Haberstroh: 82 Games Season Dead

[Saint Cy of JFC]

Lol, race baiting on an internet message board. Quaint.

I did what you did, looked at every possible side and assumed the worst about a person.

 

[NAOS]

So since it's inception, do you think the 82 game schedule has always been a problem?

for some kinds of injuries? Yes

You seem to be gliding over the point that the game has changed. The forces acting on the body have changed. And that the human body has limits, despite teh awesomeness of science. I'd say the 82-game season is a bigger problem now than it was at inception. I think that's the majority view of trainers.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

Cy,

I'd also like to point out that I'm not against making changes to the NBA regular season. When you're not too busy trying to implicate me as a racist, you make a very good point about NFL Thursday night games, even if it is a different sport with a million different variables in comparison to the debate we're having. Since the NFL adopted this full time Thursday night slate, we've seen nothing but utter garbage and it needs to go away fast.

Back to the NBA, I'm all for looking at ways to get rid of back-to-back and the 3 games in 4 night scenario's. I just feel like that doesn't automatically mean they can't play 82 games. It's going to take some outside of the box thinking. Example: The Utah Jazz are hard to schedule because they immediately request a black-out on any Sunday home date each and every year. This automatically takes 1 day out of the equation when the NBA is trying to make a home schedule for the Jazz and inevitably forces the NBA to make Utah play some condensed games in order to make up for that. I remember going to a Jazz-Suns regular season match-up in SLC in the late 90's on a Sunday afternoon. The game was a sellout, the fans were actually there on time and the atmosphere was awesome. Like the Jazz, every NBA teams requests black out dates for a myriad of reasons. The first thing the NBA should do is look at eliminating (or limiting) black out dates for all NBA teams. This would allow the NBA to make a schedule years in advance, do a better job of spacing out the games, and would afford teams the luxury of having a long enough lead time to schedule other revenue drawing events at their arenas. Basically instead of Utah tweaking their schedule and creating a back-to-back scenario so they could accommodate Disney on Ice when it comes to town, Utah would have a schedule made a few years in advance and Disney on Ice would have to pick a time to visit SLC based on that.

Doing something like that in conjunction with adding 2 or 3 week would allow the NBA to alleviate many of the problems that people are citing with the current schedule. The fact that these ideas exist and should at least be explored is why I'm not ready to throw my hands up in the air and call for the end of an 82 game regular season.

Why is it important to play 82 games?

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

What if he was playing an 82 game season in the era of chartered flights, drastically reducing the amount of time he spent sitting in airplanes with that bad back? What if he played in the era of sports medicine and sports nutrition that we currently enjoy? Is it possible that under these circumstances, Larry Bird could have played a little bit longer while still playing this ever daunting 82 game schedule?

What if Larry Bird grew up playing AAU basketball and played international basketball every year?

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

Not to mention Bird and other old era guys played during a time of less NBA teams and intense travel. Even though they did have ax luxury accommodations, there was way less travel.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

This is a GREAT point. If Cy wants to replicate NFL's success so much, and want each game to be extremely RARE, why not just do a 16 game season?


NFL teams don't play each other twice a year do they? Why do we need to stick to that? NFL has the recipe to success right?

How is that a great point? It's him being an ******* and trying to being hyperbolic instead of actually thinking.

The NFL had figured out a great formula. Own a day and play a marquee game on Monday night. That gives every team 6-8 days rest between games to recover, gameplan, and practice. The NBA never figured that out. They are just now figuring out how bad back-to-backs are.

 

[NAOS]

OL is just completely ****ing flailing and failing at this discussion. IQ is clearly a problem.

 

[7StraightIsGreat]

Why is it important to play 82 games?

