Study Reveals NBA’s Hardest Working Teams: 2023 Edition

Gambling.com calculated which NBA teams worked the hardest during the NBA regular season – by measuring their average distance covered per 48-minute game.

The Dallas Mavericks were the 2nd least hard-working or ‘laziest’ team in the NBA – covering only 3.453 miles per game.

The San Antonio Spurs were the hardest-working NBA team last season.

The Indiana Pacers covered the 2nd most ground, while the Sacramento Kings are in 3rd – the highest-ranked team to actually make the playoffs.

Of the Top 10 teams that covered the most distance/worked hardest, only 3 made the playoffs – showing that it takes more than just perspiration to advance to the business end of the NBA.

Basketball as a sport involves a lot of high-intensity sprints and requires a certain level of aerobic endurance from its athletes – particularly at the highest level. But which NBA teams cover the most distance on average in their games?

Gambling.com worked this out using statistics from the official NBA website to crown the division’s hardest-working teams.

After looking at the numbers, the data team at Gambling.com can reveal that the San Antonio Spurs are the NBA’s hardest-working team. The Texas-based side covered an average of 3.742 miles per 48-minute game over the regular season. Twenty-one different players were also used by the Spurs in this year’s competition, the joint highest across the league.

The Indiana Pacers are the 2nd hardest-working team in the NBA. The Pacers ran a mile every 12 min 56 seconds, which works out at 3.710 miles per game. The Indianapolis-based team utilized 18 different players over the 2022/2023 regular season.

In 3rd place are the Sacramento Kings, who made it to the 1st round of the Western Conference playoffs (where they were eliminated by the Golden State Warriors).

At the other end of the spectrum, the NBA champions, the Denver Nuggets, were the least hard-working/laziest team in the NBA regular season. The Coloradan outfit only covered an average of 3.431 miles per game, or a mile every 13 min 59 sec, suggesting that their march to the NBA title was an effortless one. Meanwhile, the defeated finalists, the Boston Celtics, were the 24th hardest working (or 7th laziest) team in the study.

The Dallas Mavericks and LA Clippers were the 2nd and 3rd laziest teams when it came to distance covered, with both sides taking 13 min 54 seconds to cover a mile on average. At the same time, the Philadelphia 76ers and Houston Rockets were joint 4th in the inverted rankings.

Methodology

Gambling.com calculated which NBA teams were the hardest working during the regular season by measuring the average distance each team traveled per 48-minute game. They used the official NBA website to find the minutes played and distance covered (miles) of all players – before calculating totals for each team.

The average distance each NBA team covers per game was calculated by measuring how long it takes them to cover a mile and dividing this into 48 (how many minutes in a game). All teams were ranked from most to least distance covered, with all data collected and corrected on 09/05/2023.

Photo: NBA Analysis Network