The 20-Game NBA Season

This is my annual post on why the NBA season should only be 20 games.  Nothing about cute kids, my wife, or my mortgage today, but it is more something fun for me.

The NFL is popular because most males play football growing up and understand the rules and enjoy watching. The unspoken popularity is the gambling, office pools, fantasy football (which is really gambling in a different form), etc. I think the other aspect that enhances the gambling opportunities is simply that the games are played once a week as a general rule, on a regular schedule. Also, a team can lose a few games without being eliminated from a championship. but at the same time, there are few enough games that each game does matter. I guess that is where I am going with this, that other major sports could learn a lesson from this strategy as well.

Baseball is talking about adding another two teams to their playoffs because more fans will be excited about post season play and more fans will attend late season games, making more money. This argument is false. Just look at the NBA.

At this point, most of the NBA teams have played 20 games, or 25% of their season is complete. Today, we already know who will make the playoffs and the remaining 60 games are for owners to make money to pay outrageous player salaries and give me more opportunities for fans and dads taking their kids to games to pay $6 for a hot dog and $9 for a beer and $5 for cotton candy, etc.  For my family to go to an NBA game, it is between $200 - $300 dollars for tickets, parking, and popcorn and a drink.  If we bought any souvenirs, add another $50 minimum.  Or, I could buy buy the kids an iPad for the same price.

Additionally, it doesn't help when only 9 teams win the championship in the last 32 years. It drops to just 7 teams when you take out one-year champions, Philadelphia and Dallas. Only 8 other teams have been to the finals and lost.  Put another way, only 23% of teams have ever won a championship, and almost 50% of the teams in the league have never played for a championship in 32 years.  In the same thirty 32 time period, 14 different teams (43%) have won the Super Bowl and only 4 teams (12%) have never been to the Super Bowl.  From a fan perspective, on opening day, only 1 in 4 NBA fans believe their team can win the championship while each year in the NFL brings new hope. Some of the NBA fans are just hoping to win one series in the playoffs for it to be a really good year before they get beat by the Lakers or the Celtics.

I do not watch games on TV because the schedule is so erratic. My favorite team might play five games in one week and two games the next, and not even on the same day of the week. I do not even know which games will be televised. However, with football, I know that my team will be on TV every Sunday. It is either the early or the late game, but Sunday afternoon, I can watch football with my friends and root for my favorite team. Owners could make more money by having fewer games that were more meaningful in deciding the league champion. The TV and radio broadcast rights could be sold for more money if more viewers watched. More viewers would watch and more fans would attend if there were fewer games and the schedule was played at the same time each week. Games could be played on Wednesday and Saturday. The NFL plays a schedule where not every team plays all the other teams and that has not dampened enthusiasm for their sport. Why does the NBA insist on having every team play every other team, both home and away?

So, without further ado, we will write down the eight teams from each division that will begin playing the real NBA season starting in April and ending in June. Check back in April to see how meaningful the remaining 60 games were.

Eastern Conference                Western Conference
1. New York                             1. Oklahoma City
2. Miami                                    2. San Antonio
3. Atlanta                                  3. Los Angeles Clippers
4. Chicago                               4. Golden State
5. Brooklyn                              5. Memphis
6. Boston                                 6. Utah
7. Milwaukee                             7. Minnesota
8. Philadelphia                         8. Los Angeles Lakers *

You will notice that the 8th playoff spot in the west is is the Los Angeles Lakers, because although they are the ninth place team by two games, I am a believer in the league-referee conspiracy that says you always need to favor the Lakers in order to insure high TV ratings.  Looking at the standings, really, the top four or five teams are really the only ones with a chance.  Te rest are playing to see who gets beat in the first round of the playoffs that no one will watch anyway.

April 19th UPDATE:  The playoffs start tonight in the NBA. 

In the Western Conference, we got 7 out of 8 teams correct.  We were unable to predict the 15 game Denver Nugget winning streak where they only lost one game in March, and the injury to Kevin Love of the Minnesota Timberwolves which damaged their chance at getting bloewn out in the first round of the playoffs.

In the Eastern Conference, we got 7 out of 8 teams correct. also.  Indiana finished in third place.  At the 20-game mark the Pacers had 10 wins and 10 losses.  The remainder of the season they won twice as many games as they lost.