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

I mean call me a boot licker but paying players extra to play games they’re already getting paid to not play seems like an absurd solution

well it's not exactly the same thing...bonuses for stats benchmarks are sort of like performance bonuses in some corporate jobs, but i don't know of a job where you get a bonus for working your allotted number of days/hours.

but either way i think exhorting the players to play with money is missing the point--the teams with the best players are generally supportive of playing those guys between 60 and 70 games a year, and i'm sure the smart ones have already priced that in to their planning and projections. so why are we doing carrots and sticks with the individual players? i can't think of a reason other than "it's easier to try that first."

like would the clippers be happy if kawhi suddenly decided he needed to play 72 games a year to get some sort of bonus? i don't think they would!

well it’s not a question of what the teams want

tbf the teams do make the rules

yeah that gets to who exactly is advocating for high profile players to play more and why this entire thing is probably noise just like the upper spending limit was noise

but it’s not like players are refusing to play, right? it’s teams and coaches choosing to rest their playoffs.

i think it’s on a case by case basis

the league has fined teams for mass benching players for national TV games but they’d never be able to ratchet up to a price that actually mattered

you could also pretty easily incentivize at the team level to play guys

this is all a question of when you turn on TNT or ESPN or go to the arena do you know that the stars on each team are actually going to be playing. so yeah if we go by what the owners want paying bonuses for playing in scheduled games would never happen… we also wouldn’t have free agency and the players would be flying coach on southwest. most of the owners would be happy not even hitting the salary floor. practically speaking what the owners want does matter of course, but again this is an existential discussion about the point of the sport that is best off with little input from the owners who would be happy to just outright steal their customers money if they could. the league and the owners combined could come up with such a bonus system and barely make a scratch on their own bottom lines

you could also pretty easily incentivize at the team level to play guys

ok so why haven't i heard any proposals to do it this way?

but also, all this talk of incentivizing anyone to play somewhere in the area of 82 games keeps missing the point. the regular season has too many games!

I thought this was interesting from a recent article I read about this stuff:

At the end of the 1989-90, Stern was fining teams for resting players. On the last day of that season, the Lakers chose to rest James Worthy and Magic Johnson against the Blazers for a nationally televised game, even though the Lakers and Portland were locked into their playoff seeds (Portland ended up winning by 42). Jerry Buss actually apologized for the resting, though Pat Riley was defiant that it wasn’t worth the risk stating that he had “an obligation to our management” to protect his stars. The NBA said the fine was “for failing to play two healthy players who are normally starters.” Riley had fought this battle before. In 1985, the Lakers were also fined for not playing Magic or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in a season-ender against the Kings.

but it’s not like players are refusing to play, right? it’s teams and coaches choosing to rest their playoffs.

― Piven After Midnight (The Yellow Kid), Tuesday, February 14, 2023 10:28 PM (one hour ago)

agree w/ jordan that it’s case by case, which is why I really don’t think a bonus system is going to move the needle here. kawhi isn’t getting out of bed for a few extra bucks to play in a random tuesday night TNT game, and the team obviously isn’t going to care if their star does or doesn’t get a bonus. (I assume you’d have to not make this count for the cap.) this is really why the only real solution is to address the root cause and just to reduce the number of games

which is why if you’re going to avoid actually addressing the problem you’d do better imo by disincentivizing players from missing too many games while also making sure the owners don’t benefit from that. you miss more than 10 games, you forfeit a game check for each additional game you miss but get a payout from the insurance pool which is financed by those forfeited salaries and by luxury taxes. the players full salary still counts against the cap to discourage teams from paying players under the table to miss games. also deals with malcontents like kyrie or jae crowder. at the end of the season the surplus from the pool goes to rookies or to some charitable cause or something

obviously there are a lot of holes in this proposal, for example how to do treat end of the bench guys who are suiting up but not getting run, obviously they shouldn’t be penalized. (though maybe their insurance pool payouts are actually bigger than their usual game checks.)