If back-to-backs can be eliminated all together, why is it important that they don't play 82 games? Isn't your point of this conversation to limit the physical stress on on the players, resulting in less injuries and creating an overall better product? Maybe that can be achieved while still preserving the 82 game schedule. Why would that be so bad? If you cut games, which games do you cut? Do the Jazz only play the Eastern Conference teams once a year? Do they scale back division games? I like the current balance of an NBA schedule and I think they can preserve that while making some changes that would accommodate the other side of the argument.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

The point of the regular season is to determine the best 8 teams in each conference for the playoffs. Look at every season, these are usually decided at the All-Star break and dont change much after. The other point of the regular season is to give every city a (theoretical) chance at seeing every player in their city. It's important that every team play a road game against every team.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

If back-to-backs can be eliminated all together, why is it important that they don't play 82 games? Isn't your point of this conversation to limit the physical stress on on the players, resulting in less injuries and creating an overall better product? Maybe that can be achieved while still preserving the 82 game schedule. Why would that be so bad? If you cut games, which games do you cut? Do the Jazz only play the Eastern Conference teams once a year? Do they scale back division games? I like the current balance of an NBA schedule and I think they can preserve that while making some changes that would accommodate the other side of the argument.

Because the NBA season is too long. Individual games dont hold much weight and it just results in teams resting players either because they are so good and so far ahead individual games no loner hold meaning. Even if you get rid of back-to-backs teams like San Antonio are going to be up by so much they are still going to rest players because it will still be valuable. Hell most NBA standing are decided at the All-Star break every year. Very little changes in terms of overall standings of the top 8.

It's laughable anyone thinks simply getting rid of back to back will stop teams from resting players. If a team is up by a ton in the standings with a lot of meaningless games ahead, they are going to rest their stars and older vets.

 

[7StraightIsGreat]

Because the NBA season is too long. Individual games dont hold much weight and it just results in teams resting players either because they are so good and so far ahead individual games no loner hold meaning. Even if you get rid of back-to-backs teams like San Antonio are going to be up by so much they are still going to rest players because it will still be valuable. Hell most NBA standing are decided at the All-Star break every year. Very little changes in terms of overall standings of the top 8.

It's laughable anyone thinks simply getting rid of back to back will stop teams from resting players. If a team is up by a ton in the standings with a lot of meaningless games ahead, they are going to rest their stars and older vets.

The 8 seeds in both conferences were not decided by the all star break and are still up in the air with 5 or 6 games to go. The 4-5 seeds almost always jostle for position until the end of the season. The East's #1 seed has been going back and forth for quite a few weeks now. Each year, you'll have 1 or 2 teams that run away from the pack and 14 to 15 other teams that have to play out the year. Let's shorten the season to accommodate the top 3% of the league? Seriously?

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

The 8 seeds in both conferences were not decided by the all star break and are still up in the air with 5 or 6 games to go. The 4-5 seeds almost always jostle for position until the end of the season. The East's #1 seed has been going back and forth for quite a few weeks now. Each year, you'll have 1 or 2 teams that run away from the pack and 14 to 15 other teams that have to play out the year. Let's shorten the season to accommodate the top 3% of the league? Seriously?

Yeah, we really need to play an extra 20 games to decide who loses to the #1 seed. You have it completely backwards, playing 82 games is accommodating the %3 while the other 97% are already set in their position. It's accommodating to the top team to be able to rest while whoever is #8 has to play all 82 games to be battered to play the #1 seed.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

So not only is the NBA geared to the best teams with 7 game series, which basically guarantees the best team always wins with little random variation, but those teams also get to benefit from being the best by resting since they only need about 60-70 games to become a top 1-3 team. So they get an even bigger advantage that is completely unnecessary.

 

[7StraightIsGreat]

Yeah, we really need to play an extra 20 games to decide who loses to the #1 seed. You have it completely backwards, playing 82 games is accommodating the %3 while the other 97% are already set in their position. It's accommodating to the top team to be able to rest while whoever is #8 has to play all 82 games to be battered to play the #1 seed.

Heading into last night's games 4 TEAMS were still alive for the #1 seed in the East. That's half the damn conference's playoffs teams! Teams 5 through 9 in the East are separated by a whopping grand total of 2 games as of this morning. Literally, as I type this, it's quite feasible that EVERY playoff team in the East changes it's seeding between today and the end of the season. The West is more settled with it's top 3 seeds but you still have Utah trying to hold onto the 4 seed, the Clippers trying to take the 4 seed, OKC trying to reach the 5 seed, and Denver and Portland 1 game apart from the 8 seed.

