We have all seen that the new commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver, isn’t afraid of change. A few weeks ago he wanted a change in the playoff system. Now he wants to alter the regular season.
The regular season is already a grind. Each NBA team competes in 82 games, playing every other day or every day from the end of October to the beginning of April. That’s almost seven months if a team doesn’t make the playoffs. A team making the playoffs might play until June. The only rest a team really receives during the season is the NBA All-Star Break. This year it was about ten days for most teams.
Adam Silver desires to shorten the NBA preseason, which is only eight games. He wishes to add more regular season games in place of the preseason contests and eliminate back-to-back games. Silver has talked about adding more games on Thursday nights and all day Sunday. The Sunday games would have to wait until the end of football season because they wouldn’t achieve high ratings.
The idea of fewer preseason games makes sense. In many games they use athletes who most likely are going to go down to the NBA Development League. It’s just to showcase how far that competitor has come. The starters and the superstars don’t really play much. They may be given a few minutes each game.
82 games in a season are already too many. It’s a long season and adding back-to-back games makes it even more difficult. These teams play one game and need to travel and be ready for another game. That’s tough. It makes the product inferior because some teams will rest their starters.
The NBA should cut down on the number of games. A 76 game schedule would be better but 70 would be perfect. Eliminating the back –to-back games would be the best case for the NBA. Fans pay big ticket prices to watch superstars.
The NBA does a great job of televising a few games during the week on national television. This helps them receive exposure. For higher television ratings they could televise more games on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday when football season is over. Families could watch their favorite NBA team during the weekend. It would help the younger generation get into basketball.
How would these changes help the NBA produce a better product? What other ideas do you have?
Season tickets holders would be helped if the games could be scheduled so you went the same nights or afternoons each week.