In the National Basketball Association, there’s a term for it: a schedule loss. It usually comes on the second night of back-to-back games, when your team is on the road – when the obstacles outside the lines surmount the ones within them. It’s when you see the strange results that dot teams’ 82-game seasons. It’s when the schedule conspires against you.
Whether the Portland Timbers’ Wednesday night draw at the San Jose Earthquakes should be considered a “schedule draw,” it would be unfair to ignore the obvious. The team only had two days at home after Sunday’s game in Los Angeles; poor air quality meant the field at the team’s training facility were unusable; and a second trip to San Jose, on Saturday, meant players’ minutes had to be monitored.