2023-24 NBA Season Discussion

[eminence]

Seems pretty rare. Kawhi did it to a slightly lesser degree. Making the jump from 2015 to 2016. But he's kind of the classic 'learned to shoot' guy.

[The-Power]

Seems pretty rare. Kawhi did it to a slightly lesser degree. Making the jump from 2015 to 2016. But he's kind of the classic 'learned to shoot' guy.

Kawhi is a good call, though. +1

[Colbinii]

Edwards improved by 8% this year.

[eminence]

I understand the problem they're trying to address with the games requirements for awards... but man are we going to get some dumb results due to it.

[penbeast0]

I understand the problem they're trying to address with the games requirements for awards... but man are we going to get some dumb results due to it.

I don't think so, at least not at the top (actual award) end of the awards though some of the runnerup vote, sure. Anyone who isn't qualifying for the game marker is leaving their team to be playing an awful lot of reserve/replacement type minutes compared to someone who plays 35 minutes a night, 75 games a year. Assuming it's not a ridiculous blowout in terms of talent/performance of a type I haven't seen much of in all my years of watching, the guy playing 50 games a year probably shouldn't be MVP, DPOY, etc. (maybe most improved where I think the standards are very different).

[Doctor MJ]

I understand the problem they're trying to address with the games requirements for awards... but man are we going to get some dumb results due to it.

I don't think so, at least not at the top (actual award) end of the awards though some of the runnerup vote, sure. Anyone who isn't qualifying for the game marker is leaving their team to be playing an awful lot of reserve/replacement type minutes compared to someone who plays 35 minutes a night, 75 games a year. Assuming it's not a ridiculous blowout in terms of talent/performance of a type I haven't seen much of in all my years of watching, the guy playing 50 games a year probably shouldn't be MVP, DPOY, etc. (maybe most improved where I think the standards are very different).

It's the All-League stuff where I think it's going to seem wrong when all is said & done. Very hard to be the #1 guy at anything when you miss 18+ games, but being the #10 or #15 guy? Quite possible.

To be honest, I think the issues with these awards go so much deeper than that it's hard for me to be worried about this particular thing. The fact that they're no longer focusing on positions when Russell & Wilt had to compete for one 1st team spot kills the consistency. The fact that we know they tended to give All-D to the same guys year after year by reputation long after they stopped being elite killed their fundamental credibility there.

I do think we might well see the NBA walk some stuff back after this season due to Embiid. One thing to eliminate him from an award he shouldn't be getting consideration for anyway (if he misses that much time), quite another to not have him a candidate for All-NBA 3rd team.

[penbeast0]

Fair enough. I was only thinking of the single person awards rather than All-NBa teams or All-Defense teams where there are a lot of awards being handed out. Maybe walk it back for those but not for MVP, DPOY, SMOY, etc.?

[Doctor MJ]

Fair enough. I was only thinking of the single person awards rather than All-NBa teams or All-Defense teams where there are a lot of awards being handed out. Maybe walk it back for those but not for MVP, DPOY, SMOY, etc.?

To be honest, to hammer the situation in for the players, I think keeping it as is is probably best.
But yeah, I could see it being a partial walk-back just like you propose.

[penbeast0]

True, to actually change behavior you may need overkill. Depends on whether your goal is to have a reasonably proportionate rule or to change behavior.

[Doctor MJ]

True, to actually change behavior you may need overkill. Depends on whether your goal is to have a reasonably proportionate rule or to change behavior.

Yeah, honestly not sure if anything can change the behavior now, but I think the NBA is right to see this as a serious - and worsening - problem.

[eminence]

I understand the problem they're trying to address with the games requirements for awards... but man are we going to get some dumb results due to it.

I don't think so, at least not at the top (actual award) end of the awards though some of the runnerup vote, sure. Anyone who isn't qualifying for the game marker is leaving their team to be playing an awful lot of reserve/replacement type minutes compared to someone who plays 35 minutes a night, 75 games a year. Assuming it's not a ridiculous blowout in terms of talent/performance of a type I haven't seen much of in all my years of watching, the guy playing 50 games a year probably shouldn't be MVP, DPOY, etc. (maybe most improved where I think the standards are very different).

It's the All-League stuff where I think it's going to seem wrong when all is said & done. Very hard to be the #1 guy at anything when you miss 18+ games, but being the #10 or #15 guy? Quite possible.

