As far as the actual basketball game season goes, I could see something like the first 2-3 games showing what an impact MC has, then we skip ahead a bit to midseason for a key game, maybe a couple key games at the end of the season, then they make it to the playoffs, where of course every game matters. That'd be about a dozen games total. Which might still be too much. But continuing to do this day by day, steadily introducing new characters and developing a bunch of subplots...the dev is going to overwhelm himself at some point. I'd expect a time skip after the first couple weeks to a few days before the first game, at the very least.