NBA teams don’t relish these threes

Heads will pound, legs will ache, losses will mount.

Playing three games in three days was supposed to triple the pain for NBA teams this season.

Wakeup, shoot-around, game, sleep. Rinse and repeat, except on the occasions when a charter flight is thrown into the mix.

By the time the third game in 72 hours rolls around, how much do teams really have left?

Quite a bit, actually.

The 12 teams that have completed back-to-back-to-back situations this season are 8-4 in the third games, an impressive .667 winning percentage. Yes, all eight victories came at home.

But consider this: The teams have gone 22-14 in all three games of the lockout-imposed madness.

In some cases, playing three games in three days has been a win-win-win proposition.

Oklahoma City and Chicago swept their back-to-back-to-backs, with the Bulls fittingly relying on third-string point guard John Lucas III to beat Washington, 78-64, in the Jan. 11 finale of their three-games-in-three-days stretch.

The backup to the injured Derrick Rose and C.J. Watson wasn’t bashful, hoisting 28 shots and scoring 25 points in his first career start.

“He didn’t leave any bullets in the gun,” Chicago Coach Tom Thibodeau said of Lucas.

Even with diminished firepower, the Clippers and Denver won the final games of their back-to-back-to-backs. The Clippers shrugged off a hamstring injury to point guard Chris Paul to beat Dallas, 91-89, on Chauncey Billups’ three-pointer with one second left, ending a 10-game losing streak against the Mavericks.

Denver had a 6-foot-11 hole in its lineup Jan. 2 with Nene sidelined by a heel injury but didn’t miss a step in a 91-86 victory over Milwaukee that capped a stretch of three games in three days. The Bucks had not played the previous two days and took much of the fourth quarter off, the Nuggets going on a 10-0 run to secure the victory.

“When you get to the third game,” Denver guard Danilo Gallinari said, “it is not easy for anyone.”

Particularly when you have played four overtimes in the previous two games. That was the predicament facing Atlanta, which had slogged through a triple-overtime loss to Miami and an overtime victory over Charlotte when the Hawks returned home to play Chicago on Jan. 7.

Atlanta somehow mustered energy from the start, building a 29-point lead and finishing with 16 steals and 27 fastbreak points while forcing 20 turnovers. Things were going so ridiculously well that Lakers castoff Vladimir Radmanovic made five three-pointers for the Hawks.

“We played in four overtimes,” Atlanta guard Joe Johnson said, “so three games felt like four or five.”

Houston didn’t just feel like it was in a fog going into its third game in three days when it played Atlanta on New Year’s Eve; the Rockets actually were, their flight back home to play the Hawks having been delayed by a heavy mist.

It didn’t matter as Houston raced to an early lead and held on for a 95-84 victory after Kyle Lowry sprinted to block Jeff Teague’s shot on what looked like an easy breakaway layup for the Hawks guard.

“They had a little more gas in the tank than I thought,” Rockets Coach Kevin McHale said of his players.

Of course, it’s a bit early to say the three-games-in-three-days beast has been tamed.

Every team must play at least one back-to-back-to-back set, and 12 — the Clippers, Atlanta, Denver, Detroit, Indiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Antonio and Washington — will play two sets. What might have felt like a 10K for NBA teams in January could become a wobbly-legged marathon by April.

For now, maybe the all-over-the-place Metta World Peace put it best when asked his thoughts on having played three games in three days.

“Whew,” the Lakers forward said as he sat in front of his locker on Dec. 27 following a victory over Utah, his legs resting in an ice bucket. “That was brutal.”

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