Christ, it was months ago that the Cavs were eliminated and the damn season is still going!
I’d support eliminating the play-in rounds and ~10-15% of the regular season (say from 82 to 72). That would dramatically reduce the number of back-to-back games (currently an average of 14/team), improving competitiveness and reducing physical wear and tear on players bodies. You could also change all playoff series except the championship from 7 games to 5. But none of that will ever happen because of the desire for $$$, both from owners and the players.
I’ve always thought so. It’s an indoor sport that has its championship in June. I’d have to be a really devoted fan to watch basketball in June, and that’s if I was rooting for one of the teams in the finals. College hoops fit their season much better, finishing up in early April.
And now the list of suckers is even longer with online sports betting , so there is no incentive to shorten things. I gave up on everything but NBA long ago, and now only have a passing interest in that. I do like women’s soccer, though.
For long individual games though, you can’t beat Cricket.
Matches go on for days, with the batsman sometimes not even reaching for the ball, to appreciative murmours of “well left, sir”…
+1 for the NHL season, which runs mostly parallel to the NBA season. I mean, ice hockey finals in June?
Anyway, as mentioned, the money train is strong here so there is no incentive to shorten things.
Seven game series every single round is nuts. So is the three to four days between games in the finals. The regular season could also use a trim. Oh yeah and limit the amount of time outs that can be used in the last two minutes of games.
Yes to all of the suggestions in the preceding post.
If I’m not mistaken, NBA basketball is also the sport with the most flight-travel fatigue since each game requires an individual flight to and from the city, as opposed to MLB which schedules games in clumps as series at a time.
The NHL’s schedule works essentially the same way as the NBA’s, so I’d say it’s a tie. I might argue that hockey (the game itself) is even tougher on player bodies than basketball is, and thus makes frequent travel during road trips even more challenging, but there are likely arguments to be made both ways.