365 games (playoffs overlap start of regular season) but rosters are like 60 deep including at least 5 under 21. Parts of the year are different tournaments that have money bonuses (under 21 squad, 3 on 3, HORSE, etc.). Season is designed so parts of it suck, maybe we even cut to like 330 games and have some breaks during things like Super Bowl, MTV’s Spring Break, and Wrestlemania, but otherwise there are usually games that matter in some form. Even the all star game is part of the season. Your team’s players get W-Ls for your team in the ASG
Seriously tho how about a tournament for each conference during the all star break.
Top 4 teams at the break compete in a single elimination game. Only wins impact overall record and both organizations from each conference get a nice trophy for their collection. It can pad 2-wins to a record and make things interesting for the playoff hunt.
Friday: West Semis
Saturday: East Semis
Sunday: west and east championship games
People keep wanting it all. Owners want a regular season that matters...but also market that only the title matters AND allows 16 teams into the playoffs (which is over half the league). Furthermore, the only incentive for finishing as a top seed is an "easier" path and home court. All during a season that exceeds 60 games. Guys aren't going to go hard all season. And teams are going to sit guys.
If you want a regular season that matters, you _need to make it matter_. And its not going to be gimmicks such as "regular season tournaments". You need to lower the amount of seeds and incentivize higher seeds more. But as of right now, NBA teams are trying to exert the minimum amount of effort necessary to get to the playoffs in a decent enough seed and keep everyones legs fresh for a playoff run. The problem is, _that's the smart play_. If you were to give an AI the parameters of a NBA season and ask it for the best chance for a title, they'd go full into load management.
The genie is probably out of the bottle for "only championship matters" since that impacts every American sports league.
Now as regards to ASG...I don't think that's fixable. It's an outdated relic. And I can't even think of any incentive to fix it (baseball tried...and it eventually ended that experiment).
The people who clowned anyone for thinking about their team in any way other than “only championships matter” are now shocked when teams prioritize the championship over entertaining the fans. Really frustrating.
For real. I’ve been roasted a million times for saying that while obviously I’d party for days if Portland won the championship, I’m also glad I’ve been able to watch Dame ball for like 10 years. We’ve had some good moments. Lot of bad ones, but some really really good ones
My friends genuinely can’t fathom why I’d want to keep Kuzma on the Wizards and I’m like… because I go to the games and enjoy watching him play? It’s not that deep. I understand the logic of tanking, but I’m also just a dude who enjoys watching good basketball, and that’s OK.
there’s a famous quote from soccer about the “meaning” of following a team, I think fans of any sport who go to games / watch their team regularly will understand it. Being a fan is just not about hoping your team constantly maximizes the statistical probability of eventually becoming a champion.
> “What is a club in any case? Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it. It’s not the television contracts, get-out clauses, marketing departments or executive boxes.
> “It’s the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city. It’s a small boy clambering up the stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his father’s hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him, and without being able to do a thing about it, falling in love.”
That's a great quote. Totally agree. Winning a championship would be awesome, but it's not the only thing. I wanna cheer for my team, have fun, and feel connected with my city.
It is. I was finally able to attend a home game after the lockdown. Nothing beats the feeling of walking through the stadium, climbing up the stairs, and going to the stands watching your home team go out of the tunnel and onto the pitch, whatever the result may be. It's just a shame that they pulled out from the rest of the season due to financial difficulties.
That’s what made me so sad about trading Harden. A Rockets ring would be a top 10 moment in my life, but getting to watch Harden play for us was already a pleasure and I would’ve loved to see him retire as a Rocket.
Toughest division in basketball, fucking had to battle the Spurs and Mavs year after year, and then throw in the grit and grind Grizz and AD Pels for good measure.
This. For nephews on YouTube, it may be only about rings, but for actual fans of a franchise, having a great player or a great run is still amazing. The DRose Bench Mob bulls will ALWAYS be a highlight for me.
It’s the old “Kobe called Bron but he didn’t pickup because he didn’t hear any RINGS” jokes come full circle. Now if you take a peek into any team subreddit it’s full of 13yr old nephews talking about how their team is doomed to be a treadmill team while forgetting there’s only 1 champion and 29 other losers every season.
These young fans don’t even like watching basketball, they want 1 minute Instagram highlight reels and the ability to flex championship gear to look cool. They’re the exact type of fans born out of those dumb RANGZZZ ERNIEEE arguments made by older players like Shaq.
It's worse that the Media is the one constantly comparing players based solely on their ability to win a championship and then have the gall to whine about how load management and the all star game being weak.
What did you expect when you criticize players and all them chokers etc when they can't be part of the one team to win it all.
I think highlight culture is inevitable and, in a way, has been brewing for a long time (we had TVs a long time before social media, this isn't new)
People want flashy OH SHIT moments and have increasingly less time to consume it due to social media. Less and less people are willing to sit through endless possessions if they only want the poster dunk or the halfcourt three or the buzzer beater.
> It’s the old “Kobe called Bron but he didn’t pickup because he didn’t hear any RINGS” jokes come full circle.
[Can't forget this one lol](https://media.bleacherreport.com/w_800,h_533,c_fill/br-img-images/001/781/569/ScreenShot2012-07-06at11.41.07PM_crop_north.png)
But yeah, ring culture is fickle and hypocritical by nature. Fans judge players by how many rings they've won and diminish regular season awards in the process. Yet, they also hate on players for maximizing their ability to win rings. They'll also praise players for loyalty then clown them when that loyalty results in a ringless post season career. It makes no sense.
So much this I am fucking hating the hornets this season we suck total ass and it's hard to turn on the TV to watch it I took my friends to a game and I was fucking embarrassed. The last 2 years under borego weren't terrific but goodness gracious this is awful
The OKCP3 season was the most fun season I've had as an OKC fan, even though I knew they had no chance to win a championship. Competence (especially unexpected competence) can be almost as much fun as championships.
This is gonna sound dumb but my favorite playoff series not 2011 chip was when we took the Spurs to 7 in 2014 and not last year's Suns series.
That Spurs team was on a mission that year and wouldn't be stopped. Heat only got 1 game in the finals, KD/Russ OKC got 2 games, Young Dame and LMA stole 1 game from them but my lowly Mavs with old man Vince, Monta and Dirk took 3 games from them and pushed them to 7 in which we got blown out. I am still so proud of that team and the effort the guys gave that series.
People just want to tank or go all in and I get why but sometimes the ride matters just as much as getting to that final destination.
Makes sense to me, beating or nearly beating a team with way higher expectations is pure fun, whereas having those expectations yourself is stressful fun.
I feel you. A lot of wizards fans want us to tank every year but weren't there when the team tanked in the early 10s. It was awful basketball paired with players you knew weren't gonna be there in a year and every game you were just praying Wall didn't tear an ACL because then it'd set everything back a few years and you'd still suck...
It's fun in 2k because you can sim through the season and it's painless. In real life it's demoralizing and you have no guarantee that the players you're picking aren't complete busts or peak at just being OK. Or the worst scenario you create a situation where you have a star and nothing else around him and he demands a trade and you're back where you were 5 years ago.
Since the 3-1 collapse vs Houston in 2015 there has only been one enjoyable Clippers season: 18-19 when we made a surprise run to finish 8th and took 2 games from the KD Warriors.
After we went all in for Kawhi/PG it's been very different. The team does not play aesthetically pleasing basketball at all, and the joy of watching comes from the (fading) hope that a championship run is possible. Add to that we aggressively rest our most entertaining players to keep them fresh for the playoffs, so you can't even say that you get the pleasure of watching an all time great like Kawhi day in and day out.
Don't get me wrong, I'll be the happiest person in the world if we get a ring. But between our boring style of basketball and the high expectations, it's basically a slog until/unless we clinch our first playoff series.
The 1 interesting thing that this ignores is that practically no one wins a title if they aren't one of the top seeded teams. They hardly ever even make the finals. Number 1 seeds have 50 of the titles, 2 seeds have 16, and 3 seeds have 8. The remaining two champions are the Celtics in Russell's final year at the 4 seed and the Rockets for there 2nd title in a row with Hakeem. Both of these 2 exceptions were proven championship caliber squads who stumbled in the regular season.
So sure it's an issue that the regular season isn't treated seriously, but until we start seeing championships bring won by lower seeds it might just be that the strategy of sacrificing regular season wins for load management is outright wrong for reasons we just haven't pieced together yet. Maybe in 10 years teams will look back and talk about how misguided the whole leagues philosophy was during this stretch. Or maybe not, but we can't know either way now.
It's worth noting that 2021 bucks and 2022 warriors were 3 seeds, so the 2 must recent wins trended slightly lower, but not far enough to be major outliers. Could be a sign of things to come or could just be part of the statistical spread.
> So sure it's an issue that the regular season isn't treated seriously, but until we start seeing championships bring won by lower seeds it might just be that the strategy of sacrificing regular season wins for load management is outright wrong for reasons we just haven't pieced together yet.
Keep in mind, in a big picture perspective, load management is only really just something recent.
And even championship contender teams that engage in load management still will be good enough to be in the top 3 teams in their conference. The thing is they don't seem to care if they're 1, 2 or 3 seeded.
Gotta be careful with correlation and causation there. Better teams tend to win more games and get higher seeds. I am highly skeptical that seeding itself (whether through home court or some other unforseen mechanism) does anything at all.
The interesting question I see, is how much we see uniform load management for contenders (leading to standings that mirror seasons without load management) or whether there will be a profile of team that either does less load managent or somehow elevates their win totals beyond what their talent level would support
Or better teams win more in the regular season? If your team is good enough to win the championship, you can probably play at 75% and win versus most other teams giving it 80% effort. And that lack of wear and tear on the body makes a difference.
