If it were up to me, I'd make the season longer and make them play basketball until football starts I hate baseball and those couple months where there's nothing going on except baseball are boring as hell
If teams can just play like San Antonio, this would not be a problem. But unfortunately for the rest of the NBA, including the Rockets, you can't just arbitrarily tell someone like Dwight or Harden to take a night off. If only we could play in the East.
Start off by cutting the 1st round of playoffs back to a best of five series. It's just a couple of games, but the current format just makes the playoffs linger for too long. Keep the 82 game schedule,just start a little earlier. October 1st would make for a good time to start. That extra month would eliminate back to backs. Another idea would be to cut down the amount of playoff teams. Have the teams with the best records in each conference have automatic seeding into the 2nd round. I know the 1 vs 8 series sometime has upsets, but usually they are boring as hell.
This is a wondeful idea! Would rep if I could. 10 fewer games would only benefit players' health and that amount of games wouldn't deprive fans too much of our beloved sport. I also think that the first round of the playoffs should be a best-of-5 to prevent fatigue in later rounds.
The 82 games are fine, just no more back-to-backs or 4 in 5. Start summer camp half of September, then start the season from half October until May (1,5 months extra) and have the playoffs from the beginning May until end of June (maybe first week of July). The champs will still have about 10 weeks off, that's more than enough.
They shouldn't shorten the season but they should eliminate back to backs. Space the season out like a soccer season with minimum 2 days rest between games. The season would be longer but injuries would be reduced
Play each team in your division 4 times. (16) Each team in your conference twice. (20) Each team in opposing conference once. (alternate home court each year) (15) 51 games. No more b2bs. More meaningful games, and players careers get extended. Git r dun P.S. If the number is too low, then double the number of cross-conference games to 30. 66 game season. This would also lend itself to the idea of the "open seeding" playoff format, as conference affiliation wouldn't be as meaningful.
http://www.nbastuffer.com/component/option,com_glossary/Itemid,0/catid,44/func,view/term,How%20the%20NBA%20Schedule%20is%20Made/ the current scheduling format has 4 out-of-division conference opponents being played 3 times a season. A 5 year rotation determines which teams you play only 3 times a season. I'm not sure how they decide who gets the home advantage currently, but my guess is they take the court availability, arena/other scheduling conflicts, TV broadcasts. I guess my idea would be to just randomly pick who gets the 2H games in year one, then alternate back and forth between the two teams.
I don't get why this keeps coming up in the NBA but never in baseball. The baseball season is a joke. As a fan, I cant fathom why any of you would ever want a shorter season. It's ridiculous.
I love watching NBA basketball in general, no matter what. But I don't enjoy watching games that don't mean anything; pre-season, games w/ zero playoff implications at the end of the season, etc. Having a shorter season puts a greater meaning to each game for both playoff berths and playoff positioning. Less back to backs will put a better quality product on the court w/ fresher legs. That'll lead to hopefully a better product at the end of the season going into the playoffs, which is when the excitement is at the highest. Comparing the NBA and NFL isn't exactly fair, but that's what makes the NFL so riveting every week. Yes, there are bad matchups here and there, but there are only 1 or 2 of those games a week, with it maybe going up a bit in the tail end of the season.
Sounds awesome. Last year in 60 games, Indiana would have been the champs, and the Rockets would have been eliminated with 3 weeks left in the season.
The Spurs have adapted by resting their stars throughout the season. Games without Duncan and Manu are still entertaining to fans of the sport. Teams can adapt, the league shouldn't have to. As a fan I absolutely do not want less games. That's crazy to me. From a business perspective, I'm sure there's some sort of perfect ratio of numbers of games per week versus time to hype up games. But unlike the NFL you wouldn't have 90% of the games on 1 day of the week. You cant build hype the same way. Having a guys legs fresher... seems like a good idea. I guess. But what's the tangible value behind it? The quality of the game improves? But what's the monetary value behind that marginal amount of improvement? Does a casual fan even recognize the slight difference between Dirk with 2 days rest versus 4 on the court? Not sure it converts to more money... and as a fan I would never ask for less games.
http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/11709451/michael-jordan-disagrees-talk-shortening-season-games MJ with just pure unadulterated greatness. :grin: MJ: I mean, if you were as good as me and actually loved basketball, you wouldn't think 82 games was a big deal.
Baseball was long but there didn't used to be playoffs. They added dozens of games and never removed any.
Not as entertaining as they could be. Putting the onus on the teams to adapt, when the NBA fines teams for resting stars is kind of backwards. The league needs to adapt as well. When your product is listed as the 5th most favorite sport in polls in America, you need to make some changes. Funny, I see both sides of the argument, and neither is crazy to me. One just makes more sense in terms of the long-term success of the game, sport, and league. Of course not, but you can (and should) try. You answered your own question. Better basketball makes for better viewing. Pretty simple stuff. Then there's the whole scarcity of product thing. A lot of compelling reasons why over-saturation is a bad thing. This was why no one thought the NFL would ever surpass the MLB.
When do fans get a say in this? How about we settle the dispute over what channel our local sports team plays on first? I would be a much more devoted Rockets fan if I could actually watch the game on TV vs trying to watch the games through crappy online streams and attempting to go to a bar or whatever. If you're going to change anything, it would beneficial for both conferences to have an overall layout, combining both EAST/WEST. Instead of having terrible East teams sneaking into the playoffs we should have better West teams in the playoffs. Would make the match ups much more enjoyable to watch. Injuries are going to happen, its just a matter of when they do and how they take care of their bodies afterwards. By playing less games, it will in turn only increase the ticket prices..
