Is 82 games a season too long?

[PerfectCell]

Player fatigue: No other basketball league plays as long as 48 minutes and for so many games(82). There's also a bit more travel than in college sports as conferences are much more extensive.

Fan point of view: NBA vs College excitement

NBA has a much wider audience and a TON more casual fans watching than college basketball does. Nba fans will include families going to a game as an outing, as well as foreign people in random countries with lesser access to basketball. College fans are either die hard student alumni fans, or high school coaches and players watching and learning the college game since it's so much closer to the hs game than NBA is.

The NBA knows this, which is why their broadcasting and advertising try to be as viewer-friendly as possibly to the casual fan rather than college where there's a lot of nuances, tradition, and inside-jokes you have to be a basketball person to know. It also makes sense why each team should play every other team once at home and once away. But that's only 58 games, division and conference rivalries could use some schedule trimming especially if nba were to expand(could you imagine 85+ game seasons?)

However there's still a good amount of NBA viewers with real knowledge about basketball. The NBA regular season is becoming less and less appealing to these fans outside of the big games as in the college season every game is huge and players who may never go pro play their ass off every night but in the NBA ultratalented and athletic specimens who get paid millions rarely give it their all for all 48 minutes. You can't blame them, it wouldn't be human to go hard for 40+ min of all 82 games over a 6 month stretch. But is the regular reason really worth much attention and excitement on a game by game basis compared to college basketball when the #1 team can lose to a bottom 5 team and still be easy title favorites?

[stalkerforlife]

Yes.

Regular season should be 55-60 games. First playoff series should be a 5 game series.

[Meticode]

Yes. It should be about 3/4 of what it is now. 62 games. Most of these changes wouldn't happen I think though because they'd lose money I would assume.

[Hey Yo]

Less games, means higher ticket prices, means less butts in the seats.

[dubeta]

League is already losing money, players and owners would all lose money if games were reduced

[L.Kizzle]

The NBA has been playing 82 game seasons since the early 60s, why change now?

They played with terrible conditions back then. Didn't have private jets, teams planes and buses. Some teams played up to 5 games in a row. Didn't have team trainers, not even mentioning personnel trainers and chefs and physicians, ect.

They're lucky games haven't been added to the schedule.


It's more teams then ever and there will be more teams added to the league in the future. Why the hell would they shorten the season with more teams on the horizon?


-The last season to feature less than 82 games, was the 61-62 season, a whopping 2 less with an 80 game season. There were 9 teams total.
-9 team league beginning in the 1962-1963 season until 1966, there were 82 games played.
-10 team league for the 1966-1967 season, 82 games.
-12 team league for the 1967-1968 season, 82 games.
-14 team league between 1968-1970, 82 games.
-15 team league for the 1970-71 season, 82 games.
-17 team league between 1971-1974, 82 games.
-18 team league, between 1974-1976, 82 games.
-22 team league, between 1976-1980, 82 games.
-23 team league, between 1980-1987, 82 games.
-25 team league for the 1987-1988, there were 82 games played.
-27 team league between 1988-1995, 82 games.
-29 team league between 1995-2004, 82 games.
-30 team league since 2004, and people believe there should be less games?

[inclinerator]

no.

[Young X]

No, but there should be alot more days in between each game, there should never be days with 15 different games on at the same time and no back to backs. Pre-seasons should be shorter also. This way the players get more rest than usual in between games and we as fans get more basketball and miss less games. Everybody wins.

[Marchesk]

There's no basketball reason to play that many games. It's all about the $$. There would be less injuries, longer careers, and more competitive regular season games if the schedule was reduced. Plus guys would have fresher legs come playoff time.

[Meticode]

There's no basketball reason to play that many games. It's all about the $$. There would be less injuries, longer careers, and more competitive regular season games if the schedule was reduced. Plus guys would have fresher legs come playoff time.
This is why I'm so for the longer all-star break.

[dubeta]

Its a basic Supply/Demand mechanism


Supply is fixed in stadiums as teams cannot increase capacity (more seats)

This is because the court is small compared to other sports, so there can only be about 20,0000 seats or else people at the back wont be able to see the game


Therefore, to reach the profit maximizing output, and to equate Supply to Demand, Demand should shift to the left (i.e reduce). This is done by flooding the market with more games. More games = less demand for each individual game. So the demand is mostly kept to just about 20,000 people so that there isnt any EXCESS Demand and therefore loss of potential sales. So having more games is a way to negate the effects of fixed supply through a relatively small amount of seats



- Phd in Economics

[L.Kizzle]

There's no basketball reason to play that many games. It's all about the $$. There would be less injuries, longer careers, and more competitive regular season games if the schedule was reduced. Plus guys would have fresher legs come playoff time.
Guys did it 50s years ago with worse circumstances. Players now have personal trainers, personal chefs, separate coaches for this and that, transportation, ect, ect, ect.