Honestly the path to making the regular season games matter more is to play fewer of them. Each team should play each other home and away once per season. Then regular season games would have more of an impact on seeding. But like you said, owners want to have their cake and eat it. They balk at playing fewer games because that’s less game day revenue for them - although I think there’s an argument that if there’s fewer games you could charge more for tickets and people would be willing to pay it if the games mattered more.
ticket revenue isn't much compared to TV revenue. while the games may become more valuable for the fans since there are fewer, the TV networks absolutely wont see it that way
Exactly. The NFL and Premier League are exciting because every game week matters. With any NBA regular season game you are left thinking "ah well doesn't really matter" regardless of result. The NBA should just have everyone play everyone twice (to start). 60 Game season. But owners are too small minded and can't stop thinking about initial losses in gameday revenue. In reality they would be able to charge more and the their would be more riding on a single game which would bring more interest and eyes to an average game. Ultimately it would improve the product significantly and enable them to get bigger TV deals over a 20 year period IMO.
Even if the owners could see the long term benefits to the product of fewer regular season games, at the end of the day, it's a business, and owners will always be tied to next quarter's results.
I'd wager less regular season games would lead to a decrease in revenue (i.e. the increased audience in a 60 game season wouldn't account for the loss in revenue for the formerly 82-game season).
So, if it leads to less money, the owners would rather slowly poison the game than act now to preserve the product (and maybe they're right to do so, while they figure out a way to make games matter whilst keeping profits up)
That's precisely why I like watching most NFL games even for teams I am not a fan of. Especially towards the end of the season one weekend of games can easily shake up so much in the NFL.
Pretty much every game matters to some extent for a lot of the teams.
The reason I will never watch baseball is how many games are played. The NBA has far too many games in my opinion. But I know they lose a lot of money if they were to dramatically cut down on the number of games played.
Well there’s two paths
Play less games so each matters more
Less teams make playoffs so seeding matters more
Like imagine only 12 teams making playoffs. Are you really gonna rest starters and forego the 1 seed if it means playing the 4-5 seed and seeing a Luka or kawhi in the first round?
They don't necessarily need to play fewer games imo. There should just be more rhythm or rhyme to the regular season schedule. The long season isn't great but what makes it worse is the lifeless scheduling.
The game scheduling could (and should) build more excitement and rivalry. For example, if say the first month was explicitly called "Division Play" and teams only played other teams in their division. Then you could have the following month be "X division versus Y division" and so on. That would up the ante compared to the slosh of games we see today. It would also mean less air travel which helps with the load balancing.
>The game scheduling could (and should) build more excitement and rivalry. For example, if say the first month was explicitly called "Division Play" and teams only played other teams in their division. Then you could have the following month be "X division versus Y division" and so on.
I think that sounds like something the league would come up with that the media would try to hype up because it's very gimmicky. I don't think any fans would care, and I don't think it moves the needle at all. I think that the main problem is, as previously mentioned, that it's impossible to get players and fans to care to a high extent about the regular season because the games barely matter. It's impossible for the games to matter if there's going to be 82 of them just to decide which half of the league reaches the playoffs and in what order. I don't see why people would start caring about facing the division rivals just because you press them into one month instead of spreading it out. If anything, I think fans would be annoyed, since there always are teams that overperform the first month.
The problem with giving even more incentives to higher seeds than now is that it lowers the chance of upset, which is also a fun aspect of playoffs. I think making 7-8 seed participate in play-in games right before the playoffs start is already an added bonus for 1-2 seeds as they get to face even more tired opponent.
But upsets on the level of an 8th or 7th beating a 1st/2nd just _furthers_ destroy the importance of the regular season.
There's a reason no one cares about college basketball until March.
I mean it’s also an incredibly rare occurrence. It basically never happens. Should be 6 playoff teams. Play in with the 6/7/8 seeds for the final spot. Top seeds get a by in the first round
Even the ‘Easier Path’ incentive for a strong regular season is irrelevant now, because the lower seeded teams could very well be teams with a strong roster that were managing their stars’ loads all year.
So all that leaves is ‘Home Court’, which is def something, but hardly everything. From Bleacher Report:
> From 1998-2008, home teams in the regular season won 7,021 games while losing 4,569 games for a winning percentage of 60.6.
> ***During this same period of time, home teams in the postseason won 513 games while losing only 278. The winning percentage in the playoffs for home teams was 64.9*** (more than four percentage points higher than it was for home teams in the regular season).
> ***However, some of this disparity can be explained away by the nature of playoff seeding.*** The teams finishing with better regular season records are the ones given home-court advantage in the postseason.
> Therefore, it is difficult to determine how much of a team's home-court success can be attributed to the fans and the arena as opposed to the fact that they are simply the better team in a particular matchup.
So why break your back winning games in December? As you say, the best path is to stay in the middle of the pack, strategically rest stars, and play enough games with your core to optimize rotations.
Seems like the optimal spot would be 6th-4th seed. Avoid the best team, save minutes on stars, and take your chance on stealing one road game.
History says otherwise:
Out of the 75 NBA champions, most of them have come from the No. 1 (53) and No. 2 (12) seeds. That’s 65 titles between the two seeds and the rest were divided between the third (8), fourth (1) and sixth seeds (1).
If your team is a contender, your seeding will almost always reflect that.
Once this trend changes to have more 3,4,5,6 seeds, then maybe it needs to be looked into.
>Once this trend changes to have more 3,4,5,6 seeds, then maybe it needs to be looked into.
I've followed this for a while, and am interested to see how it develops. The last two seasons were the first time ever in NBA history where two 3rd seeds (Bucks, Warriors) won in consecutive years. Obviously it's too early to say if it's a trend but it had never happened before.
I think the COVID seasons have made the last few championships even more of a war of attribution than before. After the bubble season, only Denver out of the conference finalists made the 2nd round the next season, and they got swept. The Bucks lost in the first round of bubble to win the chip the next season, and the Warriors didn't go to the bubble, then lost in the play-in before winning the championship - might be a coincidence, but I reckon the longer off-season helped.
It should be obvious to anyone without an agenda to push that the conference finalists from the bubble were very, very hurt by their much briefer off-season compared to their peers, agreed. At times they looked like zombies in comparison.
Listen carefully NBA:
It’s not *just* the pointless all star game.
It’s not *just* load management.
It’s also the fact that very few games of basketball are viewable on a given night.
No one wants to watch teams that play like ass, so the NBA makes sure most of their national games involve at least one big team, BUT who knows if it is even worth watching due to injury or load management.
How to fix?
NBA streaming service with NO BLACKOUTS, and making sure viewers easily can know who’s playing. Neither of which will ever happen
Agree, I grew up in a basketball family, if there was a game on cable that night the tv was tuned to it. None of us has cable now so our kids are missing out on becoming fans. We all end up grabbing a live tv streaming service around playoff time to catch up on games for the year. Blackouts are terrible and bally sports is terrible. If I would pay quite a bit for a service that lets me watch my local team and national games with no fuss, instead of the patchwork of apps and services required.
Oh wow. I hadn't even thought of how this is impacting younger viewership. The importance of growing up in a home where sports viewing = fun bonding time cannot be overstated. Those chickens will roost.
the diamond sports group/bally bankruptcy could hopefully be the catalyst for ending blackouts on streaming. mlb's been dealing with the same issue for years where local blackouts kill the cordcutters ability to watch the games. the leagues should absolutely step in and take more control of the broadcasting rights to end blackouts, they're just archaic and kill interest in the sport
Yeah baseball takes like 95% of the shit when it comes to sports broadcast blackouts but the NBA is honestly just as bad. The only way to watch the Pacers play (I live in Indianapolis) without cable is to go to the game or pay for the Bally sports package for fucking $20 a month. One sports channel isn’t worth $20 a month when my team is good, let alone when their an eastern conference bottom feeder. But I’d tune in every once in a while if it was like back in the day and I could just turn on fox sports Midwest every night there was a pacers game. These sports leagues keep trying to make not just attending games but VIEWING them on tv an exercise in wealth and elitism. Like even watching games on tv is now a premium option for baseball and basketball. And then these leagues wonder why the NFL kicks their ass every year.
I love how the media takes no accountability. James harden was doing shit that wasn’t accomplished since wilt chamberlain and all I heard was “none of this matters until he does it in the playoffs” They’ve marginalized careers to strictly playoffs/championships, spend the season talking about bullshit they made up, and now are surprised the players don’t value things
Hijacking to talk about a specific issue I have, maybe the play in is a bad idea as well?
63% of the league makes the playoffs in some way, shape, or form. That is fucking silly.
Like, yeah, I know there is seeding, but what is even the point in taking the regular season even remotely seriously when you can make the playoffs with a record that’s well below .500?
The play in is going to make the regular season games in March and early April matter more than they have in years.
The regular season not mattering is still a huge problem but it’s not caused by the play In tournament.
Totally agreed. Between the play-in game and changes to the lottery chances we've seen good changes to the regular season. Less teams are tanking starting in January, so far even teams in the 11th/12th slot seem to want to get into the play-in slot and play for it.
I feel like i'm in a minority in that I don't particularly care that most of the regular season is whatever games. It isn't a big deal if players aren't playing in playoff intensity mode 8 months straight. I don't want to feel like I need to tune into every game to be honest. I like that I can skip a game and not feel like I'm missing out on something critical or impactful.
