The NBA has allowed its regular season to be turned into an unwatchable mess. With games having too many stoppages, players missing games due to the poor schedule, and nearly half the league currently tanking for draft picks in early February, changes need to be made to make the season interesting to watch.
Here are the changes I would make….
Allow Hand Checking And Bring Back Defense
It is extremely frustrating to watch an NBA game and see any attempt to play defence called a foul. The NBA outlawed hand checking 20+ years ago to try and promote scoring in a league that was getting dominated by defensive teams. We don’t have that problem right now.
With more spacing in the game on the offensive side of the ball defenders need to be given something they can do to comeback spacing, three point shooting, and the ball movement we see today.
On top of this, defenders in the paint need to be allowed to at least stand their ground and defense without being called for fouls because they didn’t get out of the way.
Only 4 Coaching Challenges Allowed Per Month
I don’t know anyone who enjoys watching coaching challenges to calls. They stop the game in its tracks while we stand around watching a referee watching a replay! Terrible for spectators!
Coaching challenges were brought in to overcome bad calls by referees. We all can think of a moments a terrible call in the past should have been overturned, so I wouldn’t scrap them altogether, but I would limit them.
If coaches knew they had to save their challenges for only the very worst calls that matter, I think that would help cut down games being stopped over silly calls during a game that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of games.
Only Allow 5 Time Outs Per Team Per Game
The more we cut down on stoppages during a game, the better! Coaches don’t need as many time outs as they currently get, not with the number of fouls and TV time outs that we currently have. So that needs to be adjusted. Pretty straight forward.
Cut The Season From 82 Games Back To 70 Games
This is a bit of a controversial one and I understand why. It makes a lot of the leagues regular season records obsolete, and that is a big things in competition that is so heavily focused on statistics.
I think fewer games would allow for a bit more breathing space in the schedule. It would cut down and dreaded “back-to back” nights. It also allows for the next point on my list…
Turn The NBA Cup Into A Pre Season Knockout Tournament
The current NBA Cup format is just too complicated and no one really follows a teams progress until they make the semi finals. If the NBA cut back the regular season to 70 games, and pushed the season start back a little, this would allow for a true knockout style NBA Cup to be played.
Fans who have been waiting for NBA action after the off season will be engaged, and they will be able to watch sudden death basketball. It just seems like an easy way to make this competition relevant.
Scrap The NBA All Star Game And Replace It With International Basketball
The All Star Game is no longer relevant to modern basketball. Players selected don’t take the game seriously, many decline to play, and the NBA needs to stop truing to force the concept.
The NBA All Star Game should be replaced by international basketball with the USA taking on a different team each year.
This would be far more relevant to the modern game, and help the NBA grow the popularity of international competition. A win-win.
Scrap The NBA Draft And Allow Rookies To Play Where Ever They Want
The NBA is so captured by having a draft that it doesn’t realise, all of its taking problems go away if you just scrap the draft and allow rookies to enter the league by negotiating with whom ever they want.
This would require an adjustment to the rookie contract scales. You would want teams with salary cap space to be able to target the best incoming rookies, but we don’t want to go back to the days where rookies were paid enormous contracts either, as that caused its own issues in the past.
Would we see rookies leaning towards big market teams? Yes. However there’s only so many players a team can sign due to the salary cap. Small market teams would still be able to build teams however they won’t need to be tanking for years on end to do so.
This is all a move to eliminate tanking, which has got to such a ridiculous point that half the NBA is looking to lose games on purpose in early February.
Conclusion
Every regular season game needs to have more value. We need to eliminate tanking and make games flow, with less stoppages.
A lot of the changes I would make a big steps, but something needs to be done to make people want to watch the NBA season once again.
