Discussion on how to improve the NBA "product"

[patryk7754]

Since Adam Silver has become commissioner, it seems like the main thing he's tried to tackle is how to improve the product by doing things like adding th NBA cup or changing up the all star game. Some have worked and some have backfired. I thought it would be fun to "brainstorm" our own ideas.


Increasing the importance of Division games

1. I think he one of the biggest obstacles the NBA faces is getting fans and players to care about an 82 game regular season. I think a good way increase the interest of the regular season is making certain games more important. The NBA already does this with the NBA Cub, but I think this could go a step or two further. I would make the NBA Cup group stage exclusively division games . I think the NBA might have to increase the number of division games, but I don't really see that as a problem. The winner of each group gets a seed in the NBA Cup tournament that would be played during All-star weekend. Seeding would be determined by group stage points. Top two seeds get a bye. Then its a bracket style tournament. Would probably have to add a night to all-star week. RD 1 on Thursday, RD 2 main event on Friday and championship round is Saturday's main event. Also, doesn't have to be all-star weekend but it could be a way to double dip on improving the product

2. Bring back guaranteed spots in playoff seeding.

Ultimately, I think the most valuable these two things would do is reignite NBA rivalries

New Draft Lottery tournament

I think the NBA should add a tournament that determines (to some extent) the draft slots for teams. This would incentivize teams to build the best possible roster, significantly the quality of play of each team in the NBA. You're either competing to be a playoff team or the best team in the lotto tournament. There are three versions of this that comes to mind. all involve non-playoff teams

1. My favorite: Winner of the tournament gets the number one pick and everyone else is entered into a lottery for the rest of the picks. Odds for the lottery would be the same as normal.

2. where you place in the tournament determines a boost in your draft lottery position. For example, if you started with the lowest odds of winning the lottery but won the tournament, you now have the highest odds. Or if you finish in "7th place" of the tourey, you get like a 3% boost. Tie breakers would be used to determine who is slotted were outside of the top 2.

3. Winner gets the top pick and the rest of the order is determined by team record. No lottery process.

All star weekend

I haven't paid too much attention all-star weekend in recent years so I might be repeating things that have already been tried or considered

1. like I mentioned above, this could be a good place to finish the NBA Cup tournament

2. Replace skills challenge with “king of the court”. Fans have been dying for a one on one tournament for decades. might be more popular than peak dunk contest competitions.

3. US vs the World game. Two options
- Replace rising stars game with nba raising starts vs players from international leagues

- Or do the idea that’s already being considered and make the all-star game US vs World (NBA players only)

4. Add 3-on-3 tournament. One nba player, one wnba player, one g-league player makes a team

5. Rebrand play in tournament as “wild card weekend” It’ll operate the same way but fans will slowly devalue it less because it’ll start being at like the NFL’s wild card weekend. Only difference would be all games would be played in one weekend and the real playoffs would start the next week. In between, the draft lottery tournament could be played.

[Am2626]

Since Adam Silver has become commissioner, it seems like the main thing he's tried to tackle is how to improve the product by doing things like adding th NBA cup or changing up the all star game. Some have worked and some have backfired. I thought it would be fun to "brainstorm" our own ideas.


Increasing the importance of Division games

1. I think he one of the biggest obstacles the NBA faces is getting fans and players to care about an 82 game regular season. I think a good way increase the interest of the regular season is making certain games more important. The NBA already does this with the NBA Cub, but I think this could go a step or two further. I would make the NBA Cup group stage exclusively division games . I think the NBA might have to increase the number of division games, but I don't really see that as a problem. The winner of each group gets a seed in the NBA Cup tournament that would be played during All-star weekend. Seeding would be determined by group stage points. Top two seeds get a bye. Then its a bracket style tournament. Would probably have to add a night to all-star week. RD 1 on Thursday, RD 2 main event on Friday and championship round is Saturday's main event. Also, doesn't have to be all-star weekend but it could be a way to double dip on improving the product

2. Bring back guaranteed spots in playoff seeding.

Ultimately, I think the most valuable these two things would do is reignite NBA rivalries

New Draft Lottery tournament

I think the NBA should add a tournament that determines (to some extent) the draft slots for teams. This would incentivize teams to build the best possible roster, significantly the quality of play of each team in the NBA. You're either competing to be a playoff team or the best team in the lotto tournament. There are three versions of this that comes to mind. all involve non-playoff teams

1. My favorite: Winner of the tournament gets the number one pick and everyone else is entered into a lottery for the rest of the picks. Odds for the lottery would be the same as normal.