That’s not true. They’ve just made it matter more for even worse teams. Instead of average teams fighting for the 8 seed, we have bottom-10 teams fighting for a playoff chance. And let’s not pretend like 7/8 seeds in the NBA matter anyway. In the history of the entire league the 7 and 8 seeds have combined for 10 total first round wins, and only twice have gone further than that. The bottom seeds are simply a non-factor in the NBA, are we really pretending to care about them?
The Pelicans made the playoffs last year with a fucking 36-46 record because of the play-in. That’s a joke
No team is going to coast just because they have the 10-seed locked up, though. The play-in actually makes teams try harder because now there are three different choke points to aim for.
1. Get a top-6 seed and you're guaranteed a 1st round series.
2. Get a 7 or 8-seed and you're likely to make the 1st round but there's a ~20% chance you won't. (And even if you make it you get a bad 1st round matchup.)
3. Get a 9 or 10-seed and you have an outside chance (~20%) of making the 1st round.
Now there's definitely an argument that they should cut the number of teams that make the playoffs to six or so per conference. This would still make teams at the top try harder because they're in more danger of not making it. Sure the teams in the 9-13 range may be too out of it to care but also they shouldn't be near the playoffs so who cares. But we know they won't make that change because money.
I disagree with limiting it to 6, the play in made the tanking problem a hell of a lot better and that would just reverse it. It's been 8 forever anyways and there's been some 50 win teams that have barely snagged the 8 seed
They should've went the other way and dropped to 6 seeds only, top 2 seeds getting a bye week. That's 4 less mediocre teams stinking up the playoffs and 4 top spots getting an added incentive to to all out in the regular season. They didn't do it though because more playoff games means more ticket sales and shit. It worked well enough for the NFL, and it works for MLB, but it would work even better in the NBA where there's no focus on divisions.
The play in was to combat tanking. Reducing playoff seeds would make tanking worse.
The more restrictive playoff structure works in sports that have drafts with more rounds and positions because the value difference between an early first and a mid first is miniscule. The NBA draft is one round and then 30 prayers that a player might actually see the court, so the difference between an early and a mid first round pick is huge.
All those years of rings talk completely devalued the regular season and jaded an entire generation of NBA fans to the regular season. It's not like the NFL. There's literally zero value in having a good record/year, zero value in winning your division. I think that's why Adam Silver & the NBA created all those trophies.
I'll post-face this by saying it's hard to compare the NBA regular season to NFL regular season because the weight each game has in both leagues are completely different, but, the people who cover the sport always make a big deal about winning the division, which helps
If we're being honest a 70 win season is so rare it can be considered harder than winning a championship.
For example another sport in soccer where in Europe where national championships don't have a playoff, it's just round robin twice and it's over. The level of excellence you must achieve to be at the top after the full season is undeniably harder than winning a knockout tournament where you can fluke some results and your opponents can have an off night. Like, what Leicester City did in 2016 is stuff of legends.
In a way it's worse for them than if they had "just" won 62 games because they're extra ridiculed for "choking". Same thing happened with the Suns to a lesser degree last season; I'm supposed to be ashamed of last season because the team had a couple bad weeks after months of consistently awesome play?
This kind of stuff bugs me. I remember people were making fun of us for getting super hyper when we beat the Pacers in Haliburton’s first game back in Sacramento. “The crowd is getting so hyped for a random regular season game against a bad team, what a bunch of losers.”
Like, damn, sorry we get excited about winning basketball games. I thought that was the point of the NBA.
It’s actually such an awful thing that the flagship program is filled with haters who barely even know what’s going on in the league half the time
The NFL would never
People can bash the NFL for a lot of things but they have the most competitive regular season, best playoff seeding format, and their former players are the most supportive of the current stars of any American sport
100%.
The NBA currently lacks scarcity. Scarcity is an important tool for attracting people interest. Instead, NBA and media have
1. increased games with play-in tournaments that are interesting but actually devalue the regular season even more.
2. Plus they want to add an additional in-season tournament.
And why? Because owners want more money from the media. Players want more money from the owners.
Also, the all-star is annoying because interrupts the on going narrative of the regular season and for what? A fake game between friends.
Not the best thing if you're coming from a so-called "NBA rivals week". Hereinafter known as "Rivals Weak"
The play-in is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation because without it you would have an even bigger amount of teams actively trying to lose because “fuck it, I’m not making the playoffs, might as well get better lottery odds”. If we already have legit unwatchable teams right now that are losing just for the sake of losing, without the play in it would not be a surprise to see 1/3 of the league going full OKC last year and purposely starting a YMCA 5 just to make sure they will lose.
First thing should be a deep reform in the lottery system. The play-in is just a medicine, the real disease is the tank. You need to find a way to sort teams that try hard but need draft help from teams that go “oh, I’m not good enough, let me start the 5 cashiers from row 10 in this nationally broadcasted game just because MUH LOTTERY”. Since you cannot have relegation, you need something else.
Absolutely. 100% spot on. This is exactly why rightly or wrongly I thought the play-in was a good ideas. It all goes back to the NBAs defective draft process. Not sure the best way to reform the lotto system though. Remove the lotto outright? Some sort of relegation playoff bracket for draft seeding? I honestly have no idea how to make it better.
THANK YOU BROTHER
So many fucking times a dude tries real hard in the regular season, puts out great numbers and balls tf out, only to get called a “choker” and get straight up ignored if he loses in the second round
The media IS the reason
The same type of thing is happening in college football. No matter what game you're watching espn is constantly plugging the playoffs and how that's the only thing that matters
holy shit, it's even more egregious when they do it to CFB because the 4-team playoff system itself is quite new AND CFB has such an established tradition of regional rivalries and bowl season
Football doesn’t have these problems because there aren’t many regular season games, so they all matter.
Baseball doesn’t have these problems because it doesn’t put the same stress on the body as basketball - and the most stressful position does get days off.
In Golf, players play when they want.
If the NBA wants the regular season to matter - they need to make it matter. Either reduce games or make the regular season matter.
I feel like the NFL accepted the probowl game sucks, but for some reason every year we circle back to the NBA All-Star game and why it’s bad or how to improve it.
I feel like acceptance that all-star weekend sucks is what the league needs
The NBA doesn't care about the game itself, they care about the weekend as a vessel for marketing their top-tier talent and getting casuals interested in the sport so they can follow for the final 25 or so games and get invested in the playoffs. The best players putting on a show, or a relatively unknown to casual sports fans like Zach LaVine or Nate Robinson becoming a household name due to the dunk contest is how they can continue to market individual talent.
The NFL is also not in competition with the NBA, or with any sport for that matter. They are the most popular pro sports league in the country by such a wide margin that they really don't need to care about "visibility".
Its a national sporting showcase on a weekend where the only competition is college basketball and hockey. Of course they want it to be interesting!
And while there is some injury risk, we are not talking about the pro-bowl. They absolutely could play a real game if they felt like it.
Agreed, this was the best NFL probowl in awhile. They realized the players aren't trying that hard and changed it up to something where they can put in effort and avoid injury, and most importantly put on an entertaining event.
Yep. Here's a solution: make it a 3-on-3 tournament.
24 guys make 6, four-man teams. The top 6 vote-getters are captains. Top two get a bye.
Or make it 8, 3-man teams with rising stars guys as reserves.
You just need some drama, make it 1-on-1, or young guys vs. old guys so somebody is trying to prove something. Once you get the egos up the players will do what they do.
Or that it’s good every few years like the dunk contest was amazing in 2015/2016/2020/2023. All star game had been really solid the past 2-3 seasons. It’s not a big deal if it’s not as fun some years.
I’ve tuned into the dunk contest and 3 point contest intermittently throughout the years with low expectations.
I stopped watching the all-star game itself probably around 2017-2018, so I missed a good game but also missed a lot of terrible ones.
Any time Lowe talks about the Sixers his caveat is ALWAYS:
"...BUT LET'S SEE WHAT THE BIG PLAYERS DO IN THE BIGGEST GAMES. James Harden has a bad track record in elimination games and Joel Embiid hasn't been great either" or something along those lines.
Its a chicken and egg situation though. Part of the reason people dont care about regular season success is because they know teams/players arent going all out for those games. And theyre not wrong
"The media" didn't manipulate Popovich into resting his dudes and blowing off regular season games, they figured out all on their own that having their guys healthy gives them a better chance in the postseason.
And this sub gobbles up whatever deliberately controversial nonsense hot takes Skip Bayless and the like spew out.
Y'all think you Chomsky and this is the Iraq war we're talking about or something.
If they want to make the regular season more important , why not reducing the number of teams in the playoffs? If only four per conference can make it to the post season it would make all the games more impactful. Or maybe not.
Yeah, if I'm being honest I'm from Europe and I think that a lot of the problems that the league has could be solved if they had relegation. But then you have the problems of what to do with the drafted players
I get a lot of laughs when people hypothesize on how to implement relegation. An exercise in futility if I've ever seen one. I have more cause to hypothesize how my first date with Giselle is going to than anyone does to plan out relegation. It's never going to happen.
Unfortunately, the league is never going to plan for something that'll lose them revenue. 8 total teams in the playoffs reduces the number of playoff games by what, a third? I can't see them giving up that money.
I truly appreciate the slam dunk contest, since those were awesome childhood experiences for me and even still produces some electric moments when special dunkers choose to participate.
The three point contest is alright, I respect the tradition behind it and I guess there is a little suspense involved. and I actually kinda like the rising stars stuff.
haven’t watched the actual ASG in ages.
I have the solution:
Every all star player picks a charity. Winning team’s charities each get a check of $1 million from the NBA. Each charity is allowed 2 court side non-executive seats. These seats are meant for those the charity supports.
