10 minute quarters - who says yes?

[webeye]

Only 6 players per team would see the court in any given game. Bench quality would be largely irrelevant.

They'd compact the commercials; there's no way they're cutting a commercial break. So now there would either be longer commercial breaks, or faster mandatory timeouts, or both. It'd feel like more commercials, because they'd come more frequently, with less basketball in between.

And the Athletic has a good point here: Why on earth would the best league in the world update their product to be more like the inferior products that look up to it?

[sidsid]

They're talking about minutes instead of what we all know would make the players, and even the fans, happy. Reducing the regular season, trading some of those games for more meaningful games (more playoff format games, an actual relevant midseason cup). Because that might lead to a temporary dip in revenue or growth. The general problem for basically anything that generates money these days. Short term thinking everywhere.

Yeah I am 100% on board with this.

Make the RS only 58 games long or whatever, extend the NBA Cup to a bigger format, increase the play-in, IDC.

But anything but those mid march slug fests PLEASE

The trick is to convince them that it will organically grow the game and revenue over time. That's why I'd go at it incrementally. Slash the regular season to 60 games, but add about a dozen playoff style games (not elimination based, but cup/points based) to the sched. That way you only lose about 10 games in terms of product, but substitute a dozen of them with higher quality/bankable playoff style games.

The cup has to mean something so you bring in an NHL style point system and actual rewards. Win the cup = choosing your opponent in the end season playoffs or something. Every cup game win is worth 2 points compared to 1 point for a reg season game. Things like that that raise the stakes that make things interesting to the players and the fans.

I'd eventually whittle the regular season down to 40 games (and equivalent cup/playoff games as my initial proposal) with almost two fully seperate seasons in the full NBA calendar.

You'd eliminate about 20 games off the players bodies and gotten close to basically two NFL style seasons with equivalent hype.

[YogurtProducer]

They're talking about minutes instead of what we all know would make the players, and even the fans, happy. Reducing the regular season, trading some of those games for more meaningful games (more playoff format games, an actual relevant midseason cup). Because that might lead to a temporary dip in revenue or growth. The general problem for basically anything that generates money these days. Short term thinking everywhere.

Yeah I am 100% on board with this.

Make the RS only 58 games long or whatever, extend the NBA Cup to a bigger format, increase the play-in, IDC.

But anything but those mid march slug fests PLEASE

The trick is to convince them that it will organically grow the game and revenue over time. That's why I'd go at it incrementally. Slash the regular season to 60 games, but add about a dozen playoff style games (not elimination based, but cup/points based) to the sched. That way you only lose about 10 games in terms of product, but substitute a dozen of them with higher quality/bankable playoff style games.

The cup has to mean something so you bring in an NHL style point system and actual rewards. Win the cup = choosing your opponent in the end season playoffs or something. Every cup game win is worth 2 points compared to 1 point for a reg season game. Things like that that raise the stakes that make things interesting to the players and the fans.

I'd eventually whittle the regular season down to 40 games (and equivalent cup/playoff games as my initial proposal) with almost two fully seperate seasons in the full NBA calendar.

You'd eliminate about 20 games off the players bodies and gotten close to basically two NFL style seasons with equivalent hype.

This to me seems great.

****, while we are at it you can make contracts last for "stages" rather than years and then we have two free agency cycles per year

[wegotthabeet]

I'd be fine with it.

But I'd be even more fine with shortening the season.

How short?

It would have to be significantly shorter to make the regular season a much better product. We're talking 1 or 2 games per week max, so 25 to 50 games per year, not something like 76 games, which is pointless.

58 games. Everyone plays each team twice. 62 games when the two expansion teams are added.

I don't think a perfectly balanced schedule with every team playing one another twice makes sense unless the NBA eliminates Conferences altogether.

I would go even shorter than that with only two games per week max. Every team plays one weekday game and one weekend game per week. This would result in roughly 50 games per year. Allows for greater access to international TV markets.