2. where you place in the tournament determines a boost in your draft lottery position. For example, if you started with the lowest odds of winning the lottery but won the tournament, you now have the highest odds. Or if you finish in "7th place" of the tourey, you get like a 3% boost. Tie breakers would be used to determine who is slotted were outside of the top 2.

3. Winner gets the top pick and the rest of the order is determined by team record. No lottery process.

All star weekend

I haven't paid too much attention all-star weekend in recent years so I might be repeating things that have already been tried or considered

1. like I mentioned above, this could be a good place to finish the NBA Cup tournament

2. Replace skills challenge with “king of the court”. Fans have been dying for a one on one tournament for decades. might be more popular than peak dunk contest competitions.

3. US vs the World game. Two options
- Replace rising stars game with nba raising starts vs players from international leagues

- Or do the idea that’s already being considered and make the all-star game US vs World (NBA players only)

4. Add 3-on-3 tournament. One nba player, one wnba player, one g-league player makes a team

5. Rebrand play in tournament as “wild card weekend” It’ll operate the same way but fans will slowly devalue it less because it’ll start being at like the NFL’s wild card weekend. Only difference would be all games would be played in one weekend and the real playoffs would start the next week. In between, the draft lottery tournament could be played.

Three things I would like to see is get rid of the play in games, flatten the odds to move up in the draft lottery even higher and raise the draft age limit to 20.

I hate the play in games. There are already enough teams that qualify for the playoffs. We don’t need to open the door for more teams to falsely believe that they are good enough to compete. Also a team in the 7th spot could have 12 more wins than a team in the 9th or 10th spot and could be 2 consecutive losses from not making the playoffs. The regular season should have more weight.

Giving teams in the back end of the lottery better odds to win the lottery should further reduce the desire to tank. It allows teams in NBA hell to have a chance to get out of that situation by winning the lottery.

With NIL money there is no reason prospects should jump to the NBA one year after high school. The NBA is watered down with prospects that should be developing in college. Let them take the responsibility of leading a college team before going to the NBA. If a great prospect wants to reclassify they can do so and play 2 years in college before going to the NBA at 19.

I also think an undrafted player should be able to go back to school. The NBA has to change a rule to make that happen.

[Ice Man]

Good ideas, guys. All are worth at least a look, but I think the raising the draft age doesn't even need evaluation. Do it. Anybody frosh good enough to declare for the NBA draft is going to get some serious NIL money as a soph, so it's not as if we will be starving the kids by making them wait a year. And yes, the quality of the league is diluted when teams draft teenagers who can't play now, but who are regarded as having high future ceilings.

For example, although Stephon Castle won the ROY Award, he wasn't actually very good. He was an inefficient scorer and poor defender who ended up being regarded as a negative player by all the advanced stats. If you had a strong team and were trying to win games, he might not even make a playoff rotation. To put the matter another way, if you took all the rookies out of the league this past season, nobody but their mothers would have known the difference.

[League Circles]

I'd replace the current draft system with a rotating position system where each team picks at each of the 30 positions every 30 years (expansion would be prohibited). But it would be staggered, so a team would pick in one of the 6 tiers of picks (#1 through #5, #6 through #10, etc) every year. So you'd get a top 5 pick every 6 years, a pick in the 6-10 range every 6 years (but 3 years offset from when you get the top 5 pick, etc).

I'd call more travelling violations and offensive fouls.

I'd eliminate the individual max player salary, or at least make it even for all players after their rookie deals.

I'd go back to 12 man rosters or even 10 man.

