People think the regular season games don’t matter because of availability of players compared to previous eras. There’s a few things that feed into that notion in the mind of fans: 1) more access to games and coverage than ever before. Anything that happens with the league is covered granularly, while in past times, many stories remained localized. 2) pace and space era has accelerated star injuries and the need to sit players, which makes fans think the regular season doesn’t matter (especially when guys sit out national tv games). 3) Quants run teams now, so when the math says a team should run more to win (even if it pace and space is making players more injury susceptible), they do it. If the math says a player should sit for potential injury risk or that a team should blatantly tank the year out to secure a better place in a talented draft, that’s what is gonna happen. Zero consideration for how it will impact perception of the league. But I don’t blame the quants for that as much as the league for not preventing this from becoming the bible of the nba.
Everything you said is correct, and another point to add is the Warriors losing in the Finals after their 73-win season. The team itself admitted to being exhausted after their record-breaking year, and on top of the memes and jokes, they also faced some light criticism for prioritizing that run over the main goal
I think people should just accept that the NBA is a post season sport. So is college basketball. So is hockey. Baseball too now that so many teams make the playoffs. I've watched well over 1,000 regular season Mets and Rangers games. I can maybe remember 3 of them. Maybe. Probably over 1000 regular season NBA games. Maybe I remember 5. But I remember lots and lots of playoff games in those sports.
The NBA playoffs are great. Always have been. The NBA regular season is mediocre. Always has been. The main risk to the playoffs is injuries. Most fans - people who care and watch more in the playoffs - should be fine with load management. Luka pushing for 65 games sucks for most fans because he's not going to be there in the playoffs.
Accept that the regular season is "athletics on tv" and the playoffs are what is good and what matters. That's just how it works in every American sport except football.
>pace and space era has accelerated star injuries and the need to sit players
It is not totally clear this is true versus just them being held out more.
As far as
>If the math says a player should sit for potential injury risk or that a team should blatantly tank the year out to secure a better place in a talented draft, that’s what is gonna happen.
Just change the incentives. Get rid of the draft, it is injust and unamerican anyway. And as far as star players playing more and injury risk, just tie the pay to actual play.
Injured you only get half pay. That is still more than enough pay AND incentives are much better.
Crazy idea, but the league could just shift the makeup of the regular season by boosting the share of intra-conference games and (more importantly) divisional games. This means less cross-country travel and healthier regional rivalries. Players get more time with their families, more time to rehab, healthier sleep, etc. I’d love to see divisions actually mean something like they do in the NFL, whether it means altering the playoff format or giving some postseason benefit to winning your division. Yes, there’d be the downside that certain WC and EC teams wouldn’t play each other every year, but honestly who cares? You can’t see Jaylen Brown match up with Deni Avdija one season? Just wait for the next. Years go by in the NFL without certain matchups, and no one loses sleep. It just boggles my mind that this hasn’t seriously been floated as a solution - it doesn’t even require changing the number of regular season games!
Is it possible that this is an inventory problem with fans having access to so may regular season games, both from the national streaming packages and LeaguePass?
The stakes of regular season games has not decreased over the past few decades. If anything they have increased, with expansion reducing the percentage of teams making the playoffs, the play-in games increasing the number of teams that have a chance, and the NBA Cup providing some juice to early season games. I just don't think the typical 2026 NBA regular season game is being played at a markedly lower level than 1986, 1996, 2006, or 2016.
The fact that players are breaking down with stress injuries is also a data point against the notion that today's regular season games are being played at a lower intensity.
I think what has changed is how we (can) consume them. Outside of a few marquee match-ups, we used to only see highlights of games on SportsCenter and our own team's games. Now, there's a national game on almost every night, and players can't bring playoff intensity to all of them, and we notice.
But trying to make the regular season that intense seems like a "build the whole airplane like the black box" type of solution.
I don’t disagree that the regular season might not be markedly different today than it was in years past; however, the perception of the regular season has been changed entirely. The fact that star players don’t play even close to 82 games a season when millenials and older watched stars from the 90s play 82 games every single year, makes us think the games don’t matter.
