On one hand, I don't like the reduced minutes, ridiculous amount of injuries, and the lacksadasical play you see on frequent 2nd half of back to backs...

On the other hand, I do like seeing teams with deeper benches flourish (Pacers, 76ers, Rockets, Blazers, Nuggets) with a more pure form of basketball and it is cool to see lots of box scores every night. There's almost always some Rockets game to catch and some piece of good news to talk about.

Crap, there's almost not even enough time to talk about all the stories. Guys who have emerged like this Ilyaslova or whoever are going completely unnoticed because we only really have time to talk about Lin, D12, Lakers drama, and Lebron.

In a roundabout way the lockout has been great for the NBA. I am watching more regular season games than I ever have. Not just the Mavs either.

I've always thought that NBA regular season was ridiculously/stupidly long. 82 games to eliminate 50% of the field strikes me as beyond pointless.

Give me this format from now on. It might be a little bit more stressful on the players, but it truly accents the team concept. Not to mention that teams desperate to find depth can turn to players that end up fostering some great NBA drama (Lin obviously).

I'm pretty torn on it. The major positive is definitely the shortened season... elevates every game just that much more in importance.

That said, I actually think the games have sufferred a tad in quality. Sure, the product looks prettier, but a big reason for that is that the teams always appear to be sucking wind a litte bit more on defense because of the lack of down days these guys are collectively getting. I see more games this year than any other time where I can just tell one team's going to get crushed halfway through the 1st quarter. That takes away from the product as much as the more cohesive offenses bring to it.

The other thing is the 5 teams you mentioned... realistically, I can see every single one of them underperforming relative to their record come playoff time when we're back to a somewhat 'normal' format. I don't like that.

As touched upon already, I love the volume of basketball that we are seeing. But hate the injuries.

Do you guys think the officiating is more inconsistent this year? Not to say it's lopsided in a given game, but the inconsistencies of calls/no-calls from game to game or even throughout a game. Or do we say this every year?

I actually like the schedule. If teams adjust and manage players' minutes better and get a full preseason in, it might not even have many downsides other than the travel schedules for the players.

As a fan, it makes for a much more interesting and intense regular season.

I think the play has suffered, not just the players, but there are so many WTF officiating moments lately, I think those guys (and the horrible Violent Palmer) are being worn down.


I wonder how it has impacted attendance. I would think that these 3-4 game homestands in 1-week make it tough for a fan with a family & job to get out to all the games.
However, there is a good game on every night, and it has been nice to watch that.

I'd be good with 72-75 games. Shorten the season, just don't condense it as much as this year's schedule. There's no excuse for these back-to-back-to-backs and 8-game road trips. That's just bad for the players.

I like the frequency of games and the increased dependence on depth, though. And the fact that seeding and scheduling is way more crucial to playoff positioning than it seemed during the 82-game marathon.

there needs to ba a medium between the back to back to backs of this year and the 3-4 days between games in a normal season. i think that would probably take the schedule down to 70 or so games. the problem is that takes away 5-6 home games for each team at roughly 14% of the games. i dont see the owners going to a shorter season since they all claim they are losing money as it is.

No chance on reduced # of games, but I would be happier starting the season a month later than normal. Why open at the end of October when you have to compete against college and pro football? How about opening after Thanksgiving in the end of November and have Christmas be a big weekend. Even if it means starting the playoffs later it just seems smarter to compete against MLB instead of the NFL and NCAA football.

Also, the playoffs can be condensed to every other night or 3 games per week instead of lengthy 3 week series.

I can give an AMEN to that.

Part of my problem with the typical regular season is that it's so spread out. Most years, there is less than a 50% chance that my team will play on a given night, and a bunch of those games are against teams like Toronto or Sacramento that just don't get a twitch of interest. Sometimes they'll go a week and only play 1-2 games, and those games are against bottomfeeders. In that time, I basically forget about the NBA because the regular season is so unimportant. It's not like football where every game is a huge chunk of the season so every game is a big event, and a ton of NBA teams get in the playoffs so winning percentage doesn't matter much except for a couple teams on the bubble.


With the accelerated schedule, it's a lot easier to fall into a routine of watching the game after work. You get to see lots of players play more minutes at a higher level because the stars can't play 35-40 minutes every night. Depth and team basketball are more highly valued.

IMO, the biggest problem with the NBA is that the playoffs are too big and long. Half the teams make it and they stretch it out over too long a time. It's like the playoffs are half the season with half the teams. It needs to be condensed in a bad way.

The playoffs are too stop-and-start. I still remember the year San Antonio got something like 20 hours between games and ended up sleeping on the plane because of a delay... then there was more than a week break between the end of both conference finals and the start of the finals.

Obviously scheduling is tricky, but come on.

[This message has been edited by Ulrich (edited 2/22/2012 2:16p).]