Ways The NBA Can Make Its Season More Entertaining
Every year around this time, the NBA faces an issue of a dip in popularity. It’s the dog days of the season where we already know which teams will be contenders, star players sit out national TV games seeking refuge from the end of a grueling season, and teams outside of the playoffs start purposefully losing to improve their lottery odds.
Needless to say, this is not the best product. But year after year nothing changes because of tradition. “That’s the way we’ve always done it,” is the response when asked why the schedule isn’t shortened, why so many teams make the playoffs, and why the league hasn’t implemented rules to discourage tanking. I’m all for continuity, but when it’s the only reason to keep a flawed system, it’s time to reevaluate. Here are ideas, some my own, most from the minds of others, for how the NBA can fix its problems.
The Playoffs
There are so many ways to improve the NBA playoffs. The first and most logical answer is to remove conferences and create a Sweet Sixteen-type bracket, where each team is seeded 1–16 based on record (credit to Kirk Goldsberry with this idea). The top seed (which would be the Warriors this year) would play the 16 seed (the Heat), and so on. This would solve the issue of teams not making the postseason even though they had a better record than a playoff team from the other conference. It would also end complaints about teams in one conference having a much harder road to the Finals than the other conference. There’s literally no legitimate reason not to do this. When March Madness destroys the NBA’s ratings year after year, why not take a page out of its book?
The playoffs also drag on for so long, with one team having to win four seven-game series to win the championship. One answer is to go back to the old five-game first round series, but I have a more radical idea. The best playoff experiences are one-game formats; March Madness, the NFL playoffs, and baseball’s Wild Card round are all decided in one contest, making for higher drama and intensity. Anything can happen, making for more upsets and incredible moments like in March Madness. Creating a hybrid of the NFL and MLB playoffs, let’s cut the NBA playoffs down to 12 total teams, give the top four seeds a first round bye, and have the other eight play a one-game playoff to advance to the next round. That series will be decided in five games, and then the semi-final and finals can be seven-game series. Can you imagine, say, a Thunder-Rockets first round game? Westbrook vs. Harden, one contest to move on? How much fun would those games be? It would make the playoffs so much less predictable, and fewer teams means a higher level of basketball.
Also, what if the match-ups were decided by the highest seed? For example, under the conference structure, Golden State would get the first choice of who to play in the first round, then the Spurs, then the Rockets. Can you imagine the storylines, bulletin board material, and strategies? What if the Warriors picked Oklahoma City in the first round? How would Gregg Popovich go about his pick? Would the Celtics pick the Wizards out of spite? So much to think about.
Rest
Resting players has become a hot topic in the NBA community. Over a long, strenuous season, players will sometimes take games off, especially if they’re preparing for a playoff run. Fans buy tickets only to find their favorite player isn’t active and the NBA loses money on TV viewership for nationally televised games. But players deserve to have a say in what to do with their bodies.
I agree with the feeling Bill Simmons expressed in his latest mailbag — 76 games is the ideal length for an NBA season. It removes any four games in five nights scenario while coming close enough to the original 82 games for the league not to lose money. I also liked a reader’s idea from that column; if DNP-Rests were submitted before the season, fans would know when players were going to be absent and the NBA could know which games not to put on national television.
Tanking
Watching NBA teams try their best to lose isn’t fun. Yet the NBA continues to reward teams for tanking. Let’s fix that.
One idea proposed is Simmons’ “Entertaining As Hell” tournament in which the top 14 seeds are set, and the remaining teams play one-game playoffs to decide the final two slots. Whoever wins the final game gets the 15 seed. With a legitimate shot at the playoffs, it would be even more reprehensible to purposefully lose, especially in a nationally televised tournament. This tournament would give the top 14 teams time to rest before the playoffs, and the entertainment possibilities are endless. This would be our chance for Boogie and the Brow to make the playoffs this year!
How about this: if a team finishes with one of the league’s five worst records for three straight years, they get removed from the lottery for the next three. Or the team could be heavily fined or prevented from raising ticket prices. Hit the owner where it hurts: his pocket.
If Adam Silver comes up with different ideas from these, that’s fine, too. But it seems pretty clear that we’re not getting the best product as viewers, and that’s frustrating when the league has had so many years to fix these problems. If Silver wants to take advantage of football’s many crises and make the NBA the country’s most popular sport, he better do something soon.
