2019-20 NBA Thread of Threads

[DG_ThenNowForever]

4 minutes ago, Digby said:

Kemba Walker’s getting stretchered off right now. Head/neck injury after a dumb luck collision with a teammate. Feeling sick and anxious having watched it. 

 

I have no love for the Celtics but I have a lot of appreciation for Kemba Walker, his game, and his professionalism. That's just terrible.

[AustinFromBoston]

Yeah, that was really scary to see. Hoping it isn't anything too serious. 

 

Damn, First Hayward, now Kemba. That really sucks.  

[Digby]

Reporting just (“just”) concussion symptoms the rest of the night... I figured that was most likely, but still a relief — that was a scary enough incident that worse outcomes came to mind.

[buzzcut]

NBA is considering a restructuring of the regular season and playoffs. For those who are click-shy:

 

-A shorter regular season of at least 78 games.

-An in-season tournament modeled on the FA Cup.

-An expanded playoffs, where 7th-10th seeds play-in to the playoffs.

-Re-seeding to be introduced for the semifinals.

 

The NBA hopes to include some, perhaps all, recommendations to be implemented in 2021-22.

[JayMac]

7 minutes ago, buzzcut said:

NBA is considering a restructuring of the regular season and playoffs. For those who are click-shy:

 

-A shorter regular season of at least 78 games.

-An in-season tournament modeled on the FA Cup.

-An expanded playoffs, where 7th-10th seeds play-in to the playoffs.

-Re-seeding to be introduced for the semifinals.

 

The NBA hopes to include some, perhaps all, recommendations to be implemented in 2021-22.

We all knew that Silver has an infatuation with European football so a midseason tournament is not surprising. Ridiculous, but not surprising. And a 16 team playoff is already watered down. So let's make sure 20 teams can get in. The only one that isn't ridiculous is the reseeding. I've always thought that the NBA should just do a 1-16 seeding regardless of conference. 

[mcj882000]

6 minutes ago, jmac11281 said:

I've always thought that the NBA should just do a 1-16 seeding regardless of conference. 

Love to see the Lakers have to face New York in the first round and Miami in the second. (I know, the Knicks making the playoffs at all, that's funny; but those kinds of potential travel issues are why that kind of seeding should never happen.)

That aside, these proposals are dumb; change for change's sake that doesn't actually fix any of the league's problems, shorter regular season aside.

[Dynasty]

20 teams in the playoffs is nuts. Imagine being in total rebuild mode and look! You currently have the 10th seed. It was mentioned already that this would totally water down the playoffs more than it already is but hey, at least we can end that Kings playoff drought sooner.

[The_Admiral]

And imagine what it would mean for a team to win the Pepsi-Aetna Trans Rights Tournament Classic! 

[Rockstar Matt]

Personally, I like everything suggested except for that in-season tournament. That’s dumb af. 

 

Reseeding is the best idea of the bunch, IMO. 

[Wings]

Just get rid of conferences and have five 6-team divisions. 78 game regular season. Top 16 make playoffs. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

And imagine what it would mean for a team to win the Pepsi-Aetna Trans Rights Tournament Classic! 

 

Explain why trans rights are a funny punchline?

 

 

My solution to fix the NBA is expand to 40 teams and do pro/rel. Not sure how that interacts with the draft, but that could also be a fun problem to solve.

[JayMac]

Pro/rel will never happen in pro sports in America. I think there should only be about 20 teams in the NBA. You could probably get rid of at 6 teams but maybe even 10. Only a few teams have a true shot at the title any given season anyway.

[buzzcut]

3 hours ago, Wings said:

Just get rid of conferences and have five 6-team divisions. 78 game regular season. Top 16 make playoffs. 

With the following format I presume:

1st round: Two-game, total-points. Re-seed

Quarterfinals: Best of 3. Re-seed

Semifinals: Best of 5.

NBA Finals: Best of 7.

[The_Admiral]

2 hours ago, DG_Now said:

Explain why trans rights are a funny punchline?

 

The joke is that the idea of shoehorning it into a promotional gimmick no one really asked for and giving it equal billing with not one but two corporate sponsors is funny in its bald cynicism. It's a Year Of The Depend Adult Undergarment that cares.

[UnclearInitial]

The midseason tournament is pretty dumb but relatively harmless, if I understood it correctly they would just frontload the schedule with divisional games to have a group stage and basically the teams that have a fast start and are at the top of the division would play while everyone else would get some rest. 