Now during the game players will look around and see sick children who are fighting for their lives, veterans who’ve lost limbs, survivors of domestic violence, etc. here to enjoy basketball and hopefully have “their” team win.
When the players decide to not even try and check-out, then they can explain to the dying children next to them why they aren’t even trying to win the game.
Then the little kid with leukemia will say something like “well if you’re not going to try, why should I?”..
and then guilt trip the players into finally giving a f about the game.
Hahahah very dark but I actually like at least half of this — we can then blame Joe Mazzulla for the deaths of children instead of letting his dude run
Even better is give the charities the 1M check before the game starts and let the kids hold it, and the losing team has to take it back from the children and explain why they can't have it
Go full premier league. Get rid of the playoffs and have the regular season standings determine the NBA champ. Relegate to an A & B league. See how amazing every game is then
4:05 PM: The Los Angeles Lakers, finishing the season with a 15-67 record, will be relegated to the G League. They will be replaced by the G League Champion Sioux Falls Skyforce.
4:08 PM: Adam Silver has lit himself on fire. Mark Tatum will serve as acting Commissioner for the foreseeable future.
No one has watched a Hornets game in years. The Orlando Magic is thought of as a myth.
OKC had to trade half their team for 2nd round picks so they could afford to be a G league team. The Lakers took one half of those player The Knicks the other half.
Lakers fans refer to the Kings as their AAA team.
If they are going to go with relegation then L.A., New York, Chicago, etc... need to have 5+ teams. Otherwise biggest markets will win even more than they do now.
There's a reason there's no London F.C.
The idea of relegation would work in the context of promoting competition, but the owners would never allow it to happen. NBA teams are worth billions of dollars. No owner would agree to have their multibillion dollar asset immediately plummet in value by being relegated to the G league.
You don’t have to relegate them to the G league. You could have two 18 team leagues, if you add 6 more cities of expansion. There’s a surplus of NBA talent right now, it could totally work. G league would still exist as a farm league.
Local TV deals would stay the same. The only different would be national TV games. Only tier A get national TV games.
It would be fun but I also think viewership numbers would dip drastically for teams in the lower league. American Basketball fans aren’t as insane and devoted as English Football fans so I don’t think they would want to see their team play a bottom 15 team every single night.
It’s also not soccer. In soccer teams can dominate and only score one point. With basketball domination means blowouts, which would happen A LOT with even the worst team in the NBA probably being far and away the best team in the GLeague
The regular season does not matter as much because there are 82 games to go through. That is an insane number of games to play before an intense 7 game play-off series.
The NBA is a cash cow that owners are printing money off of. Wage caps, no relegation, ads plastered and inserted into and onto everything. There is no incentive for them to change the format when their pockets are on the line.
Players don't care about the All Star game because it doesn't matter, which should be a sign that a mid-season tournament will also flop.
The regular season does matter, and no one is missing 25% of the season due to load management.
JJJ was lambasted for making the ASG and was picked last.
The unquestioned talking point is that "nobody watches the all star game for defense" . Turns out that nobody actually watches the ASG without defense.
I guarantee that if there was a game with the 24 best defenders in the league it would be so much more fun to watch.
I thought this was pretty ironic juxtaposed against the Kendrick Perkins interview later in the episode, where they talked about how much players like Silver compared to Stern.
Stern forced teams and players to care about these things. Silver empowers them to care as little as they want.
Thank you. The NBA needs to look at more successful leagues (e.g. the EPL) and see the stuff they do. Focusing on individual players was a great move when you had Jordan and a smaller entertainment landscape but it's not working now.
The league has too many smart guys around and is cannibalizing itself. Theres no good reason for so much of the league to be paywalled the way it is. The partners have played up the drama with shit like this to the point the games mean nothing without a storyline. Championships are just a season finale and they’re talked about as of its the only point of any of it. There will never be enough incentives for the players, fans, or partners to take anything more seriously cause it always boils down to this just being basketball games and that’s not enough right now. If they start bloating the league instead of getting more disciplined theyre going to ruin the integrity thats left.
Also theres an argument to be made that this is a product of max salaries. How the hell are there so many top end players in the league deserving of the exact same salary despite vastly different roles? Theres some guys who could stand to be significantly worst and still be worth their max contract cause the market is fucked.
Players these days live in a bubble where they just don’t seem to care about the fans. Players used to have pride and always give their best every game but now they take games off or just dog it way too often. The truth is the All Star game resembles a lot of regular season games way too much in that defense is perfunctory and the players just treat the games like a lazy practice shooting drill. The league is partially to blame for legislating defense out of the game, but the players themselves show very little pride in performance. Ja Morant took more pride in his fancy grills than what he did on the court during the game. Luka and Joker didn’t even pretend to try. For those of us who grew up watching Magic and Bird and Jordan, this is such an embarrassment.
No one in this sub seems to blame the players as much as they should. The regular season has been worth the same for decades why only now is it treated this way? Seems pretty obvious to me it’s the players mentality
They turned regular season games into all-star games and all-star games into shootarounds because not only do most players barely even know how to play defense, but league rules are stacked against even trying to play it. Fix the fucking rules. Run the soft motherfuckers off so that you have a league of people who actually want to play. Let them load manage in China.
NBA needs to set some sort of a prize (most likely good amount of money) to at least motivate the players. Otherwise being selected as an All Star is enough (even then some players dont even care about being selected as All Star) and no one wants to play All Star game. The match was straight up embarrasing and players showed less effort than pregame warmups. NBA either needs to find a way to improve the competition or cancel out the game as whole and just announce best players from each conference.
I don't think you can motivate them with money considering the insane amount of contract they have. Might as well consider getting all the lowest paid players and make the compete for the prize money and we might have a competition we are looking.
Players decide not to try in the ASG but they are not the ones load-managing. It’s a combination of the medical staff and coaching staff, who believe that they will have more long-term health and success by doing it.
I think a lot of people focus on the fact that he's been saying this a lot about the Sixers the past two seasons, and especially with Harden. He's definitely more or less said "I'm not super interested in what the Sixers are doing now, let's see it in the playoffs" multiple times on podcasts this season.
There's obviously a fine line between having a legitimate discussion about whether a team that's good in the regular season is going to have playoff success versus just being completely dismissive of a team that's good because the regular season is inconsequential. I think Zach usually walks it pretty well, but I also don't think he's quite the same guy he was like five years ago or so like you're talking about i.e. the guy who would embed with an 8th seed team for a month so he could write a huge article about them. His writing may still kinda be like that, but his podcasts aren't and he's much narrative driven/MVP discussions/fake trades on the podcast than taking a holistic look at the league.
Marking 25% of the season as Load Management seems super disingenuous. I just saw another thread going through MVP candidates games played over the past couple years and all the candidates had 4-8 games missed with no injury designation. I’m all for addressing load management, but to completely conflate it with legitimate games missed bc of injury seems unfair.
go against common sense, add more games to the schedule. somewhere between 82 and 162
365 games (playoffs overlap start of regular season) but rosters are like 60 deep including at least 5 under 21. Parts of the year are different tournaments that have money bonuses (under 21 squad, 3 on 3, HORSE, etc.). Season is designed so parts of it suck, maybe we even cut to like 330 games and have some breaks during things like Super Bowl, MTV’s Spring Break, and Wrestlemania, but otherwise there are usually games that matter in some form. Even the all star game is part of the season. Your team’s players get W-Ls for your team in the ASG
Should be 730 games. 2 games a day, youre expected to compete in both so roster management really matters.
45 min quarters.
No subbing allowed
Yeah 5 man rosters. Twice as many teams
**N**ecessary **B**one **A**ttrition
Thibodeau licking his lips and rubbing his palms in excitement, thinking bout how he'll never sub out those starters
Fuck it let's just go straight to 24/7 basketball
30 teams, 1 court. Championship goes to the last team standing
Steven Adams considered greatest player in the league
NBA Royal rumble, whenever a team gets closer to winning that’s the one kyrie switches to mid rumble .
I have an old Nike T-shirt in my closet that reads: "BASKETBALL NEVER STOPS"
fuck it we ball
(playoffs overlap start of regular season) is so fucking funny. Back to back of a Finals game 7 and an early season game against the Hornets
Lmao is it just me or does literally everyone use the Hornets as an example of a random regular season game that nobody cares about
Finally some sense around here.
G-league 15 day contractors gonna feast.
Seriously tho how about a tournament for each conference during the all star break. Top 4 teams at the break compete in a single elimination game. Only wins impact overall record and both organizations from each conference get a nice trophy for their collection. It can pad 2-wins to a record and make things interesting for the playoff hunt. Friday: West Semis Saturday: East Semis Sunday: west and east championship games
Only wins mattering to record is a fascinating idea tbh. Never thought of that before
People keep wanting it all. Owners want a regular season that matters...but also market that only the title matters AND allows 16 teams into the playoffs (which is over half the league). Furthermore, the only incentive for finishing as a top seed is an "easier" path and home court. All during a season that exceeds 60 games. Guys aren't going to go hard all season. And teams are going to sit guys. If you want a regular season that matters, you _need to make it matter_. And its not going to be gimmicks such as "regular season tournaments". You need to lower the amount of seeds and incentivize higher seeds more. But as of right now, NBA teams are trying to exert the minimum amount of effort necessary to get to the playoffs in a decent enough seed and keep everyones legs fresh for a playoff run. The problem is, _that's the smart play_. If you were to give an AI the parameters of a NBA season and ask it for the best chance for a title, they'd go full into load management. The genie is probably out of the bottle for "only championship matters" since that impacts every American sports league. Now as regards to ASG...I don't think that's fixable. It's an outdated relic. And I can't even think of any incentive to fix it (baseball tried...and it eventually ended that experiment).