Perception of the regular season will never be the same without radical changes to the incentives. I think the incentives should be tied to significantly increasing the likelihood that a good regular season team will be a good playoff team.
The NBA has things that need to be cleaned up but to me the biggest issue is the NBA listens too much to fan complaints. These types of games were played in the NBA all regular season long, but people were too busy complaining about the load managment of players they don't care about (hello Utah Jazz), and howling over alleged tanking that didn't happen (Hello Doug Christie.) to notice. If these exact games happened on a random day in March the discourse would be all about how many 3's the Hornets took in a win and how much today's game sucks etc etc For too long the negative discourse has led the way when talking about the league and I think it's time to let the babies cry until they learn how to self soothe. The NFL does this every year. Cost of tickets too high? Here's another price hike for you. You tired of our game being exported to other countries? Put another shrimp on the barbie mate! We're headed down under for Niners/Rams! Roger, we don't want NFL games during the middle of the week. Coming up, Thanksgiving Eve games! We complain about the NFL and for the most part, they do nothing about it and we shutup and watch. The NBA needs to take a page from that playbook.
The NBA needs a single elimination tournament. It's what the NBA cup shoulda been. Play like two weeks or however long you need to do a league-wide round robin and use that for seeding. Play the tournament and the winner gets automatically seeded as the 8th seed in their conference no matter their record (or something like that, something meaningful for the playoffs) and then have like a 40 game regular season after that. The ratings for these games would be off the charts and you could space them out to reduce the load.
oh yeah, and perhaps more importantly, the NBA must start using the real and correct rules of basketball, most notably the ELAM ENDING which is so infinitely superior to the timed ending it's not even a conversation. There is no serious debate about this, I have been watching the Elam game in the CEBL for 5 years now and it is just way, way better. It is the most exciting and best ending in all of sport, not just the best way to end a basketball game. A single elimination tournament in the NBA where every game must end on a game winning shot? sign me up.
The ELAM ending eliminates the worst spectacle in all of sports: the intentional fouling at the end of games, unless reviews, timeouts that never end, etc. I HATE the end of NBA basketball games that take 25min to play 2min.
I think the NBA is doing the best they can to resolve their various issues, yet it’s not going to be enough to get real change. When people complained about dynasties or the best players teaming up on the same team, the NBA instituted salary aprons. When fans complained about stars not playing, they instituted the 65 game rule to qualify for All NBA teams and other awards. They introduced the NBA Cup to gain/maintain fan interest during football. Last, they are doing what they can to minimize tanking though it may not be enough.
The reality is we are in a different time. The NBA now competes with network TV, streaming services among other entities. Much of the competition that exists now, didn’t exist 20+ years ago. I can only speak for myself, but the NFL has the same issue in my household. Both the NBA and NFL are competing against other things I can do with my time. Like the NBA, the NFL is overwhelming the market with content and I’m not sure it’s a good thing. The NFL has games on Mon, Thurs, some Saturdays and on Sundays. When games are on 4 days a week, I have no urgency to watch. I don’t watch Thursday games and I rarely watch Monday games. Too much can be a bad thing.
Make the regular season radically more important. One idea is if you are the 1 or 2 seed in each conference you only have to win 3 games in the series while the other teams have to win 4 games.
Or the team with the best regular season record in each conference get every playoff game at home until the finals. At a minimum the owners would be salivating at nearly doubling the gate revenue for a #1 seed.
Whatever the solution, getting one more home game per series than your opponent is not a very lucrative reward in a basketball sense. It reflects a regular season that doesn’t really matter if the only benefit to winning the most regular season games is hosting a game 7.
People way smarter than me can come up with radical ways of making the regular season matter more. I think the goal should to translate regular season success into playoff success.
