Shortening the regular season to prevent injuries is a bigger issue.
Adam Silver, commissioner of the NBA, was recently interviewed by Bloomberg on the NBA’s future. In the interview, Silver discussed the league’s future plans of expanding throughout the entire world. However, before the NBA can globally expand, it needs to make changes to ensure its product doesn’t fall behind the other major American sports leagues. The NBA needs to focus on its local product before trying to go worldwide.
The two biggest issues the NBA currently faces are the health of its star players and the amount of travel. The league has to face these issues before adding international games. If I were the commissioner of the NBA and I wanted to make the league ready for international expansion, I would make some changes.
This season, NBA teams will travel an average of 42,000 miles for games (Statsurge). This is already very taxing on athlete bodies, before adding cross-continental flights. To fix this and lower the amount of total distance traveled in the states, I would expand the league and change how divisions work.
After moving the Timberwolves and Spurs, I would add a team in Seattle and a team in Las Vegas. Doing this would expand the total number of teams to 32 as well. Why would these cities get expansion teams? Las Vegas has hosted the NBA’s summer league for five years, meaning it has a relationship with the league. Vegas also has an arena that is already built and ready for a team to play in. Seattle used to have a franchise, the Seattle Supersonics. Even though the Sonics haven’t existed for a while, they are still culturally relevant for the city. Finally, both of these cities also have franchises with the NBA’s sister league, the WNBA.
Now that the NBA has 32 teams in the league, I would reform the conferences and divisions into a system similar to the NFL. I would make each conference have four divisions with four teams each. Each team in a division would play each other, and their record against each other would determine the division winner. In this system, division winners would be rewarded with a playoff birth and homecourt advantage. With these changes, division games would be around half of a team’s total games, which would drastically shorten the total travel distance for a team.
The next issue of player health will be benefited greatly from the decrease in total travel distance. The league has had a star player health issue for many years and my solution to fix it would be to decrease the total number of games played in the regular season, while increasing the number of games played in between division rivals.
The NBA regular season consists of 82 games, but it should be closer to 60 total games. If each team played 60 games, and 30 of them were in-division, it would increase the importance of the regular season. Having fewer games would also have the added benefit of promoting rivalries between teams in a division. By putting playoff implications on regular season games and increasing the frequency of times division rivals play each other, this would foster an environment of iconic moments.
As an avid fan, it’s frustrating to hear talks of global expansion, when the product we get still has so many flaws that seem easy to change. Silver is having talks with investors about his dream for an international league when there are still things to fix here in the states. While I don’t think I’m the smartest person for the job, I believe my changes to scheduling and player health would improve the product.
Kathy Willens of USA TODAY | Courtesy