[Michael Jackson]

Good ideas, guys. All are worth at least a look, but I think the raising the draft age doesn't even need evaluation. Do it. Anybody frosh good enough to declare for the NBA draft is going to get some serious NIL money as a soph, so it's not as if we will be starving the kids by making them wait a year. And yes, the quality of the league is diluted when teams draft teenagers who can't play now, but who are regarded as having high future ceilings.

For example, although Stephon Castle won the ROY Award, he wasn't actually very good. He was an inefficient scorer and poor defender who ended up being regarded as a negative player by all the advanced stats. If you had a strong team and were trying to win games, he might not even make a playoff rotation. To put the matter another way, if you took all the rookies out of the league this past season, nobody but their mothers would have known the difference.

yeah with NIL money that makes sense and fleshes things out a lot more. I mean you have the obvious in LeBron, Kobe and KG but they really proved to be outliers in the prep to pro. Would Kwame, Eddy, Tyson have benefitted with 2 years in school? Yeah. Eliminating the prep to pro was a benefit overall. An extra year would not hurt anyone as the NIL money would be good. Even in Bronny's case I think he might have taken a paycut coming to the NBA, maybe not Lakers gifted him a contract. That being said a guy like Flagg could easily make enough with NIL.

[Michael Jackson]

I'd replace the current draft system with a rotating position system where each team picks at each of the 30 positions every 30 years (expansion would be prohibited). But it would be staggered, so a team would pick in one of the 6 tiers of picks (#1 through #5, #6 through #10, etc) every year. So you'd get a top 5 pick every 6 years, a pick in the 6-10 range every 6 years (but 3 years offset from when you get the top 5 pick, etc).

I'd call more travelling violations and offensive fouls.

I'd eliminate the individual max player salary, or at least make it even for all players after their rookie deals.

I'd go back to 12 man rosters or even 10 man.

The rotating is interesting. Expansion is happening so it would have to be after that. I get the idea though that wastelands might remain wastelands though forever but no one in the playoffs currently is being lead by a #1 pick.

[SalmonsSuperfan]

need to fundamentally re-evaluate the point values and the dimensions of the court. that seems impractical, but to me the issue with NBA basketball nowadays is that the players are too good and there are only a handful of optimal shots to take. every team's offense looks the same -- there aren't unique identities -- it's just that some teams are better at executing that cookie cutter formula. maybe you can improve the diversity in shot selection by relaxing some of the restrictions on defenders, especially around the 3 point line and the rim. make it harder to score and make players do it in more interesting ways.
the nba is in trouble for a bunch of non-basketball related reasons though. it's a celebrity-driven league and none of the zoomer athletes that will take over after LeBron, Giannis etc understand their position the cosmos in this regard. they're all unlikeable. I think they go out of their way to be unlikeable. Then again, Jimmy goes out of his way to be unlikeable and he's the most lovable player in the NBA -- so who knows what's wrong with these kids. Adam Silver has also done untold damage to the league's reputation with all of his cashgrabs, but fundamentally I think the problem is that basketball in its current form has been solved.

[MrSparkle]

1. Dump the current lotto odds. Evenly distribute the odds. Make a rule so that a team is ineligible for a top-3 pick after winning two in a row.

2. Dump the play-in. Just expand the playoffs, incorporate it into 5 rounds with 24 teams. Keep the 82 game season. Encourage teams to play deeper rosters, instead of fighting harder for seeding.

6 worst teams pack up early in shame, with no special lotto odds.

Round 1 (one-and-done):

1-4 bye
5 vs 12
6 vs 11
7 vs 10
8 vs 9

Round 2: best of 5

Rounds 3-5: best of 7

I don’t like best of 7s in every series. They drag on. Especially with healthy top seeds just sweeping and blowing out garbage teams. Waste of TV time.

[Am2626]

1. Dump the current lotto odds. Evenly distribute the odds. Make a rule so that a team is ineligible for a top-3 pick after winning two in a row.

2. Dump the play-in. Just expand the playoffs, incorporate it into 5 rounds with 24 teams. Keep the 82 game season. Encourage teams to play deeper rosters, instead of fighting harder for seeding.

6 worst teams pack up early in shame, with no special lotto odds.

