Escaping the NBA's Doldrums
This should be the best time of the NBA season, though that’s hardly ever the case.
Late February, March, and early April feature the league’s elite scrapping for the best possible playoff position. As such, the NBA begins to offer a reduced rate on League Pass for the last part of the regular season. In recent years, they’ve begun showing nationally televised games during primetime on Saturday nights on ABC. Some of these matchups are fun, as they provide a preview for the intensity that we can expect during the postseason.
What often goes unspoken is what happens with those 14 teams that aren’t lucky enough to make the playoffs. It’s the one problem that the league can’t seem to fix, no matter how many attempts they’ve made at draft reform or keeping stars players active. Teams tank to improve their draft position, and in these months it can get ridiculous. Established players begin sitting with mysterious ailments, while their inexperienced counterparts see an uptick in minutes. It’s subtle to the average fan, but these teams are working hard to lose as many games as possible because they are incentivized to do so.
Many times, a playoff team will enter the postseason on a nice winning streak. Those streaks become less impressive when you realize that more than a third of the league isn’t even trying to win. How can the league justify an 82-game schedule when the last 20+ games are like this? I attended a game recently where 42-year old Vince Carter played heavy minutes for the lowly Atlanta Hawks. But the shenanigans don’t stop at tanking teams. The Warriors have begun individually resting their all-stars in the last week.
26 minutes (and 21 points) from 42-year old Vince Carter for a lottery team suggests tanking.
The league must make a decision, because they are currently straddling the fence. They can either make this latter part of the season respectable or cut it entirely.
Maybe they should invert the draft lottery, giving teams with better records the better odds at earning high picks. That’d be the most logical solution, but it has never come up in labor negotiations. Top lottery teams will get the best picks while the bottom ones will likely be flush with cap room. It’s not a perfect system, but it’d do a better job of ensuring teams work to be competitive. Imagine a top draft pick going to a budding team as opposed to one struggling, we could soon see another contender instead of a slightly better bottom-dweller.
As it relates to the schedule, the league could cut back on the lengthy 82 games. That 66-game lockout season in 2011-12 was a bit hectic, but it did bring out some of the urgency football has when each game means more. 82 games are probably too many to hold anyone’s attention, even the participants. It has always felt like the decision to stick with this length has been purely financial, but will fans continue to pay the growing ticket prices for exhibition level games?
Adam Silver and the NBA’s owners will likely be slow to making any of the aforementioned changes until more fans wake up and stop supporting the late season product. Casual fans control these things. Until then, I won’t be buying any more post all-star break tickets or getting too excited about games again until the playoffs.