To be honest, I think the issues with these awards go so much deeper than that it's hard for me to be worried about this particular thing. The fact that they're no longer focusing on positions when Russell & Wilt had to compete for one 1st team spot kills the consistency. The fact that we know they tended to give All-D to the same guys year after year by reputation long after they stopped being elite killed their fundamental credibility there.

I do think we might well see the NBA walk some stuff back after this season due to Embiid. One thing to eliminate him from an award he shouldn't be getting consideration for anyway (if he misses that much time), quite another to not have him a candidate for All-NBA 3rd team.

I was thinking for the All-league awards, for the individual awards it shouldn't be an issue very often. Though it'll still feel weird for guys like current Embiid to be outright ineligible. Those guys should rarely be winning it, but they should be on the ballot most years.

Eventually there will be a situation like Embiid (MVP level guy) playing 64 games and losing out to someone like Gobert (All-NBA guy and I love Rudy) who snuck over the border with 66 games or something. And that will rightfully feel ridiculous at the time, but will get forgotten to history.

[AEnigma]

Not sure I explicitly said as much on this forum, but 65 immediately looked like an excessive cut-off for all-NBA. Not sure why it could not have been distinguished — and seeing as all-NBA affects more players, why it would not be scaled down if there were league insistence on setting one number for everything. Kawhi has not played more than 60 games since 2017, but I am not going to pretend he was anything less than a top fifteen regular season player from 2019-21.

[Colbinii]

My issue with the games cut off is season awards attempt to tell a story about the season. A player playing 60 games and playing at an MVP level but not being recognized really fails at telling the story of the season.

[falcolombardi]

True, to actually change behavior you may need overkill. Depends on whether your goal is to have a reasonably proportionate rule or to change behavior.

Yeah, honestly not sure if anything can change the behavior now, but I think the NBA is right to see this as a serious - and worsening - problem.

Is a problem only because the nba wants to keep a 82 game season, wanting teams to pretend that playing all of them is their best bet to competing and preserving player health is like wanting a cake and eating it too

Right now any GM or coach or even player who prioritizes playing regular season games should be rightfully seen as incompetent or misguided if their goal is to compete to the best of their abilities

[Doctor MJ]

True, to actually change behavior you may need overkill. Depends on whether your goal is to have a reasonably proportionate rule or to change behavior.

Yeah, honestly not sure if anything can change the behavior now, but I think the NBA is right to see this as a serious - and worsening - problem.

Is a problem only because the nba wants to keep a 82 game season, wanting teams to pretend that playing all of them is their best bet to competing and preserving player health is like wanting a cake and eating it too

Right now any GM or coach or even player who prioritizes playing regular season games should be rightfully seen as incompetent or misguided if their goal is to compete to the best of their abilities

You talk as if changing the 82 games season is some kind of easy thing that everyone else would embrace if only the NBA organization would get on board. This is not reality. The money coming into the sport come from contracts based on the season as it exists today, which is based on how the season was back before the modern media landscape. To have the kind of radical change that's necessary to kill this issue, realistically you need either a) media corporations to agree to pay the same amount of money for far less product, or b) have everyone else agree to risk a massive pay cut based on a shorter season.

Further, the NBA isn't the only major league with this issue. All the major American team leagues have this issue except the NFL, and the only reason the NFL avoided this is because they manage a bloodsport that already does so much life-crippling impact to their athletes that no one would ever try to make them play 5-10 times the amount of games.

I'm all for us examining in detail what the NBA's problem is here and describing systems that could work better, but even though I've had a handle on all of this for decades, I'm not remotely confident that I could implement a solution given the collection of forces in play.

Last thing I'll say: While I think that 80-160 game seasons are just plain a bad idea for the modern age, it's worth noting that even if you play less games than you have fingers & toes, that won't spare you from the playoff trap.

Every sport that implements playoffs ends up diminishing the regular season, and frankly this is a good reason to never have true playoffs to determine the league champion. The model of the European soccer leagues where league and tournament are fundamentally different things would have been the better model for American sports to embrace...but alas, that ship has sailed. There's nothing now that will convince Americans that the champion isn't based on who wins the tourney at the end, and that's bad news for all the people whose livelihood is influenced primarily by the regular season - by which I mean first and foremost the people who actually work in and around the stadium on game days.