Round 1 (one-and-done):

1-4 bye
5 vs 12
6 vs 11
7 vs 10
8 vs 9

Round 2: best of 5

Rounds 3-5: best of 7

I don’t like best of 7s in every series. They drag on. Especially with healthy top seeds just sweeping and blowing out garbage teams. Waste of TV time.

If that many teams make the playoffs I don’t see what value the regular season would have? In my opinion a team that makes the playoffs should be a good team. If 24 out of 30 teams make the playoffs some really bad teams would be in the post season.

If you really want to make things interesting just do an NCAA type single game elimination tournament. Give the higher seed home court advantage. It won’t happen because teams and the NBA would lose a lot of revenue with fewer games but the ratings for these games would be through the roof.

[The Box Office]

The Draft Lottery tournament is absurd. If I was a player on one of those teams, I wouldn't play hard at all. Eff that. Play hard to get a number one pick to replace me? Or my best buds?

Eff that.

[League Circles]

1. Dump the current lotto odds. Evenly distribute the odds. Make a rule so that a team is ineligible for a top-3 pick after winning two in a row.

2. Dump the play-in. Just expand the playoffs, incorporate it into 5 rounds with 24 teams. Keep the 82 game season. Encourage teams to play deeper rosters, instead of fighting harder for seeding.

6 worst teams pack up early in shame, with no special lotto odds.

Round 1 (one-and-done):

1-4 bye
5 vs 12
6 vs 11
7 vs 10
8 vs 9

Round 2: best of 5

Rounds 3-5: best of 7

I don’t like best of 7s in every series. They drag on. Especially with healthy top seeds just sweeping and blowing out garbage teams. Waste of TV time.

If that many teams make the playoffs I don’t see what value the regular season would have? In my opinion a team that makes the playoffs should be a good team. If 24 out of 30 teams make the playoffs some really bad teams would be in the post season.

If you really want to make things interesting just do an NCAA type single game elimination tournament. Give the higher seed home court advantage. It won’t happen because teams and the NBA would lose a lot of revenue with fewer games but the ratings for these games would be through the roof.

To me the 7 game series are the greatest thing on earth and a huge part of what makes the NBA so much better than NCAA. Single elimination is too fluky for my interests. I even think the NFL should go to a best-of-3 for each round of the playoffs, but only have 8 teams make the playoffs.

[Am2626]

1. Dump the current lotto odds. Evenly distribute the odds. Make a rule so that a team is ineligible for a top-3 pick after winning two in a row.

2. Dump the play-in. Just expand the playoffs, incorporate it into 5 rounds with 24 teams. Keep the 82 game season. Encourage teams to play deeper rosters, instead of fighting harder for seeding.

6 worst teams pack up early in shame, with no special lotto odds.

Round 1 (one-and-done):

1-4 bye
5 vs 12
6 vs 11
7 vs 10
8 vs 9

Round 2: best of 5

Rounds 3-5: best of 7

I don’t like best of 7s in every series. They drag on. Especially with healthy top seeds just sweeping and blowing out garbage teams. Waste of TV time.

If that many teams make the playoffs I don’t see what value the regular season would have? In my opinion a team that makes the playoffs should be a good team. If 24 out of 30 teams make the playoffs some really bad teams would be in the post season.

If you really want to make things interesting just do an NCAA type single game elimination tournament. Give the higher seed home court advantage. It won’t happen because teams and the NBA would lose a lot of revenue with fewer games but the ratings for these games would be through the roof.

To me the 7 game series are the greatest thing on earth and a huge part of what makes the NBA so much better than NCAA. Single elimination is too fluky for my interests. I even think the NFL should go to a best-of-3 for each round of the playoffs, but only have 8 teams make the playoffs.

In a 7 game series the better team almost always wins the series. It usually takes an injury to a key player to give the underdog any realistic chance to win. Experience also plays a big role so there are times where a lesser talented team that has championship experience beats the better and more talented team. While a single elimination tournament is not realistic a best of 3 series would bring some unpredictability into the playoffs. I don’t see anything changing though because the more games means more revenue.

[sco]

In terms of parity, tanking and the draft, what about excluding the top 2 or 3 picks from the lottery and have those picks get randomly assigned to teams, with a mechanism to make sure that each team gets one of each every 30 years.

