The first leg of the nasty road schedule the Jazz face now through Christmas got me to wondering about how the NBA schedule actually gets made. With the help of Google and a few early morning hours to myself, I learned a fair bit about how this happens. And you get your history lesson for the day.

In the beginning, Henry Gottlieb (the guy who the ROY award is named for) was responsible for putting this all together. Of course there weren’t as many teams or games played back then, but it is pretty amazing to me that he apparently got it done with a bunch of legal pads and the sweat of his brow. For 30 years he was the man.

Reluctantly, he turned over his baby to Holly and Henry Stephenson in 1979, who took the schedule high tech. Having learned about computers at the San Jose Computer Fair, they won the job to generate the NBA schedule, which they continued to do through 1984. With no formal background in computer science, this couple also won the job creating the schedule for the MLB in 1982, which they continued to own through 2004.

Following the Stephensons, Matt Winick, as the NBA’s vice president of scheduling and game operations took over for almost 30 years. Nowadays Stu Jackson (the guy who took my Badgers to their first NCAA tournament berth and victory back in 1994!) has control of the reins. He has to get almost 2500 games scheduled for 30 teams.

The way this happens is that about a month before the end of the regular season, each team submits a list of at least 50 dates on which their home court with be available, plus 4 Mondays and 4 Thursdays (for TV planning). Then some complicated point system is used that assigns point values to the teams and each team has to come up with at least 50 points. More points are awarded if a team makes several consecutive dates available, instead of insisting on particular dates. I wonder how much the Jazz get penalized for the desire not to play on Sunday? This year they only have 3 Sunday games all season.

It might help explain the nasty road schedule they face starting last week and going through Christmas. In this stretch of 22 games, the Jazz have a whopping 16 away games, 3 of which are under their belt now, though losing 2 of them was not a great start. Contrast that with the road schedule that the other contenders in the West got. In that same time period, the Spurs have 8 road games, the Suns have 11, the Rockets have the next worst schedule with 12, and Dallas has 9. Our only real division competitor, Denver, lucks out with only 7 road games, less than half of what the Jazz face. Now that Denver sits atop the Northwest division, I sure with they didn’t have this additional advantage. Hopefully the road will be kinder to the Jazz in the next few weeks.