20 teams making the playoff is way too much. Woohooo, Pistons, you get these two play in games to extend your season by a week and get swept by the Bucks, exciting!

Reseeding at the conference finals stage is also dumb. Would they go away from conference championships or go to an MLS style “New York is the Western Conference Champion” mess? For the large part the problem in the East has been the middle class, from  the early 2000’s Nets nadir on every East  team that made the Finals except the 2007 and 2018 Cavs had a strong claim as the second best team in the NBA and wasn’t particularly overmatched. It’s not really a problem that sometimes better teams get eliminated earlier, it’s kind of the point of the playoffs that you need to beat every team in front of you to win. The real problem is that in the East after the first 3-4 teams you’d struggle to find teams that would make the playoffs in the West, creating uncompetitive first round series. Having good teams go head to head often is good for rivalries, and reseeding teams means that instead of facing the team that eliminated you in the second round a year ago you might face a team like the Blazers last year that won’t sniff another conference final. 

 

[dfwabel]

Just keep playing old TI.

White America loves TI.

 

 

[dont care]

3 hours ago, anythinglogos said:

The midseason tournament is pretty dumb but relatively harmless, if I understood it correctly they would just frontload the schedule with divisional games to have a group stage and basically the teams that have a fast start and are at the top of the division would play while everyone else would get some rest. 

20 teams making the playoff is way too much. Woohooo, Pistons, you get these two play in games to extend your season by a week and get swept by the Bucks, exciting!

Reseeding at the conference finals stage is also dumb. Would they go away from conference championships or go to an MLS style “New York is the Western Conference Champion” mess? For the large part the problem in the East has been the middle class, from  the early 2000’s Nets nadir on every East  team that made the Finals except the 2007 and 2018 Cavs had a strong claim as the second best team in the NBA and wasn’t particularly overmatched. It’s not really a problem that sometimes better teams get eliminated earlier, it’s kind of the point of the playoffs that you need to beat every team in front of you to win. The real problem is that in the East after the first 3-4 teams you’d struggle to find teams that would make the playoffs in the West, creating uncompetitive first round series. Having good teams go head to head often is good for rivalries, and reseeding teams means that instead of facing the team that eliminated you in the second round a year ago you might face a team like the Blazers last year that won’t sniff another conference final. 

 

So you basically get punished for performing well? Mid season tournaments are dumb, the only reason it works in soccer is because the competition is different than your regular table. Unless they plan on :censored: slapping some euro teams during the mid season tournament I don’t see how this works.

[Digby]

I think the nature of a single-elimination tournament makes for a different kind of manic fun than the grind of a long season and 7-game playoff series -- particularly in basketball where outlier results are more difficult to come by. Sounds like it'll be too brief to really matter and I think it should be from Christmas to MLK Day or so. Also I'm sure it's going to be branded to death's door with an embarrassing name and a whole new "collection" of Nike atrocities. But I'm not completely writing it off.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

I love the idea of shortening the season.  But to go down to 78 games ("at least") is not much of a shortening from 82.  And, when you add in the mid-season tournament, the season would be just as long as it had previously been. 

Last week someone offered the opinion that the NBA season shouldn't start until Christmas.  While that is a bit extreme, I'd say that it should start around Thanksgiving.  This would eliminate almost 20 games per team.  A 60-ish-game season would be just fine.

 

Adding more teams to the playoffs always sounds like it is watering down the playoffs; but a play-in round amounts to a bye for the more legit qualifiers.  Likewise, when the NFL brought in the second wild card in 1978, it improved the playoffs by creating a wild card round, and thereby giving a bye to the division winners.  (But when it brought in a third wild card in 1990, it watered down the playoffs by relegating one division winner to the level of the wild card teams.)

I would hate for the NBA to devalue the conferences.  Indeed, I dislike that they have devalued the divisions by not giving division winners top seeds.  

I wish they would further emphasise the conferences and divisions.  The best playoff format for the NBA would be the simplest, the one the NFL had from 1978 through 1989: in each conference invite only the three division winners and two wild card teams.  The wild card teams play a mid-week best-of-three play-in series (all games at the home of the higher seed); and then the wild card winner in each conference joins the three divisional champions in the conference semi-finals. 

 

The entire playoffs would take three weeks, and would be done in early May.  Best of all, these meritorious playoffs would enhance the importance of the regular season.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Melo with 25! Giannis with 50!!

 

An in-season tournament would be a great opportunity for G League call-ups. LeBron and Kawhi aren't playing games that don't "count." It's a nice idea, but not really doable in the NBA.