NBA Play-In games have been an incredible success, but highlight how bad its regular season has become
The NBA has tried to prop up the regular season by inflating individual stats. It isn't working.
When Adam Silver introduced the idea of a play-in tournament in the week or so before the playoffs, he was met with plenty of consternation. Silver can take his victory lap. The games have been incredible and have even gone so far as to excite me for the midseason tournament he wants to introduce.
In both cases, he’s provided stakes that extend beyond the typical regular season game, which works great for those games specifically, but do highlight some glaring issues with the 82 games we essentially have to slog through to get to anything interesting. However might he inspire players to try (or even play) in regular season games, you ask?
Well,
With contracts extending into the near half-billion range, you’d think the sport that allows that to happen and the decades it’s taken growing the league to this point would be enough for guys to want to keep things going in that direction, but alas.
On top of injury concerns, a fun new trend is apparently players sitting out because they don’t quite trust their bodies yet, which, man. Teams have never been particularly transparent when it comes to injuries, but now apparently stars can make things even more vague with this explanation and I’m just not sure this is a path the league wants to head down.
The problem with the regular season isn’t just availability, though, either.
Tune into just about any game on any given night and you’re far more likely to see everyone standing around watching some player shooting free-throws, or some referee to go to the monitor to see if they blew a call. The sport has become so litigious that it’s far more prudent to game the system than entertain the fans.
Even worse, the sport is refereed seemingly based on how small the person with the ball is. Stepping into a shooter’s landing space can be called a flagrant foul on the perimeter, but doing exactly that with someone driving to the basket has become the predominant defensive tactic in the paint.
Basketball is blessed with, on average, some of the greatest athletes the planet has ever seen. And yet far too often we see guys who look like Avengers pretending to get knocked to the ground by glancing blows from people half their size. Enough. Enough I say.
Have some pride, man. Come on. Watch all of this. It’s embarrassing.
Two seasons ago, the league introduced rules to move away from the grifting that had become so pervasive, only as it was becoming successful, enough stars who made a living with that style of play whined loudly enough that eventually, efforts to stem that tide were disregarded entirely.
Same goes for their attempt at ridding ourselves of take fouls, where a player reaches out to foul someone as they start a fast break. Hell, we can say this about just about any rule change implemented to improve the game. At the start of the year, we see a change in refereeing only to get enough whining that they stop making those calls almost altogether.
This is where it’s going to be interesting in baseball, where its radical changes obviously ruffled feathers but have been an overwhelming success. I really hope they stick with those changes so maybe the NBA can follow suit to improve what we watch on a nightly basis.
When the NBA arrives at the playoffs, we get a return to the game we fell in love with. Players care enough to play. Organizations (for the most part) don’t hold guys out. Defenders are allowed to, you know, defend. Playoff basketball is a beautiful thing because, well, it’s how the game is supposed to be played.
By no means am I arguing for playoff intensity throughout the regular season. In all sports, everything ramps up in the postseason because of course it does. The problem the NBA has to address is that playoff basketball is a completely different sport.
In an effort to draw fans to regular season games we all know mostly don’t matter anymore, the league started inflating individual statistical performance through how the game gets officiated. So, sure, in theory it’s great to be able to say on any given night someone might drop 50, but that’s a very different thing from damn near knowing on any given night someone is going to — especially when 20 points of those 50 come at the line.
Much like no-hitters in baseball, which have been devalued from at one point being appointment viewing to now, where they barely get mentioned, we’re becoming numb to today’s insane stat lines.
I just don’t want to live in a world where dropping 50 on someone becomes pedestrian. If you ruin this for me, Adam, I swear.
The problem the NBA runs into on this is two-fold: First, cutting down the season is not an option because that would shrink the pie, and neither players or owners want to do that. Second, they won’t extend the season, either, because that cuts into everyone’s offseason, which no one seems to bring up but is a major factor here.
So instead, Silver has gone the route of offering stakes for games to get everyone to compete. The play-in has been successful on this front, which gives me hope for the midseason tournament. Eventually, I would imagine the NBA (just like every other league) is going to expand the wildly popular play-in1 just as every other postseason wildcard keeps getting bigger.
Like I’ve said and repeated, I have no problem with the play-in. Yes, it has led to teams being content to play in those games if it means a little extra rest during the regular season, but those teams are also learning that putting your eggs in that basket with the amount of variance in today’s game isn’t the wisest bet. Mess around too much in the regular season and you’re one hot or cold night from your season being over.
Ideally, guys would just play harder because they understand that, in order for the league to continue to grow (not just in a revenue sense), the sports needs to be entertaining. Clearly, that isn’t going to happen on its own. So the league office and competition committee need to step in to make the regular season look at least a little more like the play-in and, eventually, playoff games that have come to define the sport.
The league said the quiet part pretty loudly when they made it a part of the new CBA that players have to play at least 65 games to be eligible for major individual awards. They know the season is too long. They know players and organizations know this too. There aren’t any easy fixes here to get regular season games to look like they matter, but getting them to look like, I don’t know, basketball should be a priority.
Here’s one way to do this: Cut down the regular season by, say, five games or so. Then, have the 7 and 8 seeds play as they do, with the winner earning a playoff spot. From there, the loser would wait for a three-game series between the 9 an 10 seeds (with all games at 9 seed’s arena). Then, you get another three-gamer between the loser of the 7-8 game and the winner of the 9-10 series, all in the former’s arena. Winner of that moves gets that final playoff spot.
Great write-up, Anthony. Count me in as one of those fans who are longing for more compelling games in the regular season. I want friction. I want drama. I want the best players going Mano-e-Mano.
Funny thing is, as draining as the play-in game, I’d much rather have that more often than not. At least I feel something. Naturally, I have plenty of feelings about this season, as it has been all over they place. But for the rest of the league, I largely remain woefully apathetic.
That did not use to be case. Whatever fixes they throw in, the status quo cannot remain.
--Koby Boyd (aka Twoweekswithpay)
The magic of the play-in is that it's essentially double-elim for the higher seed. Turning it into a playoff series makes it less interesting. Replacing the first round with the play-in would be far better, but owners are too greedy to give up home games.