just ban zones again. less movement on defense, less stress on everyones joints, and the stars get to cook. everyone wins.

the answer is fewer games of course but that ain't happening.

lmao get a grip

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver unveils streaming experience of the future via the NBA App - and you can be in it! pic.twitter.com/FKYJvskf0H

— NBA (@NBA) February 17, 2023

that is.....something

lol thats pretty funny

rashad has hella vertical for his age impressive

gonna be a lot of people scanning their dicks for this

As long as there's such vast sums of money at stake the league is going to tinker with every aspect of the "product" to maximize its profits and growth potential, while the teams, coaches and players will game every change to the system every way they can think of to maximize benefits to themselves. Pro sports are a very pure form of capitalism in that way.

With #NBA as our first professional sports league partner, we will bring select live @NBA games to fans in #SharedReality at our immersive entertainment venues in LA & Dallas, with more venues to come, bringing fans together in person & closer to the game.https://t.co/5uVWs820mz pic.twitter.com/aTsKd6klUv

— Cosm (@experiencecosm) February 17, 2023

so like…. an annoying movie theatre?

love to have an immersive entertainment experience

Do you want a mid-season tournament?

DeRozan: “I love hooping, man. I play in the summer, every summer, for free. Midseason? I’m all for it.”

How many games should a player have to play to be MVP?

DeRozan: “All of them. All 82.”

Mikal bridges MVP.

Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game was the lowest rated and least-watched edition of the game, per @paulsen_smw

• Ratings declined 29% and viewership 27% from last year’s All-Star Game

• The record-low audience places the NBA All-Star Game well behind this year’s NFL Pro Bowl

•… https://t.co/7vjNs9pe8B pic.twitter.com/sZ2jJXdXur

— NBACentral (@TheNBACentral) February 22, 2023

with the glut of talent the league has right now, the product is not ideal

not headed in a good direction. theres a lot to figure out.

they have no idea how to market the international stars either.

my three point (ha) plan to save the nba

1 reduce number of games to 58
2 limit number of uniform designs to 3, all in team colors throwbacks excepted, return to home white road color scheme, no nickname jerseys are allowed "the city" is grandfathered in tho
3 widen court so the three point line is a uniform 23-9 and there is space to shoot without stepping out of bounds all the time

that should pretty much do it, please dont respond saying this will never happen because thats a loser mentality, the nba needs these three big ideas very much

ok also

4. dial the officiating back a bit let em play a lil rougher

addendum to 2 no alterante courts

also they should euthanize shaq

that all star game did really feel like a new low in real time

i still think the saturday events are pretty fun, they need to get creative w sunday and figure something else out. it would honestly be more fun watching those guys play horse or do trick shots then what that game was

it was so bad

I like the cray jerseys. Bring back sleeves.

mods

ban jeff

ok also

4. dial the officiating back a bit let em play a lil rougher

― lag∞n, Wednesday, February 22, 2023 11:35 AM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think they should just ref it how they do in the playoffs, it really shouldnt be two different sports between the two and yet.

that all star game did really feel like a new low in real time

i still think the saturday events are pretty fun, they need to get creative w sunday and figure something else out. it would honestly be more fun watching those guys play horse or do trick shots then what that game was

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, February 22, 2023 1:48 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I am pretty certain they’d take 3 on 3 a lot more seriously

If it was post-season like the probowl instead of a couple months before the playoffs then injury worries wouldn't be as big a factor. Of course, a lot of the best players would be pretty gassed by then. Another argument for shortening the season.

i was reading something where they pointed out that picking the teams right before the game is completely insane if you want a competitive game, no one has time to even think about who they're playing with. i would get rid of that, get rid of the elam ending, simplify the voting and try to start over.

shorten the game too

have they tried begging the players to care

i mean it's completely doomed as a concept but they've also just been stepping on a lot of their own rakes recently

Just play the game in 2K

i think just like two years ago was a fun game?