Before the season starts, hear my crazy idea to stop tanking and other meaningless games. I got this idea from swiss format in esports.

At the start of the season each team will just play two games for each teams in their conference. This would result to 28 games per team. Bottom 3 teams for each conference will be eliminated. So if your team is injured early on, goodbye season.

After that, teams would play all teams remaining once, with 51 games at this point. bottom 4 teams will be eliminated resulting to 8 teams per conference remaining.

Remaining teams will face other teams twice this round and eliminate bottom 4 teams for each conference. With this change, if a team makes it until the last round, they would have played 81 games, just 1 game less than the normal format. although this change will shorten playoff by 1 round, it would make for a higher stakes during regular season.

Now you might ask, wouldn’t the upper teams just load manage if they clinch a spot for the next round. NO, they would not because after each round W-L record will be reset, making all games meaningful. So, injuries and load management be damned.

Another question you might ask, wouldn’t tanking teams still tank in this format and the answer to that is also no. If your team is eliminated, goodbye player salary for the season. Get the players expected salary for that year, divide it by 81 and that would be the players salary per game. For example, Jaylen Brown, he’ll make almost $29M next year which would mean he’ll make ~$352k per game. if they get eliminated 1st round, he would only get ~$10M for the season. Sponsors would also get mad if teams don’t make the next round since they won’t be anywhere anymore.

So yeah, this is my crazy idea to make all games meaningful. I know this won’t happen but a man can dream

  • Clapbakatyerblakcat@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    While games are meaningless to you, they are not to the 16-20,000 people that attend them. Eliminating 1 game from the schedule would eliminate 270,000 attendences (18k x 15) Those 270k people are much more important to the league than a million internet “fans” on their couches that don’t contribute to revenue.

      • JTenjouNi@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        If it made the league more money they’d change it, instead they’ve added a few more games with the play-in and in season tournament

        • Staggeredboard@alien.topBEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I know the league knows how to make money better than I do. My point was we want (as fans) the games to be more competitive. I don’t care how much money the NBA makes.

          I was suggesting the counterargument to the making less money, but yeah I understand if this idea was more profitable it would’ve been implemented already.

          But I do think it’s a fun thought exercise to think of creative solutions.

  • agk927@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    No game is meaningless. What about developing rookie players. A super good rookies development has to be halted simply because the team isn’t good enough? It amazes me how many people want less games. Do you like basketball or not?

  • DrownedInBeans@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    the simplest way to make games matter is just to allow fewer teams to make the playoffs. right now two-thirds of the league qualifies for the postseason - 20 out of 30 teams. making the playoffs is a participation trophy in the NBA. the league is never going to make all 82 regular season games matter when it is so easy to make the postseason in this league. out of all the professional sports leagues it has the least parity and actually needs the fewest playoff spots, but they allow the most playoff spots. the reason players sit out of meaningless NBA games is because the NBA has made a system where the games are meaningless. if they cut it down to say 6 playoff teams per conference (like the NFL used to do) where the top-2 teams get a first round bye, all the great players would have huge incentives to play hard until the end of the season in hopes of getting one of those top-2 seeds. those 5-10 teams would have to play harder down the stretch because there’s fewer playoff spots to snag. those 9-15 teams in each conference might have less to play for, but those are teams that are never ever going to win a title anyway.

  • JTenjouNi@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Now you might ask, wouldn’t the upper teams just load manage if they clinch a spot for the next round. NO, they would not because after each round W-L record will be reset

    Why would this stop load management if your record resets? Just be top 12, top 8, top 4 each round instead of gunning for a top 1/2 seed