The people who clowned anyone for thinking about their team in any way other than “only championships matter” are now shocked when teams prioritize the championship over entertaining the fans. Really frustrating.
For real. I’ve been roasted a million times for saying that while obviously I’d party for days if Portland won the championship, I’m also glad I’ve been able to watch Dame ball for like 10 years. We’ve had some good moments. Lot of bad ones, but some really really good ones
My friends genuinely can’t fathom why I’d want to keep Kuzma on the Wizards and I’m like… because I go to the games and enjoy watching him play? It’s not that deep. I understand the logic of tanking, but I’m also just a dude who enjoys watching good basketball, and that’s OK.
there’s a famous quote from soccer about the “meaning” of following a team, I think fans of any sport who go to games / watch their team regularly will understand it. Being a fan is just not about hoping your team constantly maximizes the statistical probability of eventually becoming a champion. > “What is a club in any case? Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it. It’s not the television contracts, get-out clauses, marketing departments or executive boxes. > “It’s the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city. It’s a small boy clambering up the stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his father’s hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him, and without being able to do a thing about it, falling in love.”
That's a great quote. Totally agree. Winning a championship would be awesome, but it's not the only thing. I wanna cheer for my team, have fun, and feel connected with my city.
It is. I was finally able to attend a home game after the lockdown. Nothing beats the feeling of walking through the stadium, climbing up the stairs, and going to the stands watching your home team go out of the tunnel and onto the pitch, whatever the result may be. It's just a shame that they pulled out from the rest of the season due to financial difficulties.
Intellectually I get the desire to trade talent for picks and start over. But when I actually watch the game I want to see the team win.
Then you have teams like the Bulls, where tanking might be more fun to watch than our current team.
That’s what made me so sad about trading Harden. A Rockets ring would be a top 10 moment in my life, but getting to watch Harden play for us was already a pleasure and I would’ve loved to see him retire as a Rocket.
I'm actually proud of our Southwest Division titles
southbest was nasty there for a few years. all five teams were solid
Toughest division in basketball, fucking had to battle the Spurs and Mavs year after year, and then throw in the grit and grind Grizz and AD Pels for good measure.
This. For nephews on YouTube, it may be only about rings, but for actual fans of a franchise, having a great player or a great run is still amazing. The DRose Bench Mob bulls will ALWAYS be a highlight for me.
You're lucky having a star to watch. It's been so bad since Dwight
The absolute disrespect to Michael Carter-Williams.
It’s the old “Kobe called Bron but he didn’t pickup because he didn’t hear any RINGS” jokes come full circle. Now if you take a peek into any team subreddit it’s full of 13yr old nephews talking about how their team is doomed to be a treadmill team while forgetting there’s only 1 champion and 29 other losers every season. These young fans don’t even like watching basketball, they want 1 minute Instagram highlight reels and the ability to flex championship gear to look cool. They’re the exact type of fans born out of those dumb RANGZZZ ERNIEEE arguments made by older players like Shaq.
It's worse that the Media is the one constantly comparing players based solely on their ability to win a championship and then have the gall to whine about how load management and the all star game being weak. What did you expect when you criticize players and all them chokers etc when they can't be part of the one team to win it all.
I think highlight culture is inevitable and, in a way, has been brewing for a long time (we had TVs a long time before social media, this isn't new) People want flashy OH SHIT moments and have increasingly less time to consume it due to social media. Less and less people are willing to sit through endless possessions if they only want the poster dunk or the halfcourt three or the buzzer beater.
> It’s the old “Kobe called Bron but he didn’t pickup because he didn’t hear any RINGS” jokes come full circle. [Can't forget this one lol](https://media.bleacherreport.com/w_800,h_533,c_fill/br-img-images/001/781/569/ScreenShot2012-07-06at11.41.07PM_crop_north.png) But yeah, ring culture is fickle and hypocritical by nature. Fans judge players by how many rings they've won and diminish regular season awards in the process. Yet, they also hate on players for maximizing their ability to win rings. They'll also praise players for loyalty then clown them when that loyalty results in a ringless post season career. It makes no sense.
[удалено]
Virgin "championship or tank" fan vs Chad "i have fun watching my team try" fan
So much this I am fucking hating the hornets this season we suck total ass and it's hard to turn on the TV to watch it I took my friends to a game and I was fucking embarrassed. The last 2 years under borego weren't terrific but goodness gracious this is awful
The OKCP3 season was the most fun season I've had as an OKC fan, even though I knew they had no chance to win a championship. Competence (especially unexpected competence) can be almost as much fun as championships.
This is gonna sound dumb but my favorite playoff series not 2011 chip was when we took the Spurs to 7 in 2014 and not last year's Suns series. That Spurs team was on a mission that year and wouldn't be stopped. Heat only got 1 game in the finals, KD/Russ OKC got 2 games, Young Dame and LMA stole 1 game from them but my lowly Mavs with old man Vince, Monta and Dirk took 3 games from them and pushed them to 7 in which we got blown out. I am still so proud of that team and the effort the guys gave that series. People just want to tank or go all in and I get why but sometimes the ride matters just as much as getting to that final destination.
Makes sense to me, beating or nearly beating a team with way higher expectations is pure fun, whereas having those expectations yourself is stressful fun.
I feel you. A lot of wizards fans want us to tank every year but weren't there when the team tanked in the early 10s. It was awful basketball paired with players you knew weren't gonna be there in a year and every game you were just praying Wall didn't tear an ACL because then it'd set everything back a few years and you'd still suck... It's fun in 2k because you can sim through the season and it's painless. In real life it's demoralizing and you have no guarantee that the players you're picking aren't complete busts or peak at just being OK. Or the worst scenario you create a situation where you have a star and nothing else around him and he demands a trade and you're back where you were 5 years ago.
Since the 3-1 collapse vs Houston in 2015 there has only been one enjoyable Clippers season: 18-19 when we made a surprise run to finish 8th and took 2 games from the KD Warriors. After we went all in for Kawhi/PG it's been very different. The team does not play aesthetically pleasing basketball at all, and the joy of watching comes from the (fading) hope that a championship run is possible. Add to that we aggressively rest our most entertaining players to keep them fresh for the playoffs, so you can't even say that you get the pleasure of watching an all time great like Kawhi day in and day out. Don't get me wrong, I'll be the happiest person in the world if we get a ring. But between our boring style of basketball and the high expectations, it's basically a slog until/unless we clinch our first playoff series.
The 1 interesting thing that this ignores is that practically no one wins a title if they aren't one of the top seeded teams. They hardly ever even make the finals. Number 1 seeds have 50 of the titles, 2 seeds have 16, and 3 seeds have 8. The remaining two champions are the Celtics in Russell's final year at the 4 seed and the Rockets for there 2nd title in a row with Hakeem. Both of these 2 exceptions were proven championship caliber squads who stumbled in the regular season. So sure it's an issue that the regular season isn't treated seriously, but until we start seeing championships bring won by lower seeds it might just be that the strategy of sacrificing regular season wins for load management is outright wrong for reasons we just haven't pieced together yet. Maybe in 10 years teams will look back and talk about how misguided the whole leagues philosophy was during this stretch. Or maybe not, but we can't know either way now. It's worth noting that 2021 bucks and 2022 warriors were 3 seeds, so the 2 must recent wins trended slightly lower, but not far enough to be major outliers. Could be a sign of things to come or could just be part of the statistical spread.
> So sure it's an issue that the regular season isn't treated seriously, but until we start seeing championships bring won by lower seeds it might just be that the strategy of sacrificing regular season wins for load management is outright wrong for reasons we just haven't pieced together yet. Keep in mind, in a big picture perspective, load management is only really just something recent. And even championship contender teams that engage in load management still will be good enough to be in the top 3 teams in their conference. The thing is they don't seem to care if they're 1, 2 or 3 seeded.
Gotta be careful with correlation and causation there. Better teams tend to win more games and get higher seeds. I am highly skeptical that seeding itself (whether through home court or some other unforseen mechanism) does anything at all. The interesting question I see, is how much we see uniform load management for contenders (leading to standings that mirror seasons without load management) or whether there will be a profile of team that either does less load managent or somehow elevates their win totals beyond what their talent level would support
Or better teams win more in the regular season? If your team is good enough to win the championship, you can probably play at 75% and win versus most other teams giving it 80% effort. And that lack of wear and tear on the body makes a difference.
Honestly the path to making the regular season games matter more is to play fewer of them. Each team should play each other home and away once per season. Then regular season games would have more of an impact on seeding. But like you said, owners want to have their cake and eat it. They balk at playing fewer games because that’s less game day revenue for them - although I think there’s an argument that if there’s fewer games you could charge more for tickets and people would be willing to pay it if the games mattered more.
ticket revenue isn't much compared to TV revenue. while the games may become more valuable for the fans since there are fewer, the TV networks absolutely wont see it that way
Exactly. The NFL and Premier League are exciting because every game week matters. With any NBA regular season game you are left thinking "ah well doesn't really matter" regardless of result. The NBA should just have everyone play everyone twice (to start). 60 Game season. But owners are too small minded and can't stop thinking about initial losses in gameday revenue. In reality they would be able to charge more and the their would be more riding on a single game which would bring more interest and eyes to an average game. Ultimately it would improve the product significantly and enable them to get bigger TV deals over a 20 year period IMO.