[_txchilibowl_]

Eliminate the 3 point line. I'm serious.

[JohnnyKILLroy]

-Get rid of the flopping and drawing fouls Harden style

-let the defense guard again. Rules favor the offensive player too much now.

-love a tournament for draft position. One and done would be awesome

-severely cut into paychecks if guys aren’t playing 75 games at least. Punish the player and or punish the team in some way. Maybe serious fines or take away draft picks or lose draft position.

[Axl Rose]

The Draft Lottery tournament is absurd. If I was a player on one of those teams, I wouldn't play hard at all. Eff that. Play hard to get a number one pick to replace me? Or my best buds?

Eff that.

This gives a good idea of how players feel about this type of thing. Like you said no one is going to play hard to be replaced or feel like they need some 19 year old to come save the day.

Watch on YouTube

[Stratmaster]

I like the minimum age of 20 idea. And that should be 20 at the time they are drafted, not the first game they play.

From there, it is absolutely addressing the 3-point line. Start the line right where the lines meet in the corner (eliminating the pure corner 3; you would have to be a step out of the corner) and extend it a foot in all other areas the first season, and another foot the 3rd season (to allow shooters to adjust).

I could go with a tournament for draft position if it just included the 4 worst records (since the first 4 spots are what is open in the lottery now). Of course, you will still have teams tanking to get into those 4 spots.

[League Circles]

If that many teams make the playoffs I don’t see what value the regular season would have? In my opinion a team that makes the playoffs should be a good team. If 24 out of 30 teams make the playoffs some really bad teams would be in the post season.

If you really want to make things interesting just do an NCAA type single game elimination tournament. Give the higher seed home court advantage. It won’t happen because teams and the NBA would lose a lot of revenue with fewer games but the ratings for these games would be through the roof.

To me the 7 game series are the greatest thing on earth and a huge part of what makes the NBA so much better than NCAA. Single elimination is too fluky for my interests. I even think the NFL should go to a best-of-3 for each round of the playoffs, but only have 8 teams make the playoffs.

In a 7 game series the better team almost always wins the series. It usually takes an injury to a key player to give the underdog any realistic chance to win. Experience also plays a big role so there are times where a lesser talented team that has championship experience beats the better and more talented team. While a single elimination tournament is not realistic a best of 3 series would bring some unpredictability into the playoffs. I don’t see anything changing though because the more games means more revenue.

I agree with your assessment, but it's precisely the fact that the (truly) better team wins that makes me love it so much.

[meekrab]

Make the court bigger. 3 point line 24 feet all around which means the court needs to be 54 feet wide to give the same 3 foot space in the corners, and to preserve the shape of the court you add 4 feet on each side of half court to make it 102 feet long. Teams will still try to shoot layups and 3s but the 3 pointer will be less efficient and the layups take longer to drive to and there will be more space for midrange play.

[C3]

I have not been watching much lately, but used to watch almost all of the bulls game religiously.

I have pretty much lost interest in today's game with the lack of physicality, and also the tendency of analytics in promoting the 3 point shot. Basketball used to be my favorite sport to watch, its not anymore. I make no effort to catch a game, but will enjoy one if its on and I'm available.

With the improvement percentage all around concerning the three point shot. I think to improve play and interest, the easiest way to do accomplish this, would to move the three point shot out further to encourage the value of both the mid range game, and restore physicality, and value to the inside game. If you have to make the court a bit larger, so be it. (I'm okay with that too).

The NBA should even out the value in shot percentage, so both the two point, and 3 point shot have equal value in the statistics. It would make the game exciting again, and allow different teams to approach the competition in different ways restoring excitement.

The solution to what we see today is just so easy, I cant believe it has not already been done.

If the court is made larger and a player is successful, it will just give fans more to argue about, and generate more discussions for the league.

Lol, I see I made this name in 2003. I have not posted in a long time. Yep, I'm still alive and doing well. Just old, and not happy with today's current NBA product. I'm actually surprised I was able to guess what my password used to be. I can't even remember what my work related passwords were a few months ago, when my smart phone fails to auto log me in.