2021-22 NBA "REGULAR" SEASON THREAD

There's also been work done that shows zero statistical difference (in baseball) between a 5 and 7 game series in terms of outcomes. To actually move the needle the series would need to be like 35 games lol

i support it

ive floated this idea before but now that there are 32 teams forthcoming, heres my plan to save basketball from dumbness:

-create 2 8-team divisions per conference
-play a home/away against all 31 teams (62 G)
-play an additional home/away against your division opponents (14 G)

-top 8 teams in each conference go to playoffs, division winners not guaranteed of any seed
-bottom 8 teams in each conference get put into round robin play: four 4-team groups, home/away against all 3 opponents (6 G) to determine seeding. from there, 4 rounds of single elimination to determine draft order.

this solves tanking once and for all bc the very worst teams will struggle in the offseason if they can't put out a competitive team. the best rookies will go to more competent franchises. makes the end of the regular season a legit must-watch for the non-playoff teams.

if the league wants to maintain the 82 game schedule for everyone, i guess they can try doing that little tournament thing theyre considering but idk, havent thought that far ahead.

asking players on bad teams to play hard so the team can draft the guy who is going to replace them is kinda sketchy though

i think the lottery should just be flat odds, its the halfway point between the conflicting ideas of putting the best talent onto the weakest teams and rewarding teams that tried to be competitive but didn't get there

removes all weird secondary incentives in either direction, the only incentive for every team should be to try to make the playoffs

hockey heads have proposed a draft order based on (essentially) how successful a team is *after* being eliminated from the playoffs. it has its issues — and would be a little different in hoops — but it’s interesting and keeps fans of bad teams rooting for wins rather than losses

thats pretty good but i like the simplicity of my plan more

also it makes the lottery more exciting which is cool everyone loves lotteries

tbh i don't really see the downside of the play in. it has definitely curbed tanking and extended the relevancy of the regular season. you get some extra do or die playoff style games. it's added layers to the playoff race which had typically been pretty stagnant in terms of jockeying for seeding. like if you took out the play in scenario from the west this year it would basically be a dead conference for the rest of the season except for memphis and golden state playing for 2/3 and dallas/denver for 5/6. the 1 seed is up by 8.5 games, there's multiple game gaps between several other teams... the 8 seed is up 5.5 games. at least now you have a race for 5/6/7 that is legitimately meaningful as well as one for 9/10. this year in the east w/ no play in you would have a bunch of teams fighting for 8 but i actually prefer the scenario where it's teams playing for seeding and then we have a little mini playoffs to see who gets in. that's far more interesting to me than atlanta, charlotte, toronto etc fighting it out indirectly in regular season games that aren't even on TV.

i guess the one downside i can think of is some scenario like we kinda have w/ the lakers where a team that has had injuries to its stars plays its way into the playoffs from outside the top 8 and then becomes a threat to the 1 seed which doesn't "deserve" having to play that team but deserve isn't a great way to run an entertainment product and i don't see any real argument for why having star driven teams that had rough regular seasons getting into the playoffs is bad for basketball fans

let the top seed choose which play-in winner it wants to face

removes all weird secondary incentives in either direction, the only incentive for every team should be to try to make the playoffs

― ciderpress, Thursday, March 10, 2022 1:05 PM (twelve minutes ago)

i actually think the system right now is working pretty well insofar as it's okay for the league if like 2-3 teams at the beginning of the season are incentivized to not really compete so that they can improve their rosters and then another 2-3 teams join them halfway thru the season after their teams went south for whatever reason. i would say we went into this regular season with only 2 teams in each conference who weren't trying to win (det, orl & okc, hou) and now we have another 3 more across the league (wash, ind, por) who are not really trying at this point. it still leaves 11-12 teams in each conference who are trying to win for basically the full year which is a good number, and they're actually competing for something interesting to the fans (do or die games) than something not interesting (getting the 8 seed in the regular season and then getting killed in round 1)

yeah pretty much how i feel

Did anybody else post this already: https://poeltl.dunk.town/

lmao one of these teams has chris paul and lebron the other has perk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssSZgqN2_OM

jordan otm about the play-in and such i'm into it.