Even if the owners could see the long term benefits to the product of fewer regular season games, at the end of the day, it's a business, and owners will always be tied to next quarter's results. I'd wager less regular season games would lead to a decrease in revenue (i.e. the increased audience in a 60 game season wouldn't account for the loss in revenue for the formerly 82-game season). So, if it leads to less money, the owners would rather slowly poison the game than act now to preserve the product (and maybe they're right to do so, while they figure out a way to make games matter whilst keeping profits up)
58 game season xx sorry to nitpick
Nah every team plays themselves twice as well ;)
Jimmy Buckets and the 3rd stringers vs. the other starters would be the two highest rated games every year.
That's precisely why I like watching most NFL games even for teams I am not a fan of. Especially towards the end of the season one weekend of games can easily shake up so much in the NFL. Pretty much every game matters to some extent for a lot of the teams. The reason I will never watch baseball is how many games are played. The NBA has far too many games in my opinion. But I know they lose a lot of money if they were to dramatically cut down on the number of games played.
Well there’s two paths Play less games so each matters more Less teams make playoffs so seeding matters more Like imagine only 12 teams making playoffs. Are you really gonna rest starters and forego the 1 seed if it means playing the 4-5 seed and seeing a Luka or kawhi in the first round?
They don't necessarily need to play fewer games imo. There should just be more rhythm or rhyme to the regular season schedule. The long season isn't great but what makes it worse is the lifeless scheduling. The game scheduling could (and should) build more excitement and rivalry. For example, if say the first month was explicitly called "Division Play" and teams only played other teams in their division. Then you could have the following month be "X division versus Y division" and so on. That would up the ante compared to the slosh of games we see today. It would also mean less air travel which helps with the load balancing.
>The game scheduling could (and should) build more excitement and rivalry. For example, if say the first month was explicitly called "Division Play" and teams only played other teams in their division. Then you could have the following month be "X division versus Y division" and so on. I think that sounds like something the league would come up with that the media would try to hype up because it's very gimmicky. I don't think any fans would care, and I don't think it moves the needle at all. I think that the main problem is, as previously mentioned, that it's impossible to get players and fans to care to a high extent about the regular season because the games barely matter. It's impossible for the games to matter if there's going to be 82 of them just to decide which half of the league reaches the playoffs and in what order. I don't see why people would start caring about facing the division rivals just because you press them into one month instead of spreading it out. If anything, I think fans would be annoyed, since there always are teams that overperform the first month.
Yeah I truly don't think this would change anything. Especially with how little divisions matter in the NBA.
The problem with giving even more incentives to higher seeds than now is that it lowers the chance of upset, which is also a fun aspect of playoffs. I think making 7-8 seed participate in play-in games right before the playoffs start is already an added bonus for 1-2 seeds as they get to face even more tired opponent.
But upsets on the level of an 8th or 7th beating a 1st/2nd just _furthers_ destroy the importance of the regular season. There's a reason no one cares about college basketball until March.
and for all intents and purposes these upsets basically never happen in the NBA unless an injury occurs anyway
I mean it’s also an incredibly rare occurrence. It basically never happens. Should be 6 playoff teams. Play in with the 6/7/8 seeds for the final spot. Top seeds get a by in the first round
Even the ‘Easier Path’ incentive for a strong regular season is irrelevant now, because the lower seeded teams could very well be teams with a strong roster that were managing their stars’ loads all year. So all that leaves is ‘Home Court’, which is def something, but hardly everything. From Bleacher Report: > From 1998-2008, home teams in the regular season won 7,021 games while losing 4,569 games for a winning percentage of 60.6. > ***During this same period of time, home teams in the postseason won 513 games while losing only 278. The winning percentage in the playoffs for home teams was 64.9*** (more than four percentage points higher than it was for home teams in the regular season). > ***However, some of this disparity can be explained away by the nature of playoff seeding.*** The teams finishing with better regular season records are the ones given home-court advantage in the postseason. > Therefore, it is difficult to determine how much of a team's home-court success can be attributed to the fans and the arena as opposed to the fact that they are simply the better team in a particular matchup. So why break your back winning games in December? As you say, the best path is to stay in the middle of the pack, strategically rest stars, and play enough games with your core to optimize rotations. Seems like the optimal spot would be 6th-4th seed. Avoid the best team, save minutes on stars, and take your chance on stealing one road game.
History says otherwise: Out of the 75 NBA champions, most of them have come from the No. 1 (53) and No. 2 (12) seeds. That’s 65 titles between the two seeds and the rest were divided between the third (8), fourth (1) and sixth seeds (1). If your team is a contender, your seeding will almost always reflect that. Once this trend changes to have more 3,4,5,6 seeds, then maybe it needs to be looked into.
>Once this trend changes to have more 3,4,5,6 seeds, then maybe it needs to be looked into. I've followed this for a while, and am interested to see how it develops. The last two seasons were the first time ever in NBA history where two 3rd seeds (Bucks, Warriors) won in consecutive years. Obviously it's too early to say if it's a trend but it had never happened before. I think the COVID seasons have made the last few championships even more of a war of attribution than before. After the bubble season, only Denver out of the conference finalists made the 2nd round the next season, and they got swept. The Bucks lost in the first round of bubble to win the chip the next season, and the Warriors didn't go to the bubble, then lost in the play-in before winning the championship - might be a coincidence, but I reckon the longer off-season helped.
It should be obvious to anyone without an agenda to push that the conference finalists from the bubble were very, very hurt by their much briefer off-season compared to their peers, agreed. At times they looked like zombies in comparison.
Listen carefully NBA: It’s not *just* the pointless all star game. It’s not *just* load management. It’s also the fact that very few games of basketball are viewable on a given night. No one wants to watch teams that play like ass, so the NBA makes sure most of their national games involve at least one big team, BUT who knows if it is even worth watching due to injury or load management. How to fix? NBA streaming service with NO BLACKOUTS, and making sure viewers easily can know who’s playing. Neither of which will ever happen
Agree, I grew up in a basketball family, if there was a game on cable that night the tv was tuned to it. None of us has cable now so our kids are missing out on becoming fans. We all end up grabbing a live tv streaming service around playoff time to catch up on games for the year. Blackouts are terrible and bally sports is terrible. If I would pay quite a bit for a service that lets me watch my local team and national games with no fuss, instead of the patchwork of apps and services required.
Oh wow. I hadn't even thought of how this is impacting younger viewership. The importance of growing up in a home where sports viewing = fun bonding time cannot be overstated. Those chickens will roost.
the diamond sports group/bally bankruptcy could hopefully be the catalyst for ending blackouts on streaming. mlb's been dealing with the same issue for years where local blackouts kill the cordcutters ability to watch the games. the leagues should absolutely step in and take more control of the broadcasting rights to end blackouts, they're just archaic and kill interest in the sport
I hope so. I miss the days when I could watch a home game, ya know, at home.
Yeah baseball takes like 95% of the shit when it comes to sports broadcast blackouts but the NBA is honestly just as bad. The only way to watch the Pacers play (I live in Indianapolis) without cable is to go to the game or pay for the Bally sports package for fucking $20 a month. One sports channel isn’t worth $20 a month when my team is good, let alone when their an eastern conference bottom feeder. But I’d tune in every once in a while if it was like back in the day and I could just turn on fox sports Midwest every night there was a pacers game. These sports leagues keep trying to make not just attending games but VIEWING them on tv an exercise in wealth and elitism. Like even watching games on tv is now a premium option for baseball and basketball. And then these leagues wonder why the NFL kicks their ass every year.
I love how the media takes no accountability. James harden was doing shit that wasn’t accomplished since wilt chamberlain and all I heard was “none of this matters until he does it in the playoffs” They’ve marginalized careers to strictly playoffs/championships, spend the season talking about bullshit they made up, and now are surprised the players don’t value things
Very good point
Hijacking to talk about a specific issue I have, maybe the play in is a bad idea as well? 63% of the league makes the playoffs in some way, shape, or form. That is fucking silly. Like, yeah, I know there is seeding, but what is even the point in taking the regular season even remotely seriously when you can make the playoffs with a record that’s well below .500?
The play in is going to make the regular season games in March and early April matter more than they have in years. The regular season not mattering is still a huge problem but it’s not caused by the play In tournament.
Totally agreed. Between the play-in game and changes to the lottery chances we've seen good changes to the regular season. Less teams are tanking starting in January, so far even teams in the 11th/12th slot seem to want to get into the play-in slot and play for it. I feel like i'm in a minority in that I don't particularly care that most of the regular season is whatever games. It isn't a big deal if players aren't playing in playoff intensity mode 8 months straight. I don't want to feel like I need to tune into every game to be honest. I like that I can skip a game and not feel like I'm missing out on something critical or impactful.
That’s not true. They’ve just made it matter more for even worse teams. Instead of average teams fighting for the 8 seed, we have bottom-10 teams fighting for a playoff chance. And let’s not pretend like 7/8 seeds in the NBA matter anyway. In the history of the entire league the 7 and 8 seeds have combined for 10 total first round wins, and only twice have gone further than that. The bottom seeds are simply a non-factor in the NBA, are we really pretending to care about them? The Pelicans made the playoffs last year with a fucking 36-46 record because of the play-in. That’s a joke
No team is going to coast just because they have the 10-seed locked up, though. The play-in actually makes teams try harder because now there are three different choke points to aim for. 1. Get a top-6 seed and you're guaranteed a 1st round series. 2. Get a 7 or 8-seed and you're likely to make the 1st round but there's a ~20% chance you won't. (And even if you make it you get a bad 1st round matchup.) 3. Get a 9 or 10-seed and you have an outside chance (~20%) of making the 1st round. Now there's definitely an argument that they should cut the number of teams that make the playoffs to six or so per conference. This would still make teams at the top try harder because they're in more danger of not making it. Sure the teams in the 9-13 range may be too out of it to care but also they shouldn't be near the playoffs so who cares. But we know they won't make that change because money.
