That’s another good one. That’s minimum another 25 games.

Like I am all for encouraging star participation but let’s at least measure it right lol, these guys aren’t just sitting out for load management

It’s also a new tv deal with significantly more national games on the schedule than last year.

LeBron and Steph as well have sat out a good chunk of time. Both their teams are always on national tv

i mean there’s still a pretty prominent narrative even on this sub that NBA players are lazy bums that hate their fans and just want to collect a check and not play, and even if it’s not the intention of this article the headline feeds into that narrative, there should be that context added to this.

Why shouldn’t they be included in the data?

Because then it is easy to ignore the findings. “Well yeah, of course the number is down, it’s because of a few fluke season long injuries”.

And also because it makes for weird “solutions”. So if every single game the Pacers played counts against the “star availability” stat because their star is out for the whole year, then the easiest solution for the NBA is don’t put the Pacers on TV. Which then becomes “if a team’s star is injured, don’t put them on TV” - that’s a weird precedent to set, even if it does get the numbers up.

B-But I bought tickets to a game and LeBron James didn’t want to risk snapping his leg. My son was in attendance and it was going to be the only time in the next sixty years I could afford to go to an NBA game. Adam Silver please fix this.

I actually think those are the exact players this post is truly about. The guys injured before the year were never available but stars sitting out for tanking reasons is awful fan experience and does need to be fixed

Giannis has been injured three separate times this season, including with a calf injury that derailed prior seasons. He was not shut down for “tanking.”

And not a big deal. They all do it

It was so incredibly satisfying to blow them out last night, on their home court, against a healthy Kawhi with Wemby sitting out. We better see some kind of consequences, but I’ll believe it when I see it with how rich cheaters seem to be able to do whatever the hell they want right now.

haliburton 100% hurt his hamstring by coming back early to make all nba third team bc he needed 65 games.

handchecking and allowing physical defense in general without bailing out the offense for flopping, so, calling offensive violations like carrying/traveling/initiating contact. It seemed to work pretty damn well for decades

this is the thing people miss when they talk trash about previous eras. Going full speed into a crowd used to be a turnover or offensive foul (turnover) WAY more often because the refs wouldn’t call minor contact on the defense if the offensive player was out of control.

Guys looked less athletic and did less athletic moves not because they couldn’t, but because it wasn’t smart to do them more than a couple of times per game, shit was risky

so, very easily just scale back the freedom of movement changes and actually call things mildly closer to the rulebook on offensive players

Less games is the only real solution

Tackle moving screens to prevent those chain screens that have players constantly chasing.

Shorten quarters to 10 minutes like FIBA to reduce amount of playtime.

Limit screens per possession to like 3 to limit the constant scramble (nuclear option, would never happen).

Remove the defensive 3 second and let the big man camp the paint like FIBA.

Teams could start limiting their stars to 27MPG during regular season or around that.

Change the shot clock rules to reset back to 24 after an offensive rebound outside of the final two minutes is one idea. This would mean less possessions overall. I still like it at the end of a game so we don’t get as many intentional fouls.

I’ll say it: Eliminate three point line.

As much as I would hate it they need to get back to a two leg sport. These guys are so powerful and strong that the wear and tear from euro steps and long step backs and other one leg moves are brutal for them long term, combined with increased pace of play.

Make 3 pointers worth 2.5

When my grandma was first allowed to play basketball they had offensive and defensive teams because women were too delicate to run up and down the court.

Good point, I didn’t think about that. Id have to see how those schedules line up, i would think there has to be a way to tack a couple weeks on mixed between an earlier start and a later end

To remind people the season starts soon probably lmao im down to get rid of it

lets teams test out different lineups with their new players and ramp their best/oldest players up gradually with a few 15-20 min games without worrying about wins and losses. i think it’s a good thing for the game.

To prevent dudes from injuring themselves

The money.

There’s also the perspective of skewing all time records and stuff due to less games, but at the end of the day, it’s the money.

