If you’re an NBA team, especially one that’s not in the upper echelon of the league, you know that making the playoffs can be something of a double-edged sword. One the one hand, of course you want your team in the postseason, because technically that’s the only way you could possible win the championship. On the other hand, if you come in as say, the eight seed in either conference, you’ve got a better shot at scoring front row seats to Hamilton than winning it all – in non-Covid theater times, of course. And if you’re in the playoffs, that means you don’t get to be in the draft lottery, where each of the bottom 14 teams have a shot at one of the top few picks, even if somewhat minute for the better of the bad teams. But in the current era of the NBA, it’s better to have a distant shot at a transformational new player than a small chance at playing a round of two of the playoffs. I suppose that’s another way sports are like politics – there’s no middle anymore. Regardless, this is why you see a bunch of teams jockey to play worse, not better towards the end of the year. Observe this year’s Houston Rockets for a true demonstration.
This year, this whole process might get tricker. Unlike most years, when eight teams from each conference make the postseason, then one plays eight, two plays seven, and so on, this year the seventh through tenth teams in each conference will have a short play-in tournament to see who gets each of the final two spots. So the top six teams are safe, and the rest have some kind of bizarro round-robin event to find out who gets to lose to the Nets or the Jazz – and I can’t believe I just said that. Which means before the real playoffs start, you may have eight teams playing two mini-tournaments where probably half the teams secretly want to lose – or at least their owners do. Not exactly the recipe for inspired basketball.
This new model is not popular with Mark Cuban, who beyond funding companies on Shark Tank is also the owner of the Dallas Mavericks – and possibly the most visible of all NBA owners. According to Cuban, this idea, while creative in spirit, will lead to too much heated play in the final weeks of the season, when teams might otherwise rest their star players. In this new system, the divide between finishing 6th and 7th is like the Grand Canyon, which means teams will do anything to stay north of that line. Add that to this compressed 72 game season, and intensity and injuries could skyrocket – and to be clear, I think like half of the NBA all-stars have been on injured reserve already.
I’m not sure if Mark Cuban’s supposition is correct, or whether he’s simply lobbying for his Mavericks that are currently in the seven spot in the West. I do believe that when it comes to the grind of an NBA season, players should err on the side of more rest than less. Given the size, speed, and strength of today’s NBA, it’s nearly inconceivable to imagine players going all in for the better part of 100 games, year after year no less. Assuming they still want to walk someday.
But the real question here isn’t whether this play-in series is too grueling for the League’s workforce. That quandary is better discussed in the NFL, which just added a 17th game to an already physically impossible season. The question here is what is best model to keep fans interested in a league and a sport that’s undergone remarkable transformation in the modern media age. As is, most young sports fans watch the NBA – and they do watch – to see the stars come out. It’s increasingly less about how far a team makes a playoff run and more about what their star players do in that time. And as much as huge fans, like my 13-year-old, enjoy watching an entire basketball game, a whole lot more watch some compressed version thereof, all of it easily available on YouTube. Which means that adding some extra drama at the start of the playoffs might make sense for us NBA diehards, but probably less important to the young audience the League hopes to maintain. And probably a real detriment if it means more stars might end up on IR with bad knees.
Of course, for a lot of teams and their fans, making the playoffs isn’t that great a deal anyway. Especially when they can make the lottery instead.
Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.