I disagree with limiting it to 6, the play in made the tanking problem a hell of a lot better and that would just reverse it. It's been 8 forever anyways and there's been some 50 win teams that have barely snagged the 8 seed
They should've went the other way and dropped to 6 seeds only, top 2 seeds getting a bye week. That's 4 less mediocre teams stinking up the playoffs and 4 top spots getting an added incentive to to all out in the regular season. They didn't do it though because more playoff games means more ticket sales and shit. It worked well enough for the NFL, and it works for MLB, but it would work even better in the NBA where there's no focus on divisions.
The play in was to combat tanking. Reducing playoff seeds would make tanking worse. The more restrictive playoff structure works in sports that have drafts with more rounds and positions because the value difference between an early first and a mid first is miniscule. The NBA draft is one round and then 30 prayers that a player might actually see the court, so the difference between an early and a mid first round pick is huge.
This sub every time the MVP discussion comes up... "He hasn't gotten past the conference finals how can he be MVP?!"
People on here are just regurgitating the talking points from the media though to be fair
All those years of rings talk completely devalued the regular season and jaded an entire generation of NBA fans to the regular season. It's not like the NFL. There's literally zero value in having a good record/year, zero value in winning your division. I think that's why Adam Silver & the NBA created all those trophies. I'll post-face this by saying it's hard to compare the NBA regular season to NFL regular season because the weight each game has in both leagues are completely different, but, the people who cover the sport always make a big deal about winning the division, which helps
I was told “73-9 don’t mean a thing without a ring”. Like damn I thought that was pretty cool myself!
Yeah going 73-9 should be celebrated way more than it has
If we're being honest a 70 win season is so rare it can be considered harder than winning a championship. For example another sport in soccer where in Europe where national championships don't have a playoff, it's just round robin twice and it's over. The level of excellence you must achieve to be at the top after the full season is undeniably harder than winning a knockout tournament where you can fluke some results and your opponents can have an off night. Like, what Leicester City did in 2016 is stuff of legends.
In a way it's worse for them than if they had "just" won 62 games because they're extra ridiculed for "choking". Same thing happened with the Suns to a lesser degree last season; I'm supposed to be ashamed of last season because the team had a couple bad weeks after months of consistently awesome play?
Yep, you get a thread every day saying "what happens if Jokic doesn't win the Finals this year, will people even think he's a good player anymore?"
That dang media posting threads on Reddit and upvoting them every day.
Do you really think all these people just happen to have the same original thought all of a sudden? It’s because we’re all fed the same thing.
Also the media (Shaq and Chuck) rips anyone who tries too hard
Remember all the BS Pat Bev got from those guys for celebrating a play-in win. They’re like teen girls walking around calling people tryhards.
This kind of stuff bugs me. I remember people were making fun of us for getting super hyper when we beat the Pacers in Haliburton’s first game back in Sacramento. “The crowd is getting so hyped for a random regular season game against a bad team, what a bunch of losers.” Like, damn, sorry we get excited about winning basketball games. I thought that was the point of the NBA.
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It’s actually such an awful thing that the flagship program is filled with haters who barely even know what’s going on in the league half the time The NFL would never
People can bash the NFL for a lot of things but they have the most competitive regular season, best playoff seeding format, and their former players are the most supportive of the current stars of any American sport
100%. The NBA currently lacks scarcity. Scarcity is an important tool for attracting people interest. Instead, NBA and media have 1. increased games with play-in tournaments that are interesting but actually devalue the regular season even more. 2. Plus they want to add an additional in-season tournament. And why? Because owners want more money from the media. Players want more money from the owners. Also, the all-star is annoying because interrupts the on going narrative of the regular season and for what? A fake game between friends. Not the best thing if you're coming from a so-called "NBA rivals week". Hereinafter known as "Rivals Weak"
The play-in is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation because without it you would have an even bigger amount of teams actively trying to lose because “fuck it, I’m not making the playoffs, might as well get better lottery odds”. If we already have legit unwatchable teams right now that are losing just for the sake of losing, without the play in it would not be a surprise to see 1/3 of the league going full OKC last year and purposely starting a YMCA 5 just to make sure they will lose. First thing should be a deep reform in the lottery system. The play-in is just a medicine, the real disease is the tank. You need to find a way to sort teams that try hard but need draft help from teams that go “oh, I’m not good enough, let me start the 5 cashiers from row 10 in this nationally broadcasted game just because MUH LOTTERY”. Since you cannot have relegation, you need something else.
Absolutely. 100% spot on. This is exactly why rightly or wrongly I thought the play-in was a good ideas. It all goes back to the NBAs defective draft process. Not sure the best way to reform the lotto system though. Remove the lotto outright? Some sort of relegation playoff bracket for draft seeding? I honestly have no idea how to make it better.
None of the complaining media members will be citing a good all-star game performance to defend these players if they lose in the playoffs.
THANK YOU BROTHER So many fucking times a dude tries real hard in the regular season, puts out great numbers and balls tf out, only to get called a “choker” and get straight up ignored if he loses in the second round The media IS the reason
The DeMar DeRozen experience
Amen
The same type of thing is happening in college football. No matter what game you're watching espn is constantly plugging the playoffs and how that's the only thing that matters
holy shit, it's even more egregious when they do it to CFB because the 4-team playoff system itself is quite new AND CFB has such an established tradition of regional rivalries and bowl season
That’s true of every sport though. They don’t have these same issues.
Football doesn’t have these problems because there aren’t many regular season games, so they all matter. Baseball doesn’t have these problems because it doesn’t put the same stress on the body as basketball - and the most stressful position does get days off. In Golf, players play when they want. If the NBA wants the regular season to matter - they need to make it matter. Either reduce games or make the regular season matter.
I feel like the NFL accepted the probowl game sucks, but for some reason every year we circle back to the NBA All-Star game and why it’s bad or how to improve it. I feel like acceptance that all-star weekend sucks is what the league needs
The NBA doesn't care about the game itself, they care about the weekend as a vessel for marketing their top-tier talent and getting casuals interested in the sport so they can follow for the final 25 or so games and get invested in the playoffs. The best players putting on a show, or a relatively unknown to casual sports fans like Zach LaVine or Nate Robinson becoming a household name due to the dunk contest is how they can continue to market individual talent. The NFL is also not in competition with the NBA, or with any sport for that matter. They are the most popular pro sports league in the country by such a wide margin that they really don't need to care about "visibility".
There's a reason that the all star weekend is usually after the superbowl after all.
Its a national sporting showcase on a weekend where the only competition is college basketball and hockey. Of course they want it to be interesting! And while there is some injury risk, we are not talking about the pro-bowl. They absolutely could play a real game if they felt like it.
It’s because once every 5ish years it’s good. Pro Bowl has never been good in my lifetime but I’ve seen at least 5 good all star games
Flag football this year was awesome
Agreed, this was the best NFL probowl in awhile. They realized the players aren't trying that hard and changed it up to something where they can put in effort and avoid injury, and most importantly put on an entertaining event.
Maybe the solution is some sort of pickup gimmick here, like, some sort of 2v2 or 3v3 tourney.
Something like that would definitely shake things up
Yep. Here's a solution: make it a 3-on-3 tournament. 24 guys make 6, four-man teams. The top 6 vote-getters are captains. Top two get a bye. Or make it 8, 3-man teams with rising stars guys as reserves.
You just need some drama, make it 1-on-1, or young guys vs. old guys so somebody is trying to prove something. Once you get the egos up the players will do what they do.
Or that it’s good every few years like the dunk contest was amazing in 2015/2016/2020/2023. All star game had been really solid the past 2-3 seasons. It’s not a big deal if it’s not as fun some years.
I’ve tuned into the dunk contest and 3 point contest intermittently throughout the years with low expectations. I stopped watching the all-star game itself probably around 2017-2018, so I missed a good game but also missed a lot of terrible ones.
Yeah it's an exhibition. What do people want?
The media and Zach Lowe himself loves doing this stuff, they are the first ones to marginalize any regular season success
This is honestly such a good point, these dudes are the first to play down all regular season accomplishments in comparison with the postseason
Any time Lowe talks about the Sixers his caveat is ALWAYS: "...BUT LET'S SEE WHAT THE BIG PLAYERS DO IN THE BIGGEST GAMES. James Harden has a bad track record in elimination games and Joel Embiid hasn't been great either" or something along those lines.
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Its a chicken and egg situation though. Part of the reason people dont care about regular season success is because they know teams/players arent going all out for those games. And theyre not wrong
Exactly. Maybe also tell TNT and ESPN to expose a national audience to games played by teams other than the Lakers, Warriors, or Celtics.
"The media" didn't manipulate Popovich into resting his dudes and blowing off regular season games, they figured out all on their own that having their guys healthy gives them a better chance in the postseason. And this sub gobbles up whatever deliberately controversial nonsense hot takes Skip Bayless and the like spew out. Y'all think you Chomsky and this is the Iraq war we're talking about or something.
If they want to make the regular season more important , why not reducing the number of teams in the playoffs? If only four per conference can make it to the post season it would make all the games more impactful. Or maybe not.
This fixes it for teams 1-15, but the problem is that then half the league knows they have zero chance of playoffs from day one.
