FanPost

NBA Season Restructure Idea

The NBA commission has been trying to come up with a way to eliminate tanking and make the league more competitive. They have no current fix all solution to achieve this. One idea was to eliminate conferences and move to a playoff structure that has the best 16 teams regardless of conference compete for a championship. The plan has yet to go into effect because they are worried about excessive travel and this still will not fix how the draft would play out.

Below is just my opinion on why things are the way they are. I would have posted this in a global SB nation area rather than Pounding The Rock, but I could not find it.

The NBA lottery is a game of chance. Your chance at losing. You purchase your lottery tickets by either losing over and over or trading your best assets for those tickets.

For a player, think of them like your normal everyday worker. The boss says you need to slack off and do your job poorly to get better work amenities and co-workers. For a boss or organization, you worked hard to get your company what it has now. You just bought some super computer a few years ago that makes the day to day work go by fluidly. But soon, that super computer is not brand spanking new, your workers are aging and their productivity is not up to where it was when you first hired them. So there comes a point where you have to sell that super computer to be able to afford more workers more fit for the job. And the cycle repeats.

What if it worked just like normal competitive companies. You train and encourage workers to always do their best. The company makes more money to hire those new workers and the industry keeps growing and becoming more competitive. What do most people who work at normal jobs want from a job? Security, money based on personal progress, holidays and benefits, and a good retirement plan.

The playoffs as designed are to ease travel between teams from game to game and scheduling conflicts. It is not designed this way because it always puts the best against the best at the forefront.

  1. How many playoffs have there been where some teams in the West are inherently better than a team in East or vice versa, and because of their conference, the better team might miss the playoffs? You can probably think of a few.
  2. Does a team in a certain conference have an advantage over a team in a different conference because some conferences are stronger than others? You can probably think of a few.
  3. Can a team have a better record based off playing weaker teams more often? Absolutely.
I will now propose a solution and it is just my personal solution. It might not sound good to some of you, And if it isn't I hope to hear what some of you would change.

Fixing the season structure:
  1. We have to find a way for teams to play an even number of times against each other so no team has an easier schedule.
  2. We have to remove conferences out of the season so teams do not have a conference advantage.
  3. We have to have the regular season have a bigger effect on what happens at the end of the season.
  4. We have to schedule the games so no team is at a disadvantage playing a bad string of back to back games while another team does not.
Regular Season Structure:
  • A regular season will now consist of a 60 game season.
  • Each team will play each team twice.
  • If your last game was home, the next one will be away.
  • There is no conferences in the regular season
  • There must be at least one day off between the present game and the next game.
After the conclusion of the regular season, three conferences will be divided. And three different playoffs will begin in each of those conferences.

Playoffs:
  1. The top 1-16 teams will become Conference A and they will compete for the championship.
  2. The middle 17-23 teams will become Conference B and they will compete for the 8th-14th Draft pick.
  3. The bottom 24-30 teams will become Conference C and they will compete for the 1st-7th draft pick.

How does this season restructure equate to less travel?

Shorter regular season where you only play each team twice.


How does this season restructure level the playing field where each team has the same difficulty of schedule?

Each team plays each team twice, and since there is no conference, there is no location advantage.


Ok, maybe you sold me on the regular season restructure, but how will that effect the playoffs?

Won't there be more travel anyways when the playoffs start?

That is true, but since the regular season was shorter and you didn't play different teams more than twice.That offsets the rate of travel over the entire course of an NBA season.


Wouldn't that playoff scenario involve more further travel, say If Golden State had to play 8 different teams on opposite sides of the country?

This is one area I think there is no scheduling or home/away work around for. There might have to be a concession. The NBA would need to build a big giant mega arena for all the playoffs to take place or three large arenas to house the three different conferences.


Think about it. Every big entertainment field has a big event that everyone gathers at once a year, all the talent, and all walks of people. In video games we have E3, in the movie industry the Grammys, in the music industry there is Woodstock, and various other events.

Idea for the grand scale of One Colossal Arena:
Imagine an arena with 30 NBA regulation courts inside it. No team would have a home or away advantage. All 30 NBA teams would come here for their playoff run, be it for the championship, or for draft order. The teams would have their own practice arena, the NBA could charge royalties for any hotel or food companies that want to lease a space within the facility to house guests and NBA players. Every NBA team would stay there for the duration of the playoffs, so no hassle with flights back and forth, or being tired from travelling. The NBA could schedule the playoffs to a fine tune of how they would like with the teams all in one epicenter.

Where would the NBA build it and how much would it cost?

If I had my choice, it would have to be somewhere that is neutral, meaning some place that has no NBA team as of now. Some place that has a ton of space. Some place that is known for glitz and glamour and has many tourists and visitors all year long. For me that would be Las Vegas Nevada. And with the NBA pondering getting into gambling and charging royalties, what better place to host an NBA championship but Las Vegas? They could even host the draft one day after playoff conclusions and add to the excitement there.

Idea for 3 Large arenas in neutral areas:
Let's say the cost was just too much to build that monumental sized mega arena. They could build 3 smaller arenas spread across three points in the United States. Arena A host the top 16 teams. Arena B hosts the 17-23rd seed teams. Arena C hosts the 24th-30th seeds.

The one thing that any of these neutral arenas might do negatively is take away from that feeling of going to watch your state's team playing their home game in the playoffs. But if the overall chance to increase competitiveness and fairness is positive, do we take that dive?

There is something I think might be a problem that I overlooked. And that is...
If teams would be competing for draft pick order. Trading a key player or pick for another team's pick might be more susceptible to abuse. But I can't think of how to deal with that, I guess that would be something for you guys to figure out or the NBA commission.


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