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Nikola Vucevic: 'It's much more fun' to not have to play a day after Thanksgiving

kelly dwyer
Nikola Vucevic powers through. (Getty Images)
Nikola Vucevic powers through. (Getty Images)

Thanksgiving was on Thursday. Extended and unrelenting movement, ideally, should not be for the Friday following.

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The NBA, apparently, doesn’t want to hear that. After a night off on the holiday, the league scheduled fifteen games for its teams on Friday. And, because you’re good at math, you’ve already realized that each of the league’s 30 teams will be working on the day after Thanksgiving. Including the San Antonio Spurs and Boston Celtics, who will be up for a matinee game in Boston just a few hours after final bit of gravy was consumed.

The stock needed to make that gravy took more time to break down and congeal than the Spurs and Celtics have had to recover from their collective Thanksgiving intake. Mindful of this, the Orlando Sentinel’s Josh Robbins talked to some Magic players about their dreaded post-Thanksgiving jaunt up the court, scheduled for Friday evening against the typically Thanksgiving-listless Washington Wizards:

Robbins talked with center Nikola Vucevic about his plans:

Vucevic pledged he would eat no more than two plates of food. His rationale: The Magic will have a shootaround Friday morning and a game Friday night.

Even professional athletes worry about the consequences of eating too much food over the holidays.

“You have to watch that,” Vucevic said, a hint of disappointment in his voice. “If you overeat, you’re gonna feel all slow tomorrow, especially with turkey and all that bad food that you can eat for Thanksgiving. Yeah, you’ve got to be careful. The last few years, we did have a game right after Thanksgiving. I wish we didn’t. It’s much more fun when you don’t have a game the next day.”

Again: EVERYONE HAS A GAME. Thanks, 82 games inside five and a half months.

The Spurs and Celtics provide a trickier setup. In a lot of ways, the Friday matinee game could act as an NBA Finals preview. One of just two pairings between the squads this season, Dec. 14’s matchup between the two will be rightfully telecast by ESPN as a showcase, nationally televised game.

C’s coach Brad Stevens, for one, is already a little frightened about what’s rolling in to Boston:

… and his pre-holiday policy came off like a weighted shrug of the shoulders:

“I’m excited to be home for a day, finally,” Stevens told reporters on Wednesday. “And I don’t know what’s on the menu. I look forward to spending a little bit of time. That’ll probably made a little less enjoyable knowing what’s coming on Friday afternoon. From a coaching standpoint, right? You have to prepare for one of the best teams in the NBA, for a 1 o’clock game.

Stevens added, “You eat and then you work.”

There is a solid chance, in June, we’ll have to consider the ramifications of a post-Thanksgiving, matinee game as we look at two games’ worth of stats created by these two teams when they worked against each other. That is to say, we shouldn’t consider it.

A Magic/Wizards tilt, featuring two out of the current Eastern Conference playoff bracket, has less significance, but the action might be just as stilted. We’re just preparing the typical NBA fan for what they and their leftovers have in store on Friday night.

And Friday afternoon. The day after Thanksgiving. With jumping and running and all of that.

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!