Just two weeks into the 2026–27 NBA campaign, a familiar and alarming narrative has taken over the league. Star players are dropping like flies as a wave of early-season injuries sidelined marquee names like Anthony Edwards, Tyrese Haliburton, Chet Holmgren, and Ja Morant. And we’re not even talking about freak accidents like what happened with Jalen Williams. While several sports media professionals are urging Adam Silver to do something, Bill Simmons unloaded on the NBA commissioner for not showing urgency about the players’ wellbeing.

While most were focused on Simmons calling Luka Doncic “insufferable” during a recent episode of his podcast, he actually dove into a major burning point: The 82-game regular season schedule. Pointing directly at Commissioner Adam Silver and NBA ownership, Simmons didn’t mince words about the current scheduling model and stubborn adherence to an 82-game calendar.

The discussion on the podcast didn’t happen in a vacuum. Earlier in the episode, Simmons and co-host Kirk Goldsberry examined the grueling physical endurance required in the modern NBA, both by the young players like Cooper Flagg and veterans like Paul George. That physical reality set the stage for Simmons’ fiery critique of league leadership.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve talked about this on the pod, about the schedule, and about how this to me is like just inexcusable and semi-reprehensible,” Simmons declared. “That whoever is in charge of the league, which I think is Adam Silver these days, that he doesn’t care.”

Simmons highlighted the massive financial windfalls pouring into team accounts, such as incoming expansion fees from Las Vegas (projected at a minimum of $9.5 billion) and potential additions in Seattle or Mexico City, noting that these billions go directly to owners without being shared with players.

“So all these owners are getting, I don’t know, 16 billion in expansion fees that they don’t have to share with players… And yet everyone’s like, ‘Well, we can’t lose games. We lose too much money. We lose revenue,'” Simmons argued. “At some point, you have to look at this holistically and be like, alright, well you’re adding these five home games for everybody, but you’re ruining your players, and you’re making your sport worse, and you’re hurting careers, and you’re shortening careers.”

He proceeded to repeat a popular suggestion he’s made before. “And this should be a 70-game season. And if you talk to literally everybody who plays basketball, all of them would say the season needs to be shorter. If you don’t do it at this point, I just think it’s negligent. I really do. I think it’s like actual negligence and greed.“

Kirk Goldsberry, chiming in from a business and sports-science perspective, noted that the league functions fundamentally as a media company leasing out human bodies that are actively breaking down under the strain.

“Your media products is… the enshittification, to use the parlance of today, has set in in part because of this stubborn reliance on 82 games,” Goldsberry said. “Anybody with any kind of link to a team or sports science would say this is too many. This is negligence, as you say, to try to get away with this; the data is screaming.”

While Goldsberry floated the idea of shorter, 40-minute games, Simmons pushed back, maintaining that the primary culprit is the sheer volume of games rather than the length of individual contests.

Simmons and Goldsberry’s frustrations reflect a broader anxiety spreading across the basketball world. As Tyler Parker detailed in The Ringer, injuries have quickly become the “main character” of the 2026–27 season, overshadowing rookie phenoms and early-season matchups.

Within the first two weeks of play, a staggering list of star talent has landed on the injury report:

• Anthony Edwards (Timberwolves) sidelined for up to two months following an arthroscopic knee procedure.
• Tyrese Haliburton (Pacers) missing time with a left hamstring strain.
• Jalen Williams (Thunder) ruled out for the foreseeable future with a dislocated ankle and fractured fibula.
• Chet Holmgren (Thunder) underwent treatment for a patellar tendon tear and now will miss 8-10 weeks, according to team and ESPN reports.
• Ja Morant (Trail Blazers) suffered a Grade 2 strain in his left hamstring while playing against his former team, the Grizzlies.
• Kawhi Leonard (Raptors) just finished treatment on his injured knee.

As of Haliburton’s update last week, analysts estimated that over 90 players across the league are on the injury list. Teams like the Indiana Pacers are already suffering extreme roster strain. Their latest update listed three players as questionable and four as out for Wednesday’s game against the Memphis Grizzlies.

Even the active symbol of career longevity and the oldest veteran in the league, Philadelphia 76ers star LeBron James, recently said that it’s the shortening of the preseason that is leaving players poorly conditioned for the sudden velocity of regular-season games.

“If you just think that they were just kind of running at 50 or 60% during their practice rounds, and then the Olympics happen… now the gun goes off, and they’re taking off full speed, I feel like there’s going to be some potential injury that happens,” James explained on Mind the Game.

As ticket prices climb and fans pay a premium to watch top-tier competition, the gap between the product promised and the product delivered on the floor is widening. For Simmons, Goldsberry, and frustrated observers everywhere, Adam Silver and the league’s governors need to rethink the length of the season and prioritize player health over revenue.