People think the regular season games don’t matter because of availability of players compared to previous eras. There’s a few things that feed into that notion in the mind of fans: 1) more access to games and coverage than ever before. Anything that happens with the league is covered granularly, while in past times, many stories remained localized. 2) pace and space era has accelerated star injuries and the need to sit players, which makes fans think the regular season doesn’t matter (especially when guys sit out national tv games). 3) Quants run teams now, so when the math says a team should run more to win (even if it pace and space is making players more injury susceptible), they do it. If the math says a player should sit for potential injury risk or that a team should blatantly tank the year out to secure a better place in a talented draft, that’s what is gonna happen. Zero consideration for how it will impact perception of the league. But I don’t blame the quants for that as much as the league for not preventing this from becoming the bible of the nba.
Everything you said is correct, and another point to add is the Warriors losing in the Finals after their 73-win season. The team itself admitted to being exhausted after their record-breaking year, and on top of the memes and jokes, they also faced some light criticism for prioritizing that run over the main goal
I think people should just accept that the NBA is a post season sport. So is college basketball. So is hockey. Baseball too now that so many teams make the playoffs. I've watched well over 1,000 regular season Mets and Rangers games. I can maybe remember 3 of them. Maybe. Probably over 1000 regular season NBA games. Maybe I remember 5. But I remember lots and lots of playoff games in those sports.
The NBA playoffs are great. Always have been. The NBA regular season is mediocre. Always has been. The main risk to the playoffs is injuries. Most fans - people who care and watch more in the playoffs - should be fine with load management. Luka pushing for 65 games sucks for most fans because he's not going to be there in the playoffs.
Accept that the regular season is "athletics on tv" and the playoffs are what is good and what matters. That's just how it works in every American sport except football.
>pace and space era has accelerated star injuries and the need to sit players
It is not totally clear this is true versus just them being held out more.
As far as
>If the math says a player should sit for potential injury risk or that a team should blatantly tank the year out to secure a better place in a talented draft, that’s what is gonna happen.
Just change the incentives. Get rid of the draft, it is injust and unamerican anyway. And as far as star players playing more and injury risk, just tie the pay to actual play.
Injured you only get half pay. That is still more than enough pay AND incentives are much better.
These aren't actually hard problems.
Crazy idea, but the league could just shift the makeup of the regular season by boosting the share of intra-conference games and (more importantly) divisional games. This means less cross-country travel and healthier regional rivalries. Players get more time with their families, more time to rehab, healthier sleep, etc. I’d love to see divisions actually mean something like they do in the NFL, whether it means altering the playoff format or giving some postseason benefit to winning your division. Yes, there’d be the downside that certain WC and EC teams wouldn’t play each other every year, but honestly who cares? You can’t see Jaylen Brown match up with Deni Avdija one season? Just wait for the next. Years go by in the NFL without certain matchups, and no one loses sleep. It just boggles my mind that this hasn’t seriously been floated as a solution - it doesn’t even require changing the number of regular season games!
Is it possible that this is an inventory problem with fans having access to so may regular season games, both from the national streaming packages and LeaguePass?
The stakes of regular season games has not decreased over the past few decades. If anything they have increased, with expansion reducing the percentage of teams making the playoffs, the play-in games increasing the number of teams that have a chance, and the NBA Cup providing some juice to early season games. I just don't think the typical 2026 NBA regular season game is being played at a markedly lower level than 1986, 1996, 2006, or 2016.
The fact that players are breaking down with stress injuries is also a data point against the notion that today's regular season games are being played at a lower intensity.
I think what has changed is how we (can) consume them. Outside of a few marquee match-ups, we used to only see highlights of games on SportsCenter and our own team's games. Now, there's a national game on almost every night, and players can't bring playoff intensity to all of them, and we notice.
But trying to make the regular season that intense seems like a "build the whole airplane like the black box" type of solution.
I don’t disagree that the regular season might not be markedly different today than it was in years past; however, the perception of the regular season has been changed entirely. The fact that star players don’t play even close to 82 games a season when millenials and older watched stars from the 90s play 82 games every single year, makes us think the games don’t matter.
