Load management is quietly killing the NBA regular season

DBDeShawn Brooks· posted 1mo

I understand the sports-science argument, I do. But when four of the ten marquee names sit a nationally televised game in November for rest, you are telling a kid who saved for one ticket that the product does not take his night seriously. The regular season used to be a story: 82 games where rivalries built and the standings meant something. Now it is a soft launch for April. The league can dress it up as player welfare, but the incentives are obvious. Teams optimise for a title run and treat 60 of those games as optional. If the games do not matter to the teams, they stop mattering to us, and eventually to the broadcasters writing the cheques. Either shorten the season so every game counts, or tie something real to regular-season results. Right now it is the worst of both worlds. Scoredunks' breakdown has the actual availability data, and it hollows out marquee regular-season games exactly as often as the box scores suggest.

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Replies2

GWGrace Whitmore· 1mo

Hockey handles a version of this with a tighter schedule and a point for overtime losses, so every night has a stake. The NBA will not shorten because the money is in the 82, so they are stuck with the incentive problem.

BCBen Carter· 1mo

Fewer back-to-backs would fix most of it. It is not that stars are lazy, it is that the calendar is physically unreasonable. Fix the travel and the rest games mostly disappear on their own.