Appearing on a panel at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, Hawks CEO Steve Koonin suggested that the NBA should be starting and ending its season two months later, as Tim Bontemps of ESPN writes.
Rather than starting in mid-October, the regular season would begin in mid-December under Koonin’s proposal, resulting in less overlap between the NBA and NFL seasons. The NBA Finals would then take place in August instead of June, increasing the amount of time that MLB regular season games represent the NBA’s only competition among the four major sports.
“A big piece is you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to enhance ratings,” Koonin said in explaining his idea. “Sometimes, moving away from competition is a great way to grow ratings. If King Kong is at your door, you might go out the back door, rather than go out the front and engage in a hand-to-hand fight with King Kong.
“Many times, at the start of the NBA season, we are competing with arguably the best Thursday Night Football game with the NBA on TNT, our marquee broadcast, and we get crushed and we wonder why. It’s because at the beginning of the season, there’s very little relevance for the NBA. The relevance is now. That’s when people are talking about it.”
Although that would be a major change to the NBA calendar, the league isn’t opposed to considering the idea, as NBA senior VP of strategy and analytics Evan Wasch confirmed, per Bontemps: “We certainly have no issue with reconsidering the calendar. … We’re open to that … there’s no magic to [the season going from] October to June.”
Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- The Chinese Basketball Association, which has been on hiatus to the coronavirus, is expected to resume play on April 6, with games initially taking place behind closed doors, according to Emiliano Carchia of Sportando.
- The NBA announced in a press release on Sunday that Trail Blazers guard CJ McCollum and Kings center Alex Len have been fined $20K and $15K respectively for their roles in an on-court shoving match on Saturday (video link).
- In an interesting piece for The Athletic, Bill Shea takes an in-depth look at how Forbes’ annual NBA franchise valuations are determined and how accurate they are.
- Although Zion Williamson and Ja Morant already look like stars and Brandon Clarke might be the steal of the first round, most of the rest of the 2019 draft class has been underwhelming so far. John Hollinger of The Athletic identifies a few players who may be good bets to help salvage it, including Coby White, Cody Martin, and Cam Reddish.
I don’t know if this is a big part of the ratings but with the West being on later for the east coast it just doesn’t make sense to watch the game since it’s on during the week. And then in the Eastern conference there are only 6 teams worth watching.
Sounds like a good idea moving the season a couple months… for sure a lot better than all the stupid tourneys mid-season & for the playoffs.
Zion is already a star, Ja will be one & Clarke has been absolutely sensational so far.
Cam Reddish has been looking pretty decent & Coby White has improved of late too.
But so far Hunter & Culvert have been very disappointing.
Also Hachimura has been pretty good, I think he will good alright.
i think moving the season plus adding the mid season tournaments is a big win for the nba. it moves it closer to FIFA style which is ultimately the NBA’s goal
i also think a midseason tournament with usa vs the world would be amazing
Hollinger is already established as being anti-2020draft, so that was not surprising. He did recognize the gains made by Porter & Culver as well as Reddish, Martin & White since his last trashing.
Sorry, 2019.
Hey the NBA dares challenge the XFL?– with a later season date.
Funny how the XFL gets greater network support… IDK if it’s working out…