migya wrote:It looks very fake as well.
I don't know what this means.
Certainly does no good for comparison with players from other eras, regardless of how good the stats may look. A worker turning up 3 days in a 5 day working week is not the asset another that's there almost every day is.
But surely this is a peril of cross era comparison. A worker able to leverage better tools could perhaps do more work in 3 days than one from much further back does in 5. So there's a fair argument you need to start with being aware of era norms.
Personally my impressions and thoughts are
1) Of course playing more, over playing less - if all else is equal - will be positive. Happier fans, better chance of the team winning etc.
2) the game today is more physically demanding. A circa (or greater than) 40mpg regular season player is a player who is probably playing with significant fatigue and thus not optimized and with significant injury risk.
3) I hate seeing broken down players (and other humans, but we're talking basketball here). Watching Larry Bird in pain at the back end of his career feels sad. And these people have to live with their bodies. They're well compensated and they choose to sign the contracts but I'd prefer not to see (or think of) them "broken" after we've finished watching them. And not in a "so I just choose not so see it" sort of way.
4) Not a big thing and one thing in isolation doesn't decide a series, but I hate when all the talk of a playoffs - at the time or in player conversation context on here - is about injuries. If playoffs is going to be the big thing teams really should prioritize it.
5) Having a very long regular season
and a playoffs doesn't make a great deal of sense
to me. People took a while and there are other incentives (e.g. selling tickets) but teams have caught on that RS winning isn't valued anything like playoff winning. For as long as things are as they are load management makes a ton of sense. Easy to say after the fact but in some instances maybe being more aggressive might have been better, might saying "We'll seek - without any significant injuries - to play Embiid 28mpg for 50 games - circa 1400 RS minutes ... and hopefully have a reasonably healthy, well-tuned but not overloaded superstar ready for the playoffs" make sense? It's not a guarantee and maybe it gets ugly if it doesn't stop injuries, and maybe he doesn't want to do it or maybe it causes resentment from other players, maybe fans hate it (in part because they don't know this timeline).
6) I think the MVP threshold and similar were a bad means of making the RS matter to players. It potentially creates friction between team and player, ignored a historical precedent somewhat significantly below the threshold (Walton) and somewhat misses the point. Regular season wins aren't cherished. NBA Cup too ... seems like something that made it worse, it and RS aren't important enough on their own (where cup cultures exist they are separate) to warrant more games (correctly) but (in my opinion) it just further says ... these games don't matter in and of themselves so we've made up a new trophy.
7) I don't know that there's a simple solution to RS games don't feel valuable to the basketball side of teams. And you never see all the consequences of changes in advance. But to throw something out ... if you can get buy-in for fewer RS games (may mean less money though if they're better and more prestigious) truly even schedule (at least within each conference - could go 4x against only in-conference rivals? cut travel?). 58 games. Make a big deal of RS (conference?) champions. Have a trophy, have coverage, have videos, make it clear that over a big sample this team was the best. Give that a little bit of time to breathe. Not a lot, just a little bit. Then go to the playoffs. Maybe the money doesn't work. But I think you have to at least consider this type of thing if you don't like a diluted product.