Now, you all want to baby them even more. Hell, just have every team play once a week like the NFL. Than the excuse is they're gonna be too rusty because they haven't played in a week. But ... if they play back to back games, they will be tired from playing the previous night.

Player get injured, it's a part of the game. Subtracting 20-30 games or so will not help matters.

It's fine at 82. 80 year old Oscar Robertson is still walking around fine. Meanwhile 30 year old Brandon Roy had to retire a few years back because his knee's wouldn't hold up ...

[DMAVS41]

From a quality of play standpoint? Hell yes.

66 games over the same amount of time would make a far better on court product, but the league would be sacrificing way too much money to do that.

But it would be so much better if you got rid of all the back to backs and terrible 5 games in 7 nights shit.

There'd be less injuries and players/teams would be fresher and healthier for the playoffs.

Right now a thing that really hurts the on court product in the NBA is the just awful games in which it's clear one team isn't trying that hard and is tired. Kind of sucks when you tune in and see that.

But it won't change...

[JellyBean]

Nope. A 82 game season is perfect. The playoffs are the problem. They need to go back to the old 1st round consisting of a mini-series (best of 3), the next round would be the standard best of 7, followed by Conference finals with the same best of 7 series on into the NBA Finals.

[Rose'sACL]

League is already losing money, players and owners would all lose money if games were reduced
Who the f told u that league is losing money?

[B-hoop]

Its a basic Supply/Demand mechanism


Supply is fixed in stadiums as teams cannot increase capacity (more seats)

This is because the court is small compared to other sports, so there can only be about 20,0000 seats or else people at the back wont be able to see the game


Therefore, to reach the profit maximizing output, and to equate Supply to Demand, Demand should shift to the left (i.e reduce). This is done by flooding the market with more games. More games = less demand for each individual game. So the demand is mostly kept to just about 20,000 people so that there isnt any EXCESS Demand and therefore loss of potential sales. So having more games is a way to negate the effects of fixed supply through a relatively small amount of seats



- Phd in Economics

:facepalm

Retard, you can match supply and demand by simply raising ticket price and playing less games. Teams will make the same amount of money since supply will be constrained and demand will decrease correspondingly.

[Nuff Said]

:facepalm

Retard, you can match supply and demand by simply raising ticket price and playing less games. Teams will make the same amount of money since supply will be constrained and demand will decrease correspondingly.
Whoever said basketball needed to make as much as other sports Anyway? The season will never shorten due to money loss but it really needs to and I wouldn't be mad at it. Playoffs take forever to come and half the teams be ranking anyways so it gets boring once seeds are berthed.

[senelcoolidge]

82 games is just fine. Players in the past played 82 games in harsher conditions without the medical services of today. So the current players can't say crap..or they are a bunch of pusses. I do agree though that the first and maybe the 2nd round should be a best of 5 series in the playoffs.

[Crystallas]

Nope. An 82 game regular season is great. The NBAPA and the league made changes over the last few years to allow larger rosters, and those should be utilized more. If anything the league should stop penalizing teams that rest players out of sheer common sense, and encourage the use of the 13 man roster.

[dreamwarrior]

With all the players wanting to play for team USA they're obviously not tired. Rarely do they play 2 games in a row anyway, which is why I hate managing fantasy basketball since I have days where I'll have 3 people or less starting with no option to use unused stats. It's just totally the most inaccurate fantasy sport ever

[gts]

82 games is perfect... not too long, long enough for a team to have it's ups and downs, fight through some adversity, put some streaks together.. it weeds out the pretenders from the real deal


I love watching BBall, can't imagine any scenario where making the season shorter or less playoff games is a good thing.

plus there's the fact that the CBA, player contracts, TV contracts, arena leases, contracts with arena support personnel etc etc etc are all based on there being 82 games in a season.. it would take years for the league to even get to a place where it could all be renegotiated...

[deja vu]

People have been playing 82 games since God knows when. If we reduce the number of games we should also reduce player salaries.

[pauk]

It is, 60-70 games is at least enough, it doesnt matter if it was for a purpose, but it isnt really the case, you dont need to play 82 games to boot up the playoff birth teams.

It should be reduced, only players who wont like it are the players who have a certain affection for chasing stat totals (you can kiss many of those point total records goodbye for example, especially Kareems total points).

[NZStreetBaller]

they should have like 2 weeks gap between the season and playoffs give the players time to rest up and espn and the media time to hype/promote the living sheet out of the playoff matchups ...

[bdreason]

I don't mind 82 games if they spread them out. No team in the NBA should be playing back to back road games... ever.