Mar 24, 2015; Auburn Hills, MI, USA; NBA referee Curtis Blair (74) tells Detroit Pistons head coach Stan Van Gundy to calm down during the fourth quarter against the Toronto Raptors at The Palace of Auburn Hills. Pistons beat the Raptors 108-104. Mandatory Credit: Raj Mehta-USA TODAY Sports

Stan Van Gundy on the NBA’s uneven number of back-to-backs, via Keith Langlois of Pistons.com:

“It’s something the league needs to address, but I’ve got no control over it,” Stan Van Gundy said last week. “As a coach, you play ’em, but that’s a major schedule imbalance.”

“I think the Board of Governors is who needs to bring that up and we’ll address that in the off-season,” Van Gundy said. “But there should be an equity in scheduling. Scheduling should not be to anyone’s advantage or disadvantage.”

“To me, what we’re doing on back to backs, where we’ve got, between the teams that play the most and the teams that play the least, a six- or seven-game disparity, we would never tolerate that in terms of home or away. If you looked at the schedule and you said, they’ve got 45 home games and hey, they’ve only got 37 (road games), everybody would go crazy. But on the back to backs, we don’t say anything.

The Pistons are tied for the NBA lead with 22 back-to-backs. Their opponents are on back-to-backs just 14 times, tied for sixth-fewest in the league. That eight-game difference is tied for second-largest.

Van Gundy is correct that the imbalance is unfair, but the league is actively looking to fix it.

The NBA is proposing shortening the preseason and beginning the regular season earlier. Mark Cuban additionally wants to go the other way, extending the season into July. A longer season would allow more rest between games. Van Gundy can affect change by encouraging Tom Gores to vote for those changes.

However, a frequent Van Gundy complaint – that only top teams play Thursdays – might not be going away. For one, TNT pays for those exclusive windows, and the league might prefer that money to a balanced schedule. Relatedly, bigger markets get more Thursday games. The league might prefer bigger markets have an advantage, helping them into the playoffs, where they can generate more revenue than a smaller market would.

So, saying it’s unfair is not enough. The NBA must also determine how fair it wants the schedule to be.