[Doctor MJ]

My issue with the games cut off is season awards attempt to tell a story about the season. A player playing 60 games and playing at an MVP level but not being recognized really fails at telling the story of the season.

So, as someone who is fine with Walton's MVP, I'd say I largely agree with you about the potential damage this rule could have. However as someone laments the way information about MVPs and other awards is lost with time, I don't know if in practice this will make things any worse than they already are. Here I'm thinking about that Derrick Rose MVP where there's now a risk of Rose making the HOF simply because all other MVPs are in, despite the fact that at the time Rose was recognized to be something less than an MVP-level player.

[Colbinii]

My issue with the games cut off is season awards attempt to tell a story about the season. A player playing 60 games and playing at an MVP level but not being recognized really fails at telling the story of the season.

So, as someone who is fine with Walton's MVP, I'd say I largely agree with you about the potential damage this rule could have. However as someone laments the way information about MVPs and other awards is lost with time, I don't know if in practice this will make things any worse than they already are. Here I'm thinking about that Derrick Rose MVP where there's now a risk of Rose making the HOF simply because all other MVPs are in, despite the fact that at the time Rose was recognized to be something less than an MVP-level player.

I think it is less about MVP and more about the All-NBA teams. I was referencing an MVP Level player like Joel Embiid not making any of the All-NBA teams.

edit: Dang, you really singling JordanBulls out like that?

[Colbinii]

Jabari Smith Jr vs Evan Mobley is an interesting comparison moving forward.

Mobley, the defensive stalwart who has had massive impact defensively during his young career hasn't progressed enough as a shooter while Jabari Smith Jr, 2 years younger than Mobley, is showing why he was in contention for the #1 overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft.

I wonder how it plays out moving forward, as I believe it's easier to lean on the shooting and overall offensive game of Jabari rather than Mobley's limited floor and shooting skill-set.

[sp6r=underrated]

Is a problem only because the nba wants to keep a 82 game season,

IF they dropped the RS to 60 games teams would go to resting their players for a 45 game schedule.


The issue isn't too many games. The issue is the RS is meaningless because teams no longer value it. Reducing the number of games isn't going to get teams to magically value the RS more.

Teams and players don't want to play competitive basketball unless it has championship stakes. IF they dropped the RS to 60 games teams would go to resting their players for a 45 game schedule. Teams are as much concerned with fluke injuries as they're concerned with injuries caused by excessive wear and tear.


You'd probably need to get down to 25-30 games for teams to take the RS seriously or dramatically reducing the number of playoff spots to get teams to commit to playing their players in every game. But basketball isn't popular enough to make that work.

wanting teams to pretend that playing all of them is their best bet to competing and preserving player health is like wanting a cake and eating it too

The point of the NBA is to maximize the amount of money you can make selling professional basketball. That is what almost every player is in this for not championships as much as the hardcore types like us focus on.

I don't have a great solution. Basketball is marketed as an individual sport. Fans don't care much when top talent isn't in the game which is different than most of the other team sports I follow.

The only minor solution I have is to say national tv games missed count as 2 missed games. And a player who plays in every national tv game gets a bonus.

[sp6r=underrated]

Every sport that implements playoffs ends up diminishing the regular season, and frankly this is a good reason to never have true playoffs to determine the league champion. The model of the European soccer leagues where league and tournament are fundamentally different things would have been the better model for American sports to embrace...but alas, that ship has sailed. There's nothing now that will convince Americans that the champion isn't based on who wins the tourney at the end, and that's bad news for all the people whose livelihood is influenced primarily by the regular season - by which I mean first and foremost the people who actually work in and around the stadium on game days.

One of my old man shouting at the clouds stances was college football was better pre-BCS under the old true bowl system. For non-American Sports fans the way it worked pre BCS in college football was you played an 11-12 game schedule with most games in conference. At the end of the season there would be one bowl game

Rose: Big-10 vs Pac 10 (major conferences)
Orange: Big-8 (major conference) vs invite
Sugar: SEC (major conference) vs invite
Cotton: SWC (defunct major conference) vs invite

As a result college football was really built around the RS in a way no other American sports league was. But because it was so odd compared to other formats people demanded the playoff format.