i was just reading about last night's lakers collapse and saw this

"Our game plan was just to attack Melo and find the mismatch on the floor," Green said. "So when it came down to it, we were looking for Melo and I was attacking him every time."

pretty cold coming from a rook to a first ballot HOFer, even one as easy to clown on as Melo!

less outright tanking is good but my feelings about the race for the play-in seeds are more mixed — it’s not like an unexpected surprise that there are now more teams fighting for spots, that’s the whole point, it’s basically impossible for that not to happen — but the issue is the teams that play meaningful games are just not good. like the lakers choking away a crucial game against the lowly rockets was great for very specific schadenfreude purposes, but most years it’s just going to be a random mediocre team

I mean you could extend the logic to just have every team make the playoffs, in that case even more games would be meaningful, there are just diminishing returns as far as product quality and entertainment value. that being said, maybe the trade off is worth it if it curtails tanking to the degree it seems to have

imo the actual play in games are still exciting even if the teams are bad just because theyre single eliminationy

it will fluctuate every year for sure but i mean, last year we got lakers vs warriors and warriors vs grizzlies. those were games featuring great players i would watch on any given night if i had the time & turned out to be good games. the games in the west this year prob won't be too compelling lakers car crash gawking aside, but in the east we should get 3 pretty good games esp if the nets are in there. but i'd be interested to watch the hawks, raptors, cavs, hornets. they're basically throwing 6 extra monday/wednesday/friday night national TV level games on the schedule w/ the stakes ratcheted up, i really don't see the issue. if the games in a given year aren't interesting to you there's other things you can do w/ your life but i'm not really sure how that is an argument against something that undeniably makes the regular season more compelling

yeah maybe it’s fair to say there is enough star power to make it work

they should just replace the season with a big 32-team double elimination tournament

the NBA Cup

Want to Welcome Ben Simmons to Thunderdome.

lol i just got a "Fans Boo Simmons" notification on my phone

its true they booed him

lol joel missed a point blank dunk

joel and drummond are well on their way to double technical fouls

would be really funny if these two teams saw each other in the playoffs and the seth curry swap swung the series

It’s almost likely lol

doc talking about joel being in such good shape that he could play his most minutes ever this year like are you even listening to yourself man

KD not touching rim even remotely lol

hate how embiid starts acting all incredulous as soon as he gets fouled he should wait to see if its called first before complaining

These teams need to meet in the playoffs. It would be so fun. To win, you got to beat the best.

embiid loves a demonstrative regular season basketball game

lol

someone on the sixers bench should remind harden that it's not actually game 6 of a playoff series & it only feels that way in the arena. he brain might boot back up again

his*

lol, he has not been good.

nets offense is serious celtics were playing really good D and they still got torched, sixers so far are not playing good D and are getting torched

So in the 1st quarter, the Sixers outscored the Nets by 9 points at the line ... & the Nets outscored the Sixers by 26 points from the field.

— John Schuhmann (@johnschuhmann) March 11, 2022

the nets should trade ben simmons

simmons should sit out the rest of the season

dragic has harden in a torture chamber i'm crying

Ben should come back in time for him to do this:

Ben Simmons 4th quarter this series:

Game 1: 2-2 FG
Game 2: 0-0 FG
Game 3: 1-1 FG
Game 4: 0-0 FG
Game 5: 0-0 FG
Game 6: 0-0 FG
Game 7: 0-0 FG

(Submitted by @isaacvibehrs)

— StatMuse (@statmuse) June 21, 2021

That was v. the Hawks.

one of the most legendary performances we'll ever see

we don't always appreciate it when we're witnessing history

I mean, Sixers aren't going to get it done, I know this. I just want to see Simmons sink the Nets in the playoffs.

can harden sign the $200 million max deal at halftime?

hahahah