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

I think that was just reflexive habit on the ref's part, left over from years of calling fouls on that crap. Once the whistle was blown, he couldn't un-blow it without looking even more like an idiot.

my solution of a postseason single elimination tourney to decide draft order among non-playoff teams would categorically solve tanking forever and be dope af

xps

well well well

Report: With play-in tournament, NBA would shorten regular season to 78 games https://t.co/Xg4difx4YB

— Kurt Helin (@basketballtalk) December 28, 2021

pretty cool

Sources: The NBA has a new format for Rising Stars at All-Star Weekend, featuring four seven-player teams competing in a three-game tournament and each game having final target score.

28 players: 12 rookies, 12 sophomores – and for the first time, four G League Ignite players.

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) January 25, 2022

https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/story/_/id/33303891/reinventing-basketball-nba-look-75-years-baggage

its crazy they havent already done this

FIBA has found solutions to this problem + the take foul by allowing advantage situations if the defense gains possession off of a 24 sec violation AND giving 2 shots + possession if a take foul is committed.

Really no reason the NBA should be this slow on the uptake. https://t.co/ON7bypSq1j

— Joe Viray (@JoeVirayNBA) March 11, 2022

they should honestly do it before the playoffs

there are so many dumb reasons why this has gotten done yet. it's really frustrating.

*hasn't

The NBA is getting younger and lighter.

2014-15 — 26.7 yrs | 223 lbs average
2015-16 — 26.7 yrs | 222 lbs
2016-17 — 26.6 yrs | 221 lbs
2017-18 — 26.4 yrs | 220 lbs
2018-19 — 26.3 yrs | 219 lbs
2019-20 — 26.1 yrs | 218 lbs
2020-21 — 26.1 yrs | 217 lbs
2021-22 — 26.1 yrs | 215 lbs

— StatMuse (@statmuse) April 12, 2022

and speedier, too

NBA teams have suggested some tweaks to the Play-In Tournament, which the league will discuss with the Board of Governors and NBPA this offseason.

For example, if a team has a large enough lead in the standings, should it be exempt from the Play-In? https://t.co/2drqAAY3ZY

— Alex Kennedy (@AlexKennedyNBA) April 13, 2022

"The core of what we were trying to accomplish with the Play-In was driving regular-season competition,” Wasch said. “We use the word 'tiers' a lot to describe what that means. There's now a tier of the top-four teams, each of which get home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. There’s a 5-6 tier, which gives teams a guaranteed playoff berth. There’s a 7-8 tier, which gives teams two opportunities to win a game in the Play-In. And, of course, there’s the 9-10 tier that gives teams a shot to win two in a row to get in the playoffs.

yeah its working as intended and if you want to avoid it just get a top 6 record

no

Keep the play-in forever. Drop regular season games. Add the in-season tournament. Overhaul the NBA calendar. No reason to wait. In-season tourney incentives: cash prize, the trophy, wins count toward season standings. Single-elimination and it all matters, just like the play-in.

— Kevin O'Connor (@KevinOConnorNBA) April 16, 2022

wins count toward the regular season standings... but it's single elimination, just like the play-in. hmm

following on from the recent discussion of injuries etc

the nba being a physical contest will always find a way to push the limits of what the body can do and this will result in injuries.

i don't think shortening the regular season is the answer. sure back to backs should be dropped, but apart from that there would be limited benefit to reducing games further. an nfl player might only see an hour of real action in a full season but will still get totally wrecked in that time. similarly if nba player minutes were restricted across the board you would probably see bigger athletes with more fast twitch muscle who would combust just as frequently, if not more so, and probably more violently. the long regular season as it is has an endurance aspect which might not be apparent to the casual viewer but which really adds to depth of the league.

part of the story behind stars missing games is that the top players are still undercompensated. any team would give kawhi a max even knowing for a fact that he will only play at best 50% of games, because half a kawhi is still worth it. so limiting the impact of injuries (or injury prone players) will need deeper restructing. you're looking at things like a new max contract that allows for much higher dollar amounts but can only be paid out per game played.

most coaches would be happy to run any role player into the ground if it meant a couple more wins, and the disabled player exemption is basically a licence to do just that, so the exemption should be scrapped.

some minor stuff would be allowing more perimeter contact to slow down player movement and expanding the charge circle diameter to the full width of the key.

