NBA State of Play – Rule Changes – Trends – CBA – Schedule Reform – Load Mgmt – etc

if the league reduced the schedule to i.e. 72 games i'm not sure that would really change the mentalities of franchises & older stars.

Steve Kerr on the Warriors sitting their big names in Cleveland tonight

“I feel terrible for fans who bought a ticket expecting to see someone play. It’s a brutal part of the business. It’s why I’m going to continue to advocate for 72-game seasons.”

Full soundbite pic.twitter.com/P0ZGbv1DNE

— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) January 20, 2023

i think every game you reduce it by is an improvement until you reach the ideal number of games which is prob like 50

60. play every team twice and get rid of divisions/conferences

yeah playing every team twice makes a lot of sense

every team twice would be 58

yeah i’m pretty opposed to any of this stuff that doesn’t get toward 58, and i’ll hold out judgment until i see it but i definitely haven’t seen the brilliant incentives that are going to make players care about this tournament.

if you win you get seven fouls a game for the rest of the season

if you win you only have to play 58 games that year

the ultimate prize

the owners would shut down the league before they reduce games and give up revenue. there would have to be an entirely different economic model. maybe in like 20 years when cable TV is fully dead things will be different

i mean they could build a more profitable business with fewer games but that would take vision

Once Elon takes over

there is certainly value in scarcity and while it would take some time and thought i don't believe that 17 home games per team of gate receipts is some sort of insurmountable amount of money to recoup

but if we're thinking long-term, what happens today with back to backs has to be among the worst consumer experiences out there and could be really destructive over time, like if you want alienate a well-off casual fan in cleveland just get them to pay secondary market prices for this game against the warriors where no one is playing.

sorry 12 home games

turning on the tv seeing two teams playing in unrecognizable alternate uniforms and also you dont recognize the players because the stars arent playing is a bad experience

tbf i do think the nba is generally excellent tho it would be better if healthy players played and also if a teams uniforms all more or less had the same color scheme

yeah, the nba is in a good place now which is exactly why they should get after some of these issues now

tbf i do think the nba is generally excellent tho it would be better if healthy players played and also if a teams uniforms all more or less had the same color scheme

― lag∞n, Friday, January 20, 2023 10:07 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the two most important issues

Making the season into a big double round robin is a great idea

Then you wouldn’t even need playoffs

that's how the EPL works but they obviously have other tournaments that their teams go to which adds interest, so you would still want the playoffs to have some kind of tourney element.

to me the big thing that does is get to the ideal of each team playing 2 games a week, you do one on weds/thurs and one on fri/sat, you give the season some structure as opposed to having no idea what each team's schedule is week to week, and every game becomes an event because it's really hard to blow off games in that format.

i agree that would be the ideal, and each game becomes more of an anticipated “event” a la the NFL

but it’s not just 17 games’ worth of tickets and hot dogs - it’s all the ad money that goes with those games

there would still be more than enough games for the national tv deals which is the big money. and local tv is going to look very very different in a few years anyway.

Just someone fix league pass.

538 wants in on the post-up party

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-nba-teams-are-bringing-the-post-up-back-to-life/

Thinking about post-ups in a vacuum, however, misses what makes them so valuable in the current NBA. The league is shifting away from static plays of any kind, and toward a fluid state of multiple actions layered on top of one another. The post-up as a primary playcall, with a ball handler dribbling downcourt and dumping the ball into the post, where a center promptly battles another center before shooting, is finished; that precise sequence has happened only twice this season.x
Once by Jokić and once by Andre Drummond.

this is wild. to think kendrick perkins used to get this play called for him to start every game!

wasting your first possession "getting your center involved" was such a bizarre coaching conventional wisdom

it really was, every team did it it felt like

big advantage for teams who had good centers

You might know it as "walking the dog."

I traced its 70-year history, from 60s legends to Chris Paul, and dug deep into how a new generation - led by @JaMorant - has found its most cutthroat purpose yet.

The history of walking the dog, for @espn: https://t.co/mqGCGIsIgl

— Ben Dowsett (@Ben_Dowsett) January 25, 2023

they need to change the rule that lets you drain the clock by rolling the ball. it should only be used to extend the clock

Disagree. The defending team should just have someone in the backcourt on the inbounds. It’s only happening because they let him do it.

I did enjoy watching peak Dwight go to town in the post

Disagree. The defending team should just have someone in the backcourt on the inbounds. It’s only happening because they let him do it.

― Jeff, Wednesday, January 25, 2023 11:22 AM (one minute ago)

right, until this happens

The tactic came to an extreme head in a late October game between the Nuggets and Celtics. With about five minutes left, Denver forward Aaron Gordon slammed a two-handed dunk to pull the Nuggets within 13. As Gordon jogged back on defense, Al Horford rolled the ball to Jayson Tatum so slowly that it completely stopped before his own free throw line. As Tatum stood alongside the ball, Horford and Grant Williams guarded him like linemen blocking for a running back. Nuggets coaches called for Gordon to force Tatum to pick the ball up. Gordon barreled through Williams so hard that he was called for a flagrant.

the fact that the main person quoted in this article crowing about the value of rolling the ball to waste the clock is chris paul should tell you everything you need to know about the legitimacy of this practice

Oh no, a single instance of it going bad!

ive seen that clip and gordon was clearly being a dickhead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU3gaffdUB8

If you pressure someone walking the dog, you’re going to get a wedgie.

love to have two guys set up in the backcourt playing offensive line for a third player who is watching the ball sit on the floor. that's the kinda basketball you really wanna see

Ideally basketball will become a game where the referee tosses the ball into the air, then bounces on the ground a few times, comes to a halt, and two teams just stare at it for 48 minutes

changing the rules is for cowards, all sports must be allowed to become as perverted as possible

not good

These are the kind of fouls the league has to let go of to bring a little bit more balance to the game.

What was De'Andre supposed to do here? pic.twitter.com/DoSEaFqhQq

— Nekias (Nuh-KY-us) Duncan (@NekiasNBA) January 31, 2023

yeah that is absurd. no one wants to watch that. except calls like that are how the league looks after its stars

dame was even surprised, he was already countering cos he knew he got beat to the call

beat to the *spot

feel like that was just a bad call but they are calling the game too tight imho

its bad when they call those but then miss the more obvious hacks and holds on the perimeter

it’s a contact sport iirc

on occasion