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The NBA season is objectively too long. If I were to be appointed king of the NBA, this is what I’d do:
1) Cut the regular season down to 41 games.
2) Move the season start date from October to the week after the Super Bowl.
3) No games on Tuesdays & Thursdays, thus forcing most games to Friday nights, Saturdays, Sundays, and Monday nights. Wednesday night games would have to remain for logistics reasons, but that’s fine.
4) Stop having each individual team negotiate its own media rights. Sign league-wide broadcast contracts to most games on broadcast TV and the rest on streaming services. (NFL model.)
5) Make round 1 of the playoffs 3 games and round 2 of the playoffs 5 games, but keep conference finals + league finals at 7 game series.
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These moves would make each game more meaningful and more marketable. Number of games goes down, but the revenue per game would go WAY up. Especially considering that the NBA would no longer compete with the NFL. The new playoff format would increase parity, which would add onto the parity increases that we should expect over time with the most recent NBA CBA. And the playoffs would still end early enough to give plenty of time for summer USA basketball camps & the Olympics.
But the NBA will never take the risk of cutting the number of games in half. The new CBA was a positive step towards increasing parity, but it also created incentives to keep the NBA season as long as possible…
The season is ridiculously long, and players these days start their lives by basically playing an NBA schedule from the age of 9 and throughout their entire career. Imagine how long Haliburton had been punishing his Achilles, and it finally gave out after 15-20 years. These guys play an inhuman amount of basketball from the time they’re able to do long division.