Is there any professional league whose inception and conclusion are as opaque as the National Basketball Association? Football fits nicely into its September-to-January window. Baseball awakens in the Spring and resolves itself by Fall. The NBA, however, seems to always be going.
So when David Stern announced that the 2011-12 season would be an abridged, 66-game journey, I was intrigued. For the first time in ages, it seemed as though the NBA regular season would matter.
Even though 66 games are only 16 off the standard 82, the relevance of each contest appears to have grown exponentially (or at least by 19.5%). But this isn't the only reason I feel the NBA should take a long look at their modification-by-necessity and consider implementing it indefinitely. No, there are other major benefits to the shortened season.
For starters, I have always wondered by NBA players ever needed a two-game week. These are professional athletes being paid millions of dollars to entertain fans: entertain me. One of my favorite parts about baseball and football is that a fan hardly ever has to guess if his or her team is playing on any given day. It's safe to assume that your team will be playing daily during the MLB season (as teams generally play 6-7 games a week), while the once-weekly NFL keeps it simple.
The NBA, however, has long been the league of sifting through internet schedules in order to keep up.
This is where the 66-game season wins out. With anywhere between three to five games in the average week, fan interest can stay high throughout the entire campaign. There is rarely a stretch of four days without my favorite team playing a game — which allows me to feel a bit more connected.
Secondly, the hectic cluster of game after game after game better simulates what each team is working toward: the playoffs. I mentioned in my critique of the MLB postseason a few months back that the biggest issue with Major League Baseball is that teams are inexplicably asked to build a roster that can win a marathon and then somehow achieve success in the sprint of the playoffs.
It's always been the same in the NBA. After 82 games being played bi-weekly, teams are expected to turn up the juice for a series where games are played every other night? Please. This is why basketball is the sport where favorites seem to win most playoff series. Stars can coast through the regular season, only "turning it on" for marquee matchups, and save their energy to blowout Cinderella stories in the first and second round of the playoffs.
But now teams like the Heat, the Bulls, the Lakers, and the Spurs are being forced to put their playoff-level talent on display almost nightly. This has already accounted for some thrilling finishes and stunning displays of domination (see: Bulls/Lakers opening night, Miami's 39-point rout of Charlotte, et al). Nobody wants to watch LeBron James or Kobe Bryant lazily pocket 35 and 10; instead, this year's NBA has given us the joy of watching a fast-breaking James and Dwyane Wade wow the crowd with their speed; a gritty Ray Allen fight for every point in a Paul Pierce-less loss to the aforementioned Miami; a high-flying Blake Griffin scrape out 25 with jumpers complementing his flair. It has brought the regular season to life.
Lastly — and most importantly, in my mind — the shortened NBA season is finally going to reward teams for building solid rosters. One beef I've always had with basketball is it is truly the only major professional sport (MLB, NFL, NHL being the others — sorry soccer) where you can build around a roster of one (see: 2002 Philadelphia 76ers, 2004-2009 Cleveland Cavaliers) and still be one of the best.
Naturally, deeper teams (early 2000s Spurs, 2010 Dallas Mavs) always had a small advantage, but this handicap is only going to become more evident as the starting five of each team runs out of gas on a week-to-week basis. The Sixth Man Award will no longer be a novelty because teams are going to need sixth, seventh, eighth, and often ninth men to play more minutes this year than ever before.
Many people are probably saying, "Who wants to see Steve Novak instead of Carmelo Anthony though?" That's not what I'm necessarily saying. What I'm saying is that I want to watch great teams win games — not just great players.
All in all, professional basketball lost a lot of credibility this past offseason with the lockout. Whether the NBA likes it or not, it simply does not have the muscle of the NFL to endure player-owner dissatisfaction while maintaining fan support. However, the buzz of a shortened, rushed season has brought some fans back around to — if nothing else — see how the pros can keep up.
Between playing more frequently, forcing stars to show effort nightly, and reintroducing the concept of team basketball, the 66-game NBA season seems to be a great experiment — one that I assert should become the norm for years to come.
January 5, 2012
Anthony Brancato:
But whether it’s 66 games or 82, the NBA needs to place much greater emphasis on division rivalries, which will not only lead to higher income for the league due to better attendance and TV ratings, but also lower outgo due to reduced travel costs.
Here is what I came up with for a perfectly workable, 66-game schedule format:
Each team plays its four division rivals 7 times. Total = 28 games.
Each team plays eight of its 10 non-division opponents within the same conference twice, and the other two three times, with the three-game series between teams that finished in the same position in their respective divisions the year before (1st-place vs. 1st-place, 2nd vs. 2nd, etc.). Total = 22 games.
Each team plays 14 of the 15 teams in the other conference once, and one twice, with the two-game series between teams that finished in the same overall position within their own conference the year before (1st vs. 1st down to 15th vs. 15th, with the results of the playoffs used to determine 1st through 8th so that one year’s NBA Finals participants always play each other twice the following season). Total = 16 games.
28 + 22 + 16 = 66.
And also change the playoff format to make it more division-based: The top two teams in each division make it, plus the two best third-place teams in each conference. The three division winners get the top 3 seeds, the three second-place teams 4 through 6 and the two third-place teams 7 and 8.