The NBA’s traditional national broadcast ratings are down 15% this season. There are other ways to measure interest in this most modern of sports, but that hasn’t stopped the NBA from pitching some drastic schemes to drum up viewer and player interest in the league prior to the playoffs. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is an innovative thinker, and he deserves credit for striving towards some intriguing big-picture adjustments.
Hoops Rumors detailed yesterday that the NBA has now sent all 30 teams the league’s proposed scheduling changes for the 2021/22 season, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).
Charania’s Athletic colleague Michael Lee thinks that all the chatter about free agency, trades, and interpersonal drama that has made the NBA a year-round entertainment has also served to dilute interest in the on-court product. This writer respectfully disagrees with that assessment. Interest in every behind-the-scenes aspect of the NBA is a great way to keep basketball in casual sports fans’ thoughts even during the summer, traditionally a time for baseball to get more shine.
The metrics for measuring engagement need to change, and the NBA needs to figure out how to monetize interest and viewership across 21st century platforms. The cord-cutting revolution is real, and it may have come to the NBA, as reflected in the ratings trouble.
For the changes to be implemented in the 2021/22 season, at least 23 of the 30 teams and the players’ union would need to approve the changes at their April 2020 NBA Board of Governors meeting, per Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN. A November piece from Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe first unpacked these new concepts.
Let’s tackle each big item.
The Regular Season Game Count Change
- The league’s schedule, outside of the in-season tournament (see below), would be reduced from 82 to 78 games.
The In-Season Tournament
- The NBA’s proposed in-season tournament would begin with pool play as part of the regular-season schedule. Each team would play four home and four road games during pool play.
- Pool-play records would determine the six divisional winners. Two wild card teams would be decided by the next-best records in pool play.
- These eight teams would advance to an eight-team, single-elimination tournament.
- The tournament’s quarterfinals would be played at the home market of the teams with the better record. The semifinals and finals would be played at a team-neutral location.
- The tournament champion would be the team that wins all three of its knockout-round bouts.
- Each of that champion team’s players would receive $1MM. The champion team’s coaching staff would receive a $1.5MM bonus.
The Postseason Changes
- There would be a postseason play-in qualifying tournament for the No. 7 and No. 8 playoff seeds. The six teams with the best records in each conference would experience no change in qualifying.
- The four final playoff teams, regardless of conference, would be re-seeded based on regular-season record. Woj and Lowe’s article noted that the WNBA has been reseeding its final four matchups for years.
- According to the earlier Woj and Lowe piece, the play-in tournament would comprise two four-team tournaments in each conference, with the seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th seeds competing.
- The seventh seed would play at home against the eighth seed in a single game contest. The winner of that single game would net the seventh spot in the playoffs.
- The 10th seed would play at the home arena of the ninth seed in a single game matchup. The winner of this game would compete with the loser of the 7-vs.-8 game for the final playoff seed. Thus, the seventh and eighth seed would have two opportunities to make the big dance, whereas the ninth and 10th seeds would effectively play two single-elimination games to punch their tickets.
In this fan’s opinion, creating a mandated elimination-style postseason play-in tournament, with extra accommodation being awarded to the seventh and eighth seeds, is a great way to keep the early goings of the playoffs interesting. The play-in tournament, however, feels wholly superfluous as currently constructed. Reducing the regular season to 78 games and enacting the play-in tournament would both be fun new wrinkles for 2021/22.
What do you think? Which of these policies (or which parts of these policies) should the NBA enact?
Head to the comment section below!
I like the post season stuff but the cash incentive doesn’t incentivize the star players they are looking to incentivize. The players that, that money would help are the end of bench guys who already are playing hard since they are playing for their next contract. The only way to benefit them would be a first round bye or you start the series 2-0 or a guaranteed spot in the playoffs or home court for the entire playoff no matter the record (meaning they would be the team with 4 home games, not all 7 games would be home games)
Would the lottery have less teams in it then?
Mid season tourney sounds fine.
I love it
The NBA off-season being such an event has gone along with the narrative that winning a championship is the only way to have a successful year.
The playoff race is only exciting at the fringes and those teams have no shot at the championship and therefore get little attention. 12 teams currently have a greater than 95% chance of making the playoffs.