/

the disabled player exception is hard to get and even harder to use effectively. i don't think it has much of an effect on anything.

most top players are effectively playing a short season now due to resting games and sitting out with minor injuries, which is a problem for the nba in that their big regular season matchups are almost never played with full rosters, best case scenario they figure out what the largest number games is that will inspire teams to play all their guys, i think part of that is just having a enough time between games so players are naturally rested and then the other thing is have few enough games that each game matters, that number is 58 thank you for coming to my presentation

yup. lebron has probably put more thought and effort and $$ into this than anyone and has been consistently saying the ramp-up and recovery between games matters much more than the number of minutes he plays in a given game. the hope would be that a reduced schedule gives everyone the same opportunity to do that stuff effectively.

the problem with this line of thinking is the assumption that lebron or kawhi would play 58 games instead of 42 or whatever the prorated prescribed rest schedule was

there is a number at which they will play all the games when as mentioned you meet their rest needs and the game mean enough to play, like nfl players dont take rest games for instance, obvs no one knows what that number is but its def less than now, i think also even if you never get all way the to that number you will decrease resting by playing fewer games

also! you will decrease injuries which are a huge source of missed games

the issue is more existential. regardless of how many games you reduced the schedule to, the most logical approach with stars would be a cautious one. i guess if you cut the schedule to like 30 games you could get everyone to play every game, but realistically speaking i don’t think you’d ever be able to reduce the schedule to a point where load management was detrimental. a better approach would prob be just to pay star players for playing in national TV games, or having some sponsor put up a $1 million bonus for best player in a TNT or ESPN game

the NBA could take some of its TV money and pay out bonuses at the end of the year to every player who played 75 games, 65 games etc. but of course they’d never actually give up more money to ensure a better product

idk i think if you got to ~60 games and big stars load managed to 50 things would be fine. i'm not really sure there's a realistic financial incentive that will move the needle for anybody as we get to there era of annual salaries north of $40 million

*the era

see (jordan) you, despite BTW claiming otherwise in the directly preceding sentence, think the no resting number is 30 games but no one knows what it actually is, also as mentioned while eliminating resting totally would be best by reducing games even if you dont totally eliminate resting you will decrease its occurrence, paying players for big games could maybe work too but the thing about trying to move towards a number of games that doesnt cause fatigue induced injuries is its just generally good for the quality of the game to have healthy competitive bouncy players, its a holistic solution to a number of related problems

you couldn't pay players for selected big games without impacting competitive balance. its just not feasible. and jordan is absolutely correct in that reducing the number of games won't reduce the % that stars rest in.

its not math, its the human body

yeah i have no idea why this is some kind of established proportion

theyre resting because theyre tired

i generally tend to err on the side of players want to play, within reason--the issue is that our current schedule has 20 superfluous games

so whats the perfect number of games in a season to guarantee peak performance? 10? 12? 3? and how will players bodies & juice regimes change to suit that number?

its 58

xp "peak performance" and "meaningful regular season" are two different frames so i think we're talking past each other

well thats kind of my point, i think the league needs to incentivise being available to play over stars playing at their peak in the few games they do play

then listen to lebron--give time for recovery between games and stars will play

yeah its just not that simple haha

stars rest because they’re tired but they also rest (as directed by their teams) out of risk mitigation. and the way front offices view sports now, i don’t know if that changes if you reduce the schedule. this is partly why adam silver keeps going on about the midseason tournament — trying to create meaning beyond the one championship given out per year might give players more reason to play in non-playoff games — but i don’t think they have the right solution yet. making front offices care about regular season games is a more complicated issue than just shortening the schedule

yeah totes

Really the first order of business that would prob improve things enough without drastically changing revenue for owners is to get rid of back to backs, then go from there.

They are never going to meaningfully reduce the number of games in the era of TV contracts, CBAs and salary caps as that would require people (owners AND players) deciding to take less money. Could they go from 82 to 78? Sure. They aren't going to 72 or 58 or anything like that. They are more likely to go to 86 somehow (more ins, in-season tourney, whatever) than 76 imo.

i think they could do it, the money is def an issue but the quality of the game is too, the national tv money which is the biggest single source would be unaffected fwiw since thats for a relatively small percentage of the total games anyway, where they would take a hit is local tv and stadium revenue

wld be funny if they did the in season tournament and everyone just took the opportunity to rest their guys

Like baseball, I think owners (and to some extent players) don't ultimately care about the quality of the game v. wrenching every last dollar they can out of their investment.

a higher quality game makes them more money tho, obvs you cant guarantee theyre going to connect the dots eg mlb, but its not impossible

the game is v high quality rn though isn’t it? the regular season used to be way snoozier. you could argue the reason for so many injuries is that guys are actually playing like they care for more minutes than they used to

i think resting players particularly in big reg season matchups is a legitimate problem, and the league agrees in that they already tried to address it, granted in a totally ineffective way, basically when a casual fan tunes into a sunday abc game you want all the guys there, you want a really good game, thats how you bring people back

yeah the quality game to game is decent but the stars not playing drags things down quite a bit. the end of the season has gotten a bit better with the 7-10 seeds being what they are but you do still see a lot of guys get shut down.

yeah kudos to the league the playin tourney is working as planned, to decrease tanking, and the games have even been exciting which is a nice bonus, im sure theyll keep working on solving the resting issue but i kinda doubt theres as easy of a solution out there