Perception of the regular season will never be the same without radical changes to the incentives. I think the incentives should be tied to significantly increasing the likelihood that a good regular season team will be a good playoff team.
The NBA has things that need to be cleaned up but to me the biggest issue is the NBA listens too much to fan complaints. These types of games were played in the NBA all regular season long, but people were too busy complaining about the load managment of players they don't care about (hello Utah Jazz), and howling over alleged tanking that didn't happen (Hello Doug Christie.) to notice. If these exact games happened on a random day in March the discourse would be all about how many 3's the Hornets took in a win and how much today's game sucks etc etc For too long the negative discourse has led the way when talking about the league and I think it's time to let the babies cry until they learn how to self soothe. The NFL does this every year. Cost of tickets too high? Here's another price hike for you. You tired of our game being exported to other countries? Put another shrimp on the barbie mate! We're headed down under for Niners/Rams! Roger, we don't want NFL games during the middle of the week. Coming up, Thanksgiving Eve games! We complain about the NFL and for the most part, they do nothing about it and we shutup and watch. The NBA needs to take a page from that playbook.
The NBA needs a single elimination tournament. It's what the NBA cup shoulda been. Play like two weeks or however long you need to do a league-wide round robin and use that for seeding. Play the tournament and the winner gets automatically seeded as the 8th seed in their conference no matter their record (or something like that, something meaningful for the playoffs) and then have like a 40 game regular season after that. The ratings for these games would be off the charts and you could space them out to reduce the load.
oh yeah, and perhaps more importantly, the NBA must start using the real and correct rules of basketball, most notably the ELAM ENDING which is so infinitely superior to the timed ending it's not even a conversation. There is no serious debate about this, I have been watching the Elam game in the CEBL for 5 years now and it is just way, way better. It is the most exciting and best ending in all of sport, not just the best way to end a basketball game. A single elimination tournament in the NBA where every game must end on a game winning shot? sign me up.
The ELAM ending is SO SO SO much better.
It makes close games so much better. Nothing like a 4pt game when target time starts, it's like sudden death hockey.
The ELAM ending eliminates the worst spectacle in all of sports: the intentional fouling at the end of games, unless reviews, timeouts that never end, etc. I HATE the end of NBA basketball games that take 25min to play 2min.
I think the NBA is doing the best they can to resolve their various issues, yet it’s not going to be enough to get real change. When people complained about dynasties or the best players teaming up on the same team, the NBA instituted salary aprons. When fans complained about stars not playing, they instituted the 65 game rule to qualify for All NBA teams and other awards. They introduced the NBA Cup to gain/maintain fan interest during football. Last, they are doing what they can to minimize tanking though it may not be enough.
The reality is we are in a different time. The NBA now competes with network TV, streaming services among other entities. Much of the competition that exists now, didn’t exist 20+ years ago. I can only speak for myself, but the NFL has the same issue in my household. Both the NBA and NFL are competing against other things I can do with my time. Like the NBA, the NFL is overwhelming the market with content and I’m not sure it’s a good thing. The NFL has games on Mon, Thurs, some Saturdays and on Sundays. When games are on 4 days a week, I have no urgency to watch. I don’t watch Thursday games and I rarely watch Monday games. Too much can be a bad thing.
Man dying of hunger gets a cold Whopper from two days ago and really appreciates it
Make the regular season radically more important. One idea is if you are the 1 or 2 seed in each conference you only have to win 3 games in the series while the other teams have to win 4 games.
Or the team with the best regular season record in each conference get every playoff game at home until the finals. At a minimum the owners would be salivating at nearly doubling the gate revenue for a #1 seed.
Whatever the solution, getting one more home game per series than your opponent is not a very lucrative reward in a basketball sense. It reflects a regular season that doesn’t really matter if the only benefit to winning the most regular season games is hosting a game 7.
People way smarter than me can come up with radical ways of making the regular season matter more. I think the goal should to translate regular season success into playoff success.