Reducing Travelling Costs and Player Fatigue in the National Basketball Association

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.