Why the NBA Season Needs to be Shortened

Scott Long

Load management is a bad look for sports, particularly the NBA, and if it’s not solved soon this could have serious ramifications on fan perceptions of the sport.

In recent seasons, load management, or rest and maintenance days have become commonplace in the NBA. This is a problem for the NBA, as it is a star driven league, more so than any other sport, so having a star player sit out of a nationally televised game hurts television ratings. Unlike other sports one player makes much more of a difference on a basketball court, and justifiably so, considering there are only five players on the court for each team at any given time.

Kawhi Leonard became the poster child for this tactic, but many of the league’s star players have begun to have rest days factored into their schedules. Players to sit out regular season games for rest purposes include Anthony Davis, LeBron James, Joel Embiid among others. Not only does this hurt television ratings, but this isn’t fair to the fans. With the increase of player mobility in the NBA, many fans find themselves rooting for particular players rather than a team. So, when a young fan is excited because James or Leonard is finally coming to play near them but sits out for rest purposes, they have attended an expensive game that becomes significantly less meaningful to them. NBA players are paid millions of dollars to play a sport professionally, they owe it to their fans, particularly the younger audience to show up and play in each game, if health permits.

One possible solution for the load management influx is to shrink the season by 16 games to make it a 66-game season. Doing this would allow for more time in between games and would result in less back to back games so players wouldn’t need to take games off as often. As a result, players would be able to play in about the same amount of games that they would be playing otherwise if they had sat out for rest, but now don’t have to take games off. While this wouldn’t completely eliminate this issue, it would strongly discourage players from taking games off to rest, due to the raised importance of each game. Thus, a player sitting out would be much more detrimental to the team then it is under the schedule’s current confines, further decreasing its chances of happening.

Additionally, the television ratings would likely go up for each game, because since every game is more important the stakes would be raised slightly, making each game more watchable. Not only this, but with all players getting more time to rest, the quality of play is also likely to increase, which presents another reason for ratings to increase. Not only will quality of play increase in the regular season, but more importantly the quality of postseason play will also increase, and that is the place where fans desire the most maximized performance and competition. The increased quality of play and raised stakes would likely also increase ticket sales as well because there are less games to choose from, so with supply decreasing, demand for the tickets should increase. The spike in ticket sales will offset the loss of money from the games that have been subtracted.

While making the time off between games could represent one way the schedule would change when the season is shortened there is another possible way the schedule could be shifted. This possibility involves the introduction of a second break during the season, in which case the All-Star break would likely be moved up to an earlier portion of the season with this new break taking place in a latter portion of the season. The introduction of a second break could split the season into three equal parts with the possibility of three, 22 game sections on each team’s schedule. The idea for this could become more realistic depending on the outcome of the current hiatus from the 2019-2020 NBA season as a result of COVID-19. If the season is to be continued and the quality of play increases for players, commissioner Adam Silver could determine that this second break could be something that would be beneficial to the NBA’s schedule for future years as well. While this pandemic has been devastating to the world, the NBA represents one place where a small piece of good can come from it, as the league may be able to determine a way to improve the layout of its season.

While there a multitude of potential solutions to the load management issue, the most feasible option is the shortening of the season by about 15 games. This option makes sense financially and will also allow players to be rested and perform at a higher level. Nobody wants to watch inferior players, shortening the season ensures stars will play as much as possible.