Most would agree that the NFL has surpassed baseball as “America’s Pastime,” but where does that leave the NBA? In my latest column, I discuss several ways to improve the game and make it more accessible to the fans, starting with a shortened season and the elimination of guaranteed contracts.
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2 responses to “Six ways to improve the NBA”
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>1. Shorten the season.
Honestly, I just don’t think this is even possible. Going down to 60 games would mean taking a month and a half off of the schedule. This would mean either a) ending the season at the beginning of March, which would put the playoffs in direct competition with NCAA tournament (something that neither the NBA nor the NCAA wants) b) starting the season in mid-December (something basketball fans don’t want) or c) Starting around late November and ending around late March, which would still have the first round competing with the Final Four. None of these are really feasible. Nor is asking teams and arenas to host 11 less regular season games and losing all that income from attendence and advertising.
2. Implement college five-second rule.
I like this. No more LeBron holding the ball for 7-8 seconds at a time. This rule even seems more like an NBA rule than a college or high school rule.
3. No arena music during gameplay.
I don’t see how this affects gameplay, attendence, or viewership in any way. So I guess in that sense it wouldn’t hurt, but I don’t think it would help, either.
4. Reduce the number of timeouts.
I think if you compare the NBA to the college game, timeouts are roughly the same. In college, there are 4 tv timeouts per half, including any team timeouts. The NBA’s system is a little harder to figure out, but it seems that they don’t have any more than 2 scheduled TV timeouts per quarter, and when a team takes a timeout near a scheduled TV timeout it cancels that one out. It’s tough to keep track of how the system really works, but in general the pace of play is not much different than college.
5. No more guaranteed contracts.
I don’t know if it would work exactly like this, but anything resembling this type of change in contracts would be huge. Not only would it prevent players from having one great contract season and then being a bum for the next 4-5 years, but it would also prevent teams from being mired in mediocrity for years and years, or teams making dumb trades just trying to clear cap room.
6. Change the playoff system.
This is the exact same idea that Bill Simmons presented. Both articles were published the same day, so I don’t know who was first, but someone deserves credit here. Anyways, a straight 16-team tournament this season would have had Detroit playing Golden State and then the winner of Houston and LA Lakers, rather than Chicago and Cleveland both taking their turns at getting past Detroit. Can you imagine Jordan having to go through the bottom teams of the West back in his day? This system totally kills the rivalry aspect of the playoffs and I expect fans would turn on it relatively quickly. The playoffs are designed to crown a champion, not have the two most popular teams play.
Additionally, Detroit was one game away two years ago from giving us 3 straight champions from the East. Cleveland wasn’t ready for the Finals this season, but that doesn’t mean the East won’t compete for the title in the years to come. There are plenty of young stars in the East in Howard, Bosh, Arenas, Wade, LeBron, Deng, and Gordon. And don’t rule out possible moves to the East by Kobe, KG, or Shawn Marion.
CLV – thanks for your feedback.
1. Currently, the playoffs start in late April. They should move that up to the last week of March/first week of April, being careful not to schedule any games on the Saturday or Monday of the Final Four. The pro season would start in mid-November. It currently starts in late Oct/early November, so it wouldn’t be that big of a change from the start date. Certainly, the arenas would host fewer games, but the idea here is to make the league more popular (less of a drag), so if a shorter season works, then ratings should increase, as should advertising revenue.
3. High school and college ball doesn’t have any music playing during gameplay. Suddenly, in the NBA, fans need music during the game to be entertained? This doesn’t make any sense to me. If you watched the playoff games in Golden State, there wasn’t any music while the game was going on and the fans were totally into it. The more fans that can emulate those in Oakland, the better it will be for the league.
4. NBA games are eight minutes longer than college games and take a good 30 minutes to 45 minutes more to complete. This is due to the extra eight minutes and the quarter breaks (that the college game doesn’t have). If you reduce the number of available timeouts, then the game will have a better flow and will be more entertaining to watch. Runs will be longer, more exciting and will have more momentum. These are all good things in the realm of basketball.
5. Since the current system has been in place for so long, this would be a huge change and will probably never happen. But I didn’t limit my list to only feasible ideas. This would have a huge (mostly positive) impact on the league.
6. I write my column two to four days before it’s published but I’m a firm believer that two writers can each have the same idea independently. In fact, I read after the fact that Simmons got the idea from a previous column by another writer (that I wasn’t aware of until after the fact). The key is to consider what gave the three of us the same idea – the tedious Finals matchup between the Spurs and the Cavs. You’re right, it’s not about the two most popular teams meeting in the Finals, it’s about the two best teams meeting there, instead of in the second or third round of the Western Conference playoffs.
Re: rivalires…There were no real “rivalry” series in the West this year, and I’d argue that there aren’t any great rivalries in the East either. Who really wants to see another Cleveland/Detroit matchup? Seeding #1-#16 would give us more interesting matchups and allow the playoffs to build momentum towards the Final Four and the Finals themselves, when the two best teams would meet. Who knows, maybe we’d get some new rivalries by mixing things up. Anything that brings the NBA playoffs closer to March Madness is a very, very good thing.
Re: East vs. West…I plan to write a column about this, but the talent disparity in the two conferences is only getting bigger. Over a beer the other night, a friend and I did a rough count of the number of superstars under 30 in each conference and it turned out to be 13 to 6 in favor of the West. Throw two probable superstars in Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, and the difference only gets bigger. I agree that conference power runs in cycles, but this one is taking too long to correct itself. Besides, it doesn’t matter if it’s cyclical – when one conference dominates for a decade it makes for uninteresting Finals and that’s very bad for the NBA. Apparently, the ratings for this year’s Finals were the lowest in a long, long time. Had the Spurs/Suns met in the Finals, it would have been a completely different story.