The tournament idea is wonky but there just doesn’t seem to be that much interest in the regular season, outside of highlights and storylines, and the NBA doesn’t make any money from people talking about it all off season.
This is a tournament idea that only an accountant could like. Didn’t the PTB learn in the CBA that player priorities can’t be micromanaged by $$ alone. Apparently not.
So you have the 7 and 8 seeds do better than the 9 and 10 seeds over a 78 game schedule and their reward for doing better is to risk their earned spot in the playoffs is a one game toss up game? Seems dumb to me.
But that plan sounds like the New Deal compared to the in season tourney. There is nothing good that can come from that idea. Are fans really going to be motivated to care about who wins if the only prizes are monetary for the players and coaches? Make the prize, half priced seats for that season to be paid for by the NBA and then maybe the fans might care. But giving someone already making $40 million this year another million doesn’t do anything for me.
I find none of it innovating nor exciting. It is a thinly veiled money grab especially the play in aspect. It replaces the 4 games lost which are, in most cases, of no interest with “playoff” games between teams which will likely have losing records. I am already a big fan so that is probably why I feel this way. I am not against change but this will not increase interest.
I would to see how a worldwide club tournament would work similar to soccer’s Champions League. If you want to build a worldwide brand that is how to do it.
The NBA is already a world wide brand. Doing something about the daily dosage of ridiculous blowouts is what needs attention.
1. The reseeding in the playoffs will never happen the east teams would never vote for it.
2. It will be very hard to build interest in an in season tournament. It works in European soccer because they don’t have the same season structure with a postseason and finals like the NBA has.
3. If the league wants to improve ratings then improve the number of fans who care about their local teams and make them think they have a chance. There are a ton of fans who are fans of players not teams which isn’t good for team fan base size. Also, if you keep having mid level and small market teams think no matter what you do your player will leave you for a big market you lose tons of fans for good. Imagine how many Bucks fans may be permenantly jaded and turned off from basketball if Giannis leaves for a big market.
Why not? It seems resonable that if say a 7 seed upsets a 2 the 1 should get to face them in the following round.
No they want to reseed it regardless of conference. No way east owners give up their better chances they have to advance in the playoffs currently. If they put this system in you could have it play out where there is a Clippers vs Lakers final. You think the east wants that? They need a sizable portion of the owners from each conference to vote yes.
No to any of that mess.
This is difficult to understand? Teams are not going to play same amount of games. What about scheduling when it comes to reseeding with records. Teams don’t play equal schedule. Reseeding is totally wrong. What is advantage for team that wins meaningless mid season tourney?? None of this makes sense for fans. We like the rivals of our conferences. Sounds like in long run it may run off long time fans more than attract new viewers
Sportswriters and tv media always contradict the sentiments of the general public. Nobody cares that you like controversy because it “gives you something to write about”. How crass and self-absorbed is that? I stopped watching the NBA because most of the games and teams are terrible. That, and the whining, sniveling, overpaid jerks bouncing from team to team has gotten tired. Then there are the rule changes which have hurt the game tremendously. The spacing, the lack of physicality on defense… it just turned the NBA into a 3-point contest. Boring. Lastly, there are three, possibly four viable teams in the NBA. Maybe two of them are worth watching. Fans lose interest if the season is over by Day 1. No reason to sacrifice three hours of your life for that. There are better things to do for entertainment that actually make people happy. Watching sh#tty basketball ain’t one of them.
The trick to this thing is to make the mid-season tournament meaningful. A $1 million dollar bonus is a big deal to a lot of players that are on a rookie deal or playing for the minium (which is maybe half the league). And I think the stars would play along just to get their teammates that extra million.
But if the bonus was a percentage of salary – win the tourney, get a 25% bonus directly from the NBA (which doesn’t count against the cap), you’d get the same interest from young players as you’d get from someone like LeBron.
Oh, and make a charity win too. The NBA lets’ each team choose a charity, and then they donate $25 million to that charity (or something like that).
78 games instead of 82 would make no difference to the players or fans, thus is not a cure for anything.
A play-in tournament already exists, called the playoffs. Already half the teams are in it.
That 4th-paragraph MBA-talk is just for the writer to get gainfully employed. Generally, “additional platforms” are ways to pull money from the customer base with additional subscriptions.