Bean & John R. Birge, 1980. "Reducing Travelling Costs and Player Fatigue in the National Basketball Association," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 10(3), pages 98-102, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:10:y:1980:i:3:p:98-102
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.10.3.98
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. John E. Mitchell, 2003. "Realignment in the National Football League: Did they do it right?," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(7), pages 683-701, October.
    2. Schonberger, J. & Mattfeld, D. C. & Kopfer, H., 2004. "Memetic Algorithm timetabling for non-commercial sport leagues," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 153(1), pages 102-116, February.
    3. Yiannis Nikolaidis, 2015. "Building a basketball game strategy through statistical analysis of data," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 227(1), pages 137-159, April.
    4. B. Madhu Rao & Petros Xanthopoulos & Qipeng Phil Zheng, 2020. "Case Article—DeLand Crayon Company: An Application of the Traveling Salesman Problem to Production Scheduling with Sequence-Dependent Setup Times," INFORMS Transactions on Education, INFORMS, vol. 20(2), pages 93-98, January.
    5. Bartsch, Thomas & Kröger, Stefan, 1996. "Ein Entscheidungs-Unterstützungs-System zur Erstellung von Spielplänen für die Fußballbundesliga," Manuskripte aus den Instituten für Betriebswirtschaftslehre der Universität Kiel 427, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre.
    6. Guillermo Durán & Mario Guajardo & Jaime Miranda & Denis Sauré & Sebastián Souyris & Andres Weintraub & Rodrigo Wolf, 2007. "Scheduling the Chilean Soccer League by Integer Programming," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 37(6), pages 539-552, December.
    7. Bartsch, Thomas & Drexl, Andreas & Kröger, Stefan, 2002. "Schedulung European soccer leagues: Models, methods, and applications," Manuskripte aus den Instituten für Betriebswirtschaftslehre der Universität Kiel 557, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre.
    8. Guillermo Durán, 2021. "Sports scheduling and other topics in sports analytics: a survey with special reference to Latin America," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 29(1), pages 125-155, April.
    9. Durán, Guillermo & Durán, Santiago & Marenco, Javier & Mascialino, Federico & Rey, Pablo A., 2019. "Scheduling Argentina’s professional basketball leagues: A variation on the Travelling Tournament Problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 275(3), pages 1126-1138.
    10. Matthew J. Drake & Serhan Duran & Paul M. Griffin & Julie L. Swann, 2008. "Optimal timing of switches between product sales for sports and entertainment tickets," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(1), pages 59-75, February.
    11. Saltzman, Robert M. & Bradford, Richard M., 1996. "Optimal realignments of the teams in the National Football League," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 93(3), pages 469-475, September.
    12. Urban, Timothy L. & Russell, Robert A., 2003. "Scheduling sports competitions on multiple venues," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 148(2), pages 302-311, July.
    13. A Ghoniem & H D Sherali, 2010. "Models and algorithms for the scheduling of a doubles tennis training tournament," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 61(5), pages 723-731, May.
    14. David Van Bulck & Dries Goossens, 2022. "Optimizing rest times and differences in games played: an iterative two-phase approach," Journal of Scheduling, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 261-271, June.
    15. Rasmussen, Rasmus V. & Trick, Michael A., 2008. "Round robin scheduling - a survey," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 188(3), pages 617-636, August.
    16. G Kendall, 2008. "Scheduling English football fixtures over holiday periods," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 59(6), pages 743-755, June.
    17. Alireza Tajbakhsh & Kourosh Eshghi & Azam Shamsi, 2012. "A hybrid PSO-SA algorithm for the travelling tournament problem," European Journal of Industrial Engineering, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 6(1), pages 2-25.
    18. Kent J. Kostuk & Keith A. Willoughby, 2012. "A Decision Support System for Scheduling the Canadian Football League," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 42(3), pages 286-295, June.
    19. Xiajie Yi & Dries Goossens, 2023. "Strategies for dealing with uncertainty in time-relaxed sports timetabling," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 320(1), pages 473-492, January.
    20. George L. Nemhauser & Michael A. Trick, 1998. "Scheduling A Major College Basketball Conference," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 46(1), pages 1-8, February.

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    Keywords

    games/group decisions: teams;

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