The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly: An Early Season NBA Deep Dive.
Roughly one month into the 2023/24 NBA regular season there’s much to talk about regarding the constant state of change that has become the league’s status quo. For a league that prides itself on being at the forefront of professional sports innovation, whether via player empowerment, loads of spending on social, physical, and game analysis, or a PR department that believes changing jerseys and courts might not always be the answer, but they’re going to do it anyway, the league office can confidently look back on the first month of the season and come to a few conclusions.
Let’s start with the good.
1. The In-Season Tournament (IST) is a HOME RUN.
Most American sports fans aren’t privy to the idea of more than one competition within a professional sports league. Many European soccer fans (me) have likened the IST to League Cup games within European domestic soccer leagues. The FA Cup (England), Copa Del Rey (Spain), Coppa Italia (Italy), and the DFL (Germany) are amongst the most popular. There’s an element of competition and pride within these league tournaments that hold a nuanced meaning to teams and fanbases beyond simply winning the league.
For many developing teams and players, this is a real shot to measure their progress with something meaningful on the line against the best. Let’s translate this into NBA terms — do you think the Celtics or Nuggets are as invested in a regular season matchup vs a future lottery team as they are when they play each other? Of course not! This isn’t a shot at players effort-levels. If anything it’s a shot at team owners who’re too cheap to acknowledge that the season is far too long and filled with meaningless games to supplement the bills they foot on these mega-stadiums that are often empty, but I digress.
The NBA has seemingly managed to kill two birds with one stone with the implementation of the IST. On one end, the lethargy during the beginning/middle of the season is negated by implementing games with more meaning than a regular season W/L. The new, loud courts and strict game-scheduling format of Tuesdays/Fridays subliminally bring a formality to these games signaling the importance to both the fans and players.
Additionally, similar to the European Cup games, this brings a level of heated competition that would otherwise not exist. The single-game elimination and early timing of the tournament bring with them the idea that any dog could have its day. Whereas winning the NBA Finals is a game of elite talent, attrition, and luck, it’s not unfathomable that any ~ten teams could get hot and go on to win the IST. Increasing real competition volume is a clever way for the league to market ALL of the talent spread amongst even some of the league’s worst teams. The IST gives life to players and teams that are yet to reach their window, along with those who may’ve just passed theirs.
Developing teams get an intimate at their young players’ responsiveness to actual must-win games. Contenders get a sneak peek at what may or may not work in the playoffs. The league converts roughly 15% of regular season games into real entertainment. This is a massive win for the league, the players, the teams, and the fans. For all of the talk about Commissioner Adam Silver not being a “war-time General,” this was an absolute knock out of the park.
Onto the bad.
2. PLEASE STOP WITH ALL THE DAMN JERSEYS.
Far lower stakes and much more personal vendetta, but the one bad thing about the IST is the rollout of MORE TERRIBLE JERSEYS. After last year’s City Edition/strange rollouts, it was fair to think that maybe the NBA would take a good hard look in the mirror. It turns out they must be making some real money with the ability to sell more jerseys to the same population because there’s no other reason why they’d keep coming up with them otherwise. While I think the courts serve as an obvious indicator of a different competition, the jerseys serve to this effect far less and are often flat-out hideous.
Kevin O’Connor, on his and Chris Vernon’s Podcast “The Mismatch” posed the idea of teams wearing the original first year of their franchises’ jerseys. This is tasteful and brilliant because it would both celebrate the history of the league and how far it has come while also providing a further distinction between the normal regular season and IST games. Most NBA fans don’t own retro jerseys either, giving the league the same extra-sales outlet that must be the generating force behind these continuous rollouts.
In light of my disdain for said jerseys, here’s a list of the worst three (in order).
3. The Indiana Pacers [Not an Indianapolis AAU team].
2. Memphis Grizzlies [Must know Python/C++ to read].
- The Brooklyn Nets [Spagettio font + non-camo colored camo].
Onto the ugly…
3. The Officiating…
Yes, somehow the officiating has managed to be even uglier than the brutal IST City Edition jersey rollouts to the point where it’s officially warranted a discussion. Long-time official Eric Lewis unceremoniously stepped down following a social media investigation that never yielded any real dirt, while the NBA promoted two new refs, Intae Hwang and Sha’Rae Mitchell from the G League to supplement the loss. With a relative shift in the age of refs from old to young, has come with it an apparent show of bravado, in what appears to be an early aggressive stance hoping to set a tone that lets the players know they’re not to be messed with. It’s gone FAR too far.
Games are all over the place, there’s little to no consistency throughout any given game in how levels of physicality are managed. Refs are handing out Technical Fouls like they’re going out of style and it’s to the detriment of the flow and entertainment of the game.
None of the following situations should result in a Technical Foul; Staring down an opponent after a heated moment, waving an arm or hand at a ref after a disagreement, hanging on the rim after a dunk, a big reaction to a call at a pivotal moment in a game, slamming the ball down when it doesn’t hit someone else or go into the crowd.
Each of these “offenses” has resulted in multiple Technical Fouls this year and I don’t see how anyone could argue that this isn’t bad for the game. Players are regularly punished for expressing any sort of extreme emotion to the point where they feel like they need to calm themselves down after they do something great. The league is apparently so concerned with its marketability to young audiences that they’re willing to hurt the actual quality of the game to ensure their clean reputation remains unstained.
Conflict aversion is a smart practice but it has its limits. Injecting emotion into the game is basically good in a vacuum, so long as it doesn’t manifest itself in a ‘Malice at the Palace’ type of way. Beef is good. Smack talk is good. Slapping the floor when playing defense is good. Physicality is good! The league should look to the NHL, where players regularly bash each other’s heads in and proceed to shake hands after the game. Over-policing emotion has caused the refs to become the ultimate villain of any game, almost over the opponent.
It needs to stop.