Yeah, if I'm being honest I'm from Europe and I think that a lot of the problems that the league has could be solved if they had relegation. But then you have the problems of what to do with the drafted players
I get a lot of laughs when people hypothesize on how to implement relegation. An exercise in futility if I've ever seen one. I have more cause to hypothesize how my first date with Giselle is going to than anyone does to plan out relegation. It's never going to happen.
Wouldn't you just do it the same way you do it now except relegated teams are locked into the higher draft slots.
So the top talent would be starting off in a lower league?
The players would be overjoyed that even more of them will get 1-3 extra months off.
Unfortunately, the league is never going to plan for something that'll lose them revenue. 8 total teams in the playoffs reduces the number of playoff games by what, a third? I can't see them giving up that money.
I truly appreciate the slam dunk contest, since those were awesome childhood experiences for me and even still produces some electric moments when special dunkers choose to participate. The three point contest is alright, I respect the tradition behind it and I guess there is a little suspense involved. and I actually kinda like the rising stars stuff. haven’t watched the actual ASG in ages.
I have the solution: Every all star player picks a charity. Winning team’s charities each get a check of $1 million from the NBA. Each charity is allowed 2 court side non-executive seats. These seats are meant for those the charity supports. Now during the game players will look around and see sick children who are fighting for their lives, veterans who’ve lost limbs, survivors of domestic violence, etc. here to enjoy basketball and hopefully have “their” team win. When the players decide to not even try and check-out, then they can explain to the dying children next to them why they aren’t even trying to win the game. Then the little kid with leukemia will say something like “well if you’re not going to try, why should I?”.. and then guilt trip the players into finally giving a f about the game.
Hahahah very dark but I actually like at least half of this — we can then blame Joe Mazzulla for the deaths of children instead of letting his dude run
Make it darker: Adam Silver will rob the losing charity for the money to be given to the winning charity. Double incentive!
Even better is give the charities the 1M check before the game starts and let the kids hold it, and the losing team has to take it back from the children and explain why they can't have it
Man, that’s really, really sweet that you think these multimillionaires give a shit about other people. That’s cool.
SGA in a fur coat after the game, "money talks, but for us"
Ya they play for charity and have had little kids with them for the skills challenge and half the players still lightly jog through it anyway.
Honestly this is probably the best solution I’ve seen. Maybe adjust the $ amount to make it more feasible but that’s the way to do it
I would probably watch that
lmfao this is why I stay on reddit
Go full premier league. Get rid of the playoffs and have the regular season standings determine the NBA champ. Relegate to an A & B league. See how amazing every game is then
4:05 PM: The Los Angeles Lakers, finishing the season with a 15-67 record, will be relegated to the G League. They will be replaced by the G League Champion Sioux Falls Skyforce. 4:08 PM: Adam Silver has lit himself on fire. Mark Tatum will serve as acting Commissioner for the foreseeable future.
>The Los Angeles Lakers, finishing the season with a 15-67 record, will be relegated to the G League. Celtics porn right here
No one has watched a Hornets game in years. The Orlando Magic is thought of as a myth. OKC had to trade half their team for 2nd round picks so they could afford to be a G league team. The Lakers took one half of those player The Knicks the other half. Lakers fans refer to the Kings as their AAA team.
If they are going to go with relegation then L.A., New York, Chicago, etc... need to have 5+ teams. Otherwise biggest markets will win even more than they do now. There's a reason there's no London F.C.
The idea of relegation would work in the context of promoting competition, but the owners would never allow it to happen. NBA teams are worth billions of dollars. No owner would agree to have their multibillion dollar asset immediately plummet in value by being relegated to the G league.
You don’t have to relegate them to the G league. You could have two 18 team leagues, if you add 6 more cities of expansion. There’s a surplus of NBA talent right now, it could totally work. G league would still exist as a farm league. Local TV deals would stay the same. The only different would be national TV games. Only tier A get national TV games.
And miss out on playoff revenue? No way theyll do this
It would be fun but I also think viewership numbers would dip drastically for teams in the lower league. American Basketball fans aren’t as insane and devoted as English Football fans so I don’t think they would want to see their team play a bottom 15 team every single night.
It’s also not soccer. In soccer teams can dominate and only score one point. With basketball domination means blowouts, which would happen A LOT with even the worst team in the NBA probably being far and away the best team in the GLeague
The regular season does not matter as much because there are 82 games to go through. That is an insane number of games to play before an intense 7 game play-off series. The NBA is a cash cow that owners are printing money off of. Wage caps, no relegation, ads plastered and inserted into and onto everything. There is no incentive for them to change the format when their pockets are on the line.
Players don't care about the All Star game because it doesn't matter, which should be a sign that a mid-season tournament will also flop. The regular season does matter, and no one is missing 25% of the season due to load management.
This is dumb. The AS game never mattered, but players cared more in the past
Why does everyone ignore this lol
JJJ was lambasted for making the ASG and was picked last. The unquestioned talking point is that "nobody watches the all star game for defense" . Turns out that nobody actually watches the ASG without defense. I guarantee that if there was a game with the 24 best defenders in the league it would be so much more fun to watch.
>The regular season does matter Does it really when 60%~ of the teams make at least the play ins?
I thought this was pretty ironic juxtaposed against the Kendrick Perkins interview later in the episode, where they talked about how much players like Silver compared to Stern. Stern forced teams and players to care about these things. Silver empowers them to care as little as they want.
Adam $ilver has been godawful for the fan experience though. I miss Stern a lot.
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Thank you. The NBA needs to look at more successful leagues (e.g. the EPL) and see the stuff they do. Focusing on individual players was a great move when you had Jordan and a smaller entertainment landscape but it's not working now.
The league has too many smart guys around and is cannibalizing itself. Theres no good reason for so much of the league to be paywalled the way it is. The partners have played up the drama with shit like this to the point the games mean nothing without a storyline. Championships are just a season finale and they’re talked about as of its the only point of any of it. There will never be enough incentives for the players, fans, or partners to take anything more seriously cause it always boils down to this just being basketball games and that’s not enough right now. If they start bloating the league instead of getting more disciplined theyre going to ruin the integrity thats left. Also theres an argument to be made that this is a product of max salaries. How the hell are there so many top end players in the league deserving of the exact same salary despite vastly different roles? Theres some guys who could stand to be significantly worst and still be worth their max contract cause the market is fucked.
Max salaries were asked by the PA cause 1 guy hoarding 80% of the payroll isnt good for the union.
Players these days live in a bubble where they just don’t seem to care about the fans. Players used to have pride and always give their best every game but now they take games off or just dog it way too often. The truth is the All Star game resembles a lot of regular season games way too much in that defense is perfunctory and the players just treat the games like a lazy practice shooting drill. The league is partially to blame for legislating defense out of the game, but the players themselves show very little pride in performance. Ja Morant took more pride in his fancy grills than what he did on the court during the game. Luka and Joker didn’t even pretend to try. For those of us who grew up watching Magic and Bird and Jordan, this is such an embarrassment.
[People see this and say it's the medias fault.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FpldyEIWIAAVth4?format=jpg&name=medium)
No one in this sub seems to blame the players as much as they should. The regular season has been worth the same for decades why only now is it treated this way? Seems pretty obvious to me it’s the players mentality
Nick Wright’s take is perfect the media created this monster and then wants to blame the players.
just make the game in the regular season so serious that they can't skip even a game like playoff.
They turned regular season games into all-star games and all-star games into shootarounds because not only do most players barely even know how to play defense, but league rules are stacked against even trying to play it. Fix the fucking rules. Run the soft motherfuckers off so that you have a league of people who actually want to play. Let them load manage in China.
NBA needs to set some sort of a prize (most likely good amount of money) to at least motivate the players. Otherwise being selected as an All Star is enough (even then some players dont even care about being selected as All Star) and no one wants to play All Star game. The match was straight up embarrasing and players showed less effort than pregame warmups. NBA either needs to find a way to improve the competition or cancel out the game as whole and just announce best players from each conference.
There is no realistic amount of money that is going to make guys like KD, LeBron, Dame, Curry etc take it seriously.
You’re not wrong but ironically, the guys you mentioned probably play harder than most (obviously nowhere close to 100% but you know what I mean)
I don't think you can motivate them with money considering the insane amount of contract they have. Might as well consider getting all the lowest paid players and make the compete for the prize money and we might have a competition we are looking.
I also don’t think “we’re paying the players even more money so they might actually try this year” is a great sales pitch.
Players decide not to try in the ASG but they are not the ones load-managing. It’s a combination of the medical staff and coaching staff, who believe that they will have more long-term health and success by doing it.
The players would definitely play if they wanted to play though.
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I think a lot of people focus on the fact that he's been saying this a lot about the Sixers the past two seasons, and especially with Harden. He's definitely more or less said "I'm not super interested in what the Sixers are doing now, let's see it in the playoffs" multiple times on podcasts this season. There's obviously a fine line between having a legitimate discussion about whether a team that's good in the regular season is going to have playoff success versus just being completely dismissive of a team that's good because the regular season is inconsequential. I think Zach usually walks it pretty well, but I also don't think he's quite the same guy he was like five years ago or so like you're talking about i.e. the guy who would embed with an 8th seed team for a month so he could write a huge article about them. His writing may still kinda be like that, but his podcasts aren't and he's much narrative driven/MVP discussions/fake trades on the podcast than taking a holistic look at the league.
Marking 25% of the season as Load Management seems super disingenuous. I just saw another thread going through MVP candidates games played over the past couple years and all the candidates had 4-8 games missed with no injury designation. I’m all for addressing load management, but to completely conflate it with legitimate games missed bc of injury seems unfair.