Why a shorter regular season is key to the future of the NBA
For someone who's new to the sport, understanding the NBA format can be quite exhausting. The NBA regular season lasts for almost six months spanning from October to April. Even though a total of 1230 games are played, more than 50% of the teams still make it to the postseason!
Add to this the endless travel to other parts of the country on a weekly basis, practice sessions, and press conferences - it's easy to wonder if teams really need to play 82 games every year before entering the playoffs. Well, you're not alone.
The argument to reduce the number of games and have a shorter NBA regular season has been around for a few years.
The 82-game format has been around since 1967. Though this comes with its own set of pros and cons, the negatives seem to have far outweighed the positives in the recent past. Even if it's not evident at first sight, the super-long NBA regular season might be plaguing the game in more than one way.
Fatigue and injuries
Who won the NBA Championship in 2019? It was the Toronto Raptors, but was it just because Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson were injured? Who were the champions in 2018? The Warriors, of course. But hey, if Chris Paul wasn't injured, would they have made it past the Houston Rockets?
We can go on and on about how significant injuries have hindered teams from getting the fair share of credit that they deserve. Irrespective of who wins, there is always an asterisk at the end of the champions' name due to injuries. While there is a myriad of reasons for a player to get injured, there's no denying that fatigue plays a huge role in it.
Players spend more time in the air traveling during the NBA regular season than any other major sport. With 41 away games, a player has to deal with travel and jet lag along with the physical challenges they face on the court.
Having played close to 100 games, it's no surprise that the gruesome nature of the game makes players more injury-prone towards the end of the NBA regular season.
Tanking and load management
With the rise in the number of injuries, teams have adopted different strategies to protect their star players. While it's commonplace to rest their key players towards the end of the NBA regular season, a new trend infamously known as 'load management' took this to the next level.
Kawhi Leonard was rested for 20 games due to 'load management' during the 2018-19 season. The Raptors later went on to win the chip and Kawhi was named Finals MVP. This paved way for more teams to focus solely on the end result (i.e. winning a Championship) and rest their superstars whenever they can, to 'save' their energy for when it really matters - the playoffs.
This comes off as a huge bummer for fans who pay hefty amounts to watch their favorite stars play.
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While championship contenders resort to 'load management' to get through 82 games, it's a completely different story for the teams on the other side of the table. When teams realize they don't have a realistic chance of making the playoffs, they resort to 'tanking' in the hope of getting the best draft pick in the next year's draft. While a shorter NBA regular season might not put an end to teams tanking, it'll spare the fans the pain of watching a team intentionally trying to lose 82 games.
Though the league is actively working to curb 'tanking' and 'load management', there are always loopholes that teams exploit to work around it. A shorter NBA regular season might just be the answer to ameliorate these issues.
In fact, the possibility of a shorter season became more real than ever when Adam Silver took over as the commissioner of the NBA. The success of the 2020 Orlando bubble so far has boosted the case for a shorter NBA regular season even further.
The 2020 Orlando bubble
Call it recency bias, but the 2020 Orlando bubble has been host to a few of the most thrilling matches in a long time. With multiple teams fighting with all their might for the 8th spot and the top teams trying to secure a higher seed, there was playoff-like intensity in every single game.
Though the teams played around ten fewer games, you could make an argument that it was more exciting than previous years. And thanks to the mid-season break and fewer games, most players are going into playoffs with more energy left in their tanks.
The 2020 bubble just showed the world that a shorter season works. With fewer games than before, it kept the fans on the edge of their seats and helped reduce the number of "meaningless" games.
The downside of a shorter NBA regular season
Reducing the number of games from 82 comes with its own set of challenges, the biggest of which is salary cuts for players and management. At the end of the day, the NBA is a business and players earn their salary for each game they play. Fewer games would mean fewer tickets sold, lesser revenue from ads, and broadcasting. This will definitely hurt the tier-2 and non-superstar players in the long run.
But Adam Silver and the team are already looking at ways to overcome the salary issues and maintain TV ratings. A mid-season play-in tournament and 40-minute games are some of the solutions that are being looked at. Fewer games could also mean each game is more important and raises the anticipation among fans, and hence TV ratings.
Star current and former players like LeBron James and Dirk Nowitzki have already called for a shorter NBA regular season, and coaches like Gregg Popovich and Steve Kerr have followed suit.
All in all, the impediments caused by a shorter NBA regular season seem trivial as compared to the benefits we'd get from it. If the league works out the details soon and implements it in the near future, fans can soon be talking about how great the champions played to win the finals, instead of how lucky they were because someone else was injured.
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