People say money, but I feel like this is a bit of a lazy and shortsighted answer. Adding more games only increases revenue up to a point. If there are too many games, players get injured and/or rest more which depresses overall league interest, and you’ve oversaturated the schedule with so many games that each feels kind of meaningless, which makes the league less fun to follow. If the season became 100 games, I don’t think that would net the league more revenue, and it would probably lose money by making the product less popular to a degree that outweighs the additional games.  But by the basic logic that fewer games = less money, you would expect that to generate more revenue.

There’s some optimal season length that balances all of these things, and I think there is a pretty strong case that the NBA isn’t at it currently

Push the playoffs back two weeks and eliminate back to backs. Have the finals start on July 4th and eliminate preseason games. Problem solved.

Post expansion, assuming 4 divisions of 4 teams per conference.

• 4 games against each team in own division (12 total)
• 3 games against each team in 2 in conference divisions home and away spread mixed between teams (24 total)
• 2 games against each team in 1 last in conference division (8 total)
• 2 games against each team in opposite conference (32 total)

That’s 76 games, which ends up being 1216 total games, 14 fewer than current. I think that works pretty evenly. You can rotate the in conference thing pretty simply, or keep it imbalanced to force rivalries.

The 65 game cutoff for awards is 80% of the season. I sure wouldn’t want less money if I was already getting away with missing 1 out of every 5 shifts.

So the stars should actually push for a 100 game regular season while still only participating in 60-70 of the games

but for some reason fans expect it. 

The answer is Michael Jordan. As with everything else, Michael set the expectation that everyone is expected to follow, and Mike played all 82 every year of the last 3 Peat, so that’s where people’s minds go. 

Bc their frames of reference are dudes who played a significantly less taxing brand of basketball

You can say injuries are up, but once you try to connect it to the 65 game rule you imply a causal relationship between the rule and players playing in the games.

It doesn’t make any sense to make that connection for players who didn’t even have the possibility to play 65 to begin with.

I believe they’re two separate conversations.

They happened in the same environment

But it’s not the same environment. There’s a new tv deal with way more national tv games (meaning more national tv games to potentially miss with injury).

AAU games on their own aren’t as taxing but some kids are playing multiple games a day, or at least not getting a rest day for over a week straight

I’ve also heard people mention that it would affect player salaries which would be a non starter. Players would rather risk injury than lose money.

Now whether that is true, I don’t know for certain. I assume different players might have different opinions.

Its not about the fans lol why the hell would the players agree to get their salaries cut with less games?

for real. id understand it if it were like football where there’s an increased amount of international commitments, friendlies, and cups just to make money but the nba has always been 82 games.

part of roster building should be about depth. people complain that one player impacts the game too much therefore they should tank. i agree with that take… but one way to reduce that impact is to reduce the minutes on the floor.

That would be a horrible viewing experience, 10 minutes of game?? And how many ads lol

That seems like a fair alternative yeah

This would never happen, it would destroy the relevance of previous player statistics.

Yea I mentioned in another comment that I’ve heard it wouldn’t happen due to players not wanting to take a pay cut. I am no commissioner so it isn’t my job to figure out specifics.

I just like the idea of fewer games for healthier players, myself.

players shouldnt be determining how many minutes they play, and its a problem easily solved in CBA to shift toward non volume based incentives

People talk about the number / length of games a lot but it is also the amount / intensity of training required to achieve the pace.

Trainers squeeze every bit of performance they can, but it seems recovery struugles to keep up with it.

Eliminating B2Bs seems wise but I wouldn’t touch games otherwise. You can’t control playera training intensity. The only other viable option is rules changes to reduce the pace of the game.

The average player weighs more

The average player weighed 215lbs in 1998, 223 in 2014 and 216 in 2026.

This ain’t it.

Steph is 38 years old. Every game he plays at this point is a bonus. His elite play now is a miracle in NBA terms. The Warriors chose to pay him what they pay him. If I were a Warriors fan, I’d be happy for the last 2 decades and not stress about it.

The nba app and nba.com you can find out where it is, what I’ve been doing.