OT: Time for the season to be shortened

[Phreak50]

Seriously, this is getting ridiculous. 82 games is way too many. Especially considering all playoff rounds are best of 7 (for those too young to remember, this wasn't always the case).

For me, you should play every team twice. One home, one away. 60 games. Perfect length.

So many injuries, teams resting players due to the length of the season, teams getting bored (both Spurs and Miami for sure) late in the season and playoff brackets looking out of whack because of it.

Not just that, but you have the East where Miami is going to sweep their way through to the Finals and face a team that has been beaten up in every game in every series from the West. Put them anywhere in the West and they'd have a fight on their hands against 4 or 5 different teams. On the other hand, you'd have 4 or 5 Eastern playoff teams that wouldn't even make it over in the West.

It's almost unfair.

And besides that, these playoffs show how little the season really means. Cut the length back, making each win more important and cutting out a lot of useless games so everyone can do what they are doing now.

[Donald Kaufman]

I liked the number of games in the lockout year: 66. Obviously not compacted into three and a bit months like it was then but that amount of games is good.

And I think they should make the first round best of 5 again.

[imagump1313]

I think everyone would like less regular season games. I wouldn't mind a number between 40 and 60. With all the tanking going on lately an 82 game schedule is maddening. We all know it will never happen because of the money though.
I think a great way to combat tanking and making a boatload of money to boot for the league would be to have all the teams that don't make the playoffs be seeded into an NCAA-type tournament and play for the top draft pick. Whoever wins the tournament gets the top pick. This way you can suck but not too much. Teams won't deliberately lose games as much because in the end, they will have to win some games. Milwaukee would not want to be soo awful that they would have to play Phoenix in the first round.

[Nolan]

I'd love to see it happen but the owners would never go for it.