Even if I disagree with you, I can at least see the logic in your other arguments for shortening the season, but don't sit here and tell me that most of the playoff spots are locked in at the All-Star break. That's just straight idiocy.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

Heading into last night's games 4 TEAMS were still alive for the #1 seed in the East. That's half the damn conference's playoffs teams! Teams 5 through 9 in the East are separated by a whopping grand total of 2 games as of this morning. Literally, as I type this, it's quite feasible that EVERY playoff team in the East changes it's seeding between today and the end of the season. The West is more settled with it's top 3 seeds but you still have Utah trying to hold onto the 4 seed, the Clippers trying to take the 4 seed, OKC trying to reach the 5 seed, and Denver and Portland 1 game apart from the 8 seed.

Even if I disagree with you, I can at least see the logic in your other arguments for shortening the season, but don't sit here and tell me that most of the playoff spots are locked in at the All-Star break. That's just straight idiocy.

They are. The exact standing might not be locked, but the top 8 teams in the West are the same save for the #8 seed.

Why not play 10 more games so we can really see who deserves that 8 seed? 82 games is not the perfect numbers of games. It's an arbitrary number they do because that's the way it's always been done, even when there was less NBA teams.

 

[fishonjazz]

Damn liberal obummer snowflakes can't handle an 82 game season! The left wing fake news liberal media is to blame!

-dutch

 

[7StraightIsGreat]

They are. The exact standing might not be locked, but the top 8 teams in the West are the same save for the #8 seed.

Why not play 10 more games so we can really see who deserves that 8 seed? 82 games is not the perfect numbers of games. It's an arbitrary number they do because that's the way it's always been done, even when there was less NBA teams.

Lol, 82 is an arbitrary number? There's a schedule balance in the NBA. The league likes to play a certain amount of divisional games, a certain amount of conference games, and the standard 2 games per year against the opposite conference. As the league has expanded, they've had to make concessions on the amount of divisional and conference games being played for the sake of not expanding the schedule.

If they contract the schedule, you will lose more of that balance. You're either giving up games against the opposite conference, which hurts the leagues marketability, or you lose games against division/conference foes which could prove to be crucial. As much as you'd like it to be, 82 is not an accidental number. Can you play a 60 game season? Of course you can, but you can't do it without changing the current balance (which I think is fairly good right now) and skewing the record books. All of a sudden you have an asterisk by a scoring champion to denote whether or not the accomplishment was made during an 82 game season.

I know "old school" is seen as a bad word in this thread, but at some point your league's history has to hold some value. I think all of this is important enough to cause the league to at least look into other ways of lessening the physical pressure put on players while still maintaining the amount of games being played. It's called a compromise and more times than not, they usually yield the best results.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

Lol, 82 is an arbitrary number? There's a schedule balance in the NBA. The league likes to play a certain amount of divisional games, a certain amount of conference games, and the standard 2 games per year against the opposite conference. As the league has expanded, they've had to make concessions on the amount of divisional and conference games being played for the sake of not expanding the schedule.

If they contract the schedule, you will lose more of that balance. You're either giving up games against the opposite conference, which hurts the leagues marketability, or you lose games against division/conference foes which could prove to be crucial. As much as you'd like it to be, 82 is not an accidental number. Can you play a 60 game season? Of course you can, but you can't do it without changing the current balance (which I think is fairly good right now) and skewing the record books. All of a sudden you have an asterisk by a scoring champion to denote whether or not the accomplishment was made during an 82 game season.

I know "old school" is seen as a bad word in this thread, but at some point your league's history has to hold some value. I think all of this is important enough to cause the league to at least look into other ways of lessening the physical pressure put on players while still maintaining the amount of games being played. It's called a compromise and more times than not, they usually yield the best results.

Yes, it's arbitrary. Go back in time. They played 82 games when they had 21 teams, 22 teams, 23 teams, etc. It's arbitrary. The 82 game season was not designed for the 30 team league the NBA now has. That's a fact.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

The 82 game season doesnt even fit the 30 teams. There are a handful of teams you only 3 times every year instead of the 4 you play most teams in your conference. WE SHOULD ADD MORE GAMES FOR TEH BALANCE!

 

[fishonjazz]

The 82 game season doesnt even fit the 30 teams. There are a handful of teams you only 3 times every year instead of the 4 you play most teams in your conference. WE SHOULD ADD MORE GAMES FOR TEH BALANCE!

Good idea.

I love watching jazz games. More the merrier!