Game Debrief: What Went Right And What Went Wrong?

agree on maybe stretching it out and timing the final for a dead zone in other sports schedules. i think that's what they were trying to do here in early december, but february is better. move the all star game to december and base it on voting after the prior year is finished.

i think the incentives can't be team-based. a player may not be there next year when the lotto pick comes, or that pick might take his job eventually.

how about in addition to the 500k, they can get 500k over any exception used to sign them in their next contract, from any team. if you're a vet min and you sign another vet min, yours is 500k more in the first year, and it compounds on longer deals. the only guys who don't benefit are those who sign into space, which isn't all that common anyway.

 

it's been obvious for a long time that these guys don't care about the regular season

the luster of the IST is going to wear off quickly. what they should do is give the winning team some sort of playoff-related incentive, like home court advantage in the first round if they make it or something like that. making the tournament longer would probably help too. feels like the season just started and now the tournament is already done

 

A lot of people seem to feel this way so not directed at you specifically 432J.

But seriously how possible is it for most teams to play that hard every game for a whole season and have even more intensity left for the grind of hopefully 4 best of 7 battles in the post season to win a championship? They're not reducing the number of games for a variety of reasons including money and screwing with the all time records, if future players don't get to play as many games. The level of pain tolerance and unlimited energy demonstrated constantly from "fans" at their keyboards is comical at times.

That said, this year, with the roster we have, IF Ham is half way intelligent about it ....SHOULD allow for a lot more intensity without the quality falling off ....all season long. And the injury bug doesn't go nuts on us again.

 

I didn't care for the whole idea at first, I have to admit tho, that the games were pretty intense and exciting for the most part. It had a mini playoffs atmosphere to it. It would have been a rousing success, if Boston or Milwaukee had made it to the Finals IMO.

 

I agree with you guys about just about all of this, especially the problem of BTB games, which have ALWAYS been a problem in the NBA. I remember Phil Jackson - when he was with us - raising a big stink with the problem of BTB games and how they warp competitiveness when one team is on a BTB while the other is well-rested.

In a rational world, 62 games rather than 82, makes more sense: the games would mean more, BTBs could be eliminated, the major problem of "load management" would largely go away.

I think even 70-72 regular games is more sane. Just stop allowing so many teams to make the playoffs. Last year we benefited from the "play-in" thing but we were a freak case: dumping Brick, finally, and importing Rui, Vando and yea: Beastley (who wasn't for us, of course), and Bamba. We were a completely different team after the trade deadline, so it was good for the NBA to have us as a play-in (we proved it by making it to the WCF), but largely I see the play-in idea as stemming from the same rationalities that led to the IST. The real joke was the NHL, in which it got to the point were you had to be a truly BAD team not to make the playoffs. That's always been embarrassing for the NHL. But the NBA's play-in thing is now just as bad: of the 30 teams, 16 make the playoffs, counting the teams that win the play-ins. In the NHL: 16 teams make the playoffs out of 32 teams total.

But the economics of professional team sports points in the watered-down direction: look at how baseball has changed since 1993: in 1994 it was one Wild Card team in the National and American leagues. Then: 3. And that means another team was in it to make it to the Wild Card but lost a game. (Now they lose a best-of-3: watered down!) TV revenue drove these moves more than anything else, but it wasn't the only thing.

Etc...

But it's all about the $$$, so shortening the NBA regular season seems unlikely to happen. More games scheduled means more "product" on the market, means more $$$. Let's not forget about the long tail of all the people who get work at arenas in any capacity, including vendors and suppliers, not to mention the grunt work of beer pourers, etc.

Hypothetical: would salaries go down if they played 20 games less in the regular season? (I don't see any salaries going down, but give me a good argument why I'm wrong here.)

The "Stats" situation: this gets to one of the most interesting aspects of hard-core fandom for me. Let's say they cut the season to 62 games: all the all-time stats would be ASTERISKED: pre-62 game season stats vs. after. You can't rack up as many games/points/boards/assists, 'cuz you're not gonna play for 30 seasons to equal the number of games it took Kareem/Lebron/Wilt/Bill Russell, etc. I'm a huge fan of STATS, and when I was a kid I had so many memorized that my dad would win bar bets when he'd call me from a bar and he and the other guy would listen to this 11 year old answer the question: who had the most rebounds in one game? (It's still Wilt: 55: 1960). I got asked about guys who had 20,000 points, did Elvin Hayes ever score 50 in a game (he did: 54), that a guy once won MVP for the Finals while playing for a losing team (at the time: only Jerry West), etc. This was WAY before anyone ever dreamed the Internet would be a thing you had in your pocket. My dad would buy me the encyclopedias, etc. I was a total nerd. Still am.

No one would ever break Lebron's total points. No one would ever come close to Wilt's 23,924 rebounds. Chris Paul, cheapshot artist, has over 11,600 assists. Will he play long enough to break Stockton's 15,806? No freaking way.

But how important are stats, really? Numbers are an objective-based argument for "who's the greatest...?" and if we made the seasons 62 games (when Wilt racked up his astounding numbers the seasons were around 78 games...not until 1966-67 did 82 become formalized) every game would be a Big Deal. And future arguments about "the best" would mean an argument based on qualitative aspects of a guy's play, so more subjective. Those were always more interesting to me, but still: STATS!

 

The All Star game has been a complete waste of time for decades now. It should just be put out of its misery.
I like the idea of lengthening the IST to February- reducing the amount of games in which we have to watch guys go through the motions.

 

i mean, the NHL has a 82 game season and those guys are 100x tougher than NBA players. a 62 or 72 game NBA schedule would be ideal, but no way the league would agree to lose $

the NBA is just a soft league

 

Not the physical demands. Ice hockey notwithstanding.

 

It's really all about the money. Although things maybe softer than before, I think we can attribute this 100% to money. Nobody wants to give up any money, but especially not if you have paid 3 billion + for a franchise. You need every single game date to turn a profit.

 

i think it's this. the league can't "go backwards" on revenue-producing items.

UNLESS someone could prove that they could make more money doing so. like, what if one of the tv/streaming rights bidders said they'd pony up extra cash if the season was shortened. what if it came with the slightly expanded IST? would silver and the union bite? i think possibly.

i agree with zoyd that the counting stat stuff could be sidestepped a bit. you already can't compare eras for multiple reasons, even statistically (scoring up or down over time, etc.). i think fans would get right over it, and the players wouldn't care, either. hell, guys like lebron would love it because certain records will never be touched. but averages and percentages still exist.

 

in good old Lakers fashion, some random scrub getting hot against us, Dante Exum 7 of 9 from 3 pts. He had 8 threes so far in the whole season before tonight. WTF

 

slow start, fake come back, no defense....good ol pimple head lead team

 

Exum 7 of 9 threes, Grant 5 of 7, Hardaway 32 points and Luka with 17 assists
WTH

 

MOST of em WIDE open

 

Yeah if you look at percentages you might think it was shooting variance but no this was bad Lakers defense leading to wide open looks

 

What happened to the defense?
Oh, this was just a regular season game that apparently didn’t mean anything to the team.

 

So, the rest of the team can’t be held accountable?