NBA Season Longer than a lot of Marriages

Credit to the cartoonist for nailing it!

 

 

The National Basketball Association is now the second most-popular sport in the United States and the favorite North American pastime abroad. That’s not as good as it sounds. Increasing numbers of fans complain it has become unwatchable because of poor lower-level coaching, too much showboating, and too many marginal players. The two-minute warning has sounded, and many disgruntled fans say that’s the only part of the game worth watching.

 

The NBA should:

 

·      First and foremost, SHORTEN THE BLOODY SEASON! The finals didn’t end until July 20, for heaven’s sake.  

·      Open the new season in mid-October, keep the Covid-induced 72-game season, and stop coddling millionaires. Other people work more than 2-3 times a week! End the regular season in March and accelerate the playoff schedule so that the championship round is settled in late April or the first week of May.

·       As with the NHL, no NBA players in the Olympics. That whole Dream Team thing is a Cold War relic. Plus, it damages the league’s reputation when an NBA squad loses, which it does with increasing frequency.

·      Make 21 (or college graduation) the minimum age for playing in the NBA. Sure, LeBron and Kobe played right out high school, but can you say “outliers?” What could possibly go wrong with handing 19-year-olds millions of bucks when they can’t legally drink?

·      Make college ball and the NBADL where fundamentals are taught. There are too many players who get drafted simply because they have “NBA bodies.” A lot of them wouldn’t know a zone defense from AutoZone. Is the NBA a “professional” league, or a pickup game at the playground?

·      Trash the three-point basket. Wouldn’t it be nice to see some ball movement for high-percentage shots rather than gunners firing away and missing 65% of the time?  Make assists sexier than poor shooting. Do you really think a sport with a 24-second shot clock should end with scores in the 80s?

·      Dunking has become boring, given that even point guards are so tall they can jam without jumping any higher than you can.

·      An alternative to abolishing the dunk is widening the lanes and creating a forbidden zone in front of the basket.

·      Still another idea—stolen from a friend–is to make the dunk a one-point play. It’s the least challenging play in basketball.

·      Bring back technical fouls for hanging on the rim. Enough with mugging for the camera.

·      While I’m on the subject of violations, I think it was sometime in the 1970s the last time a ref called a traveling violation. If you take more than two while not dribbling, you are traveling!

·      Reduce the foul limit from 6 to 5. Good coaches can exploit that, plus it means every team has to have a deeper bench of NBA-ready players.

·      Do not allow more than one designated player to “rest” by sitting out a game. How about better conditioning?

·      Reduce the timeout limit from seven to five to speed the game along. A 48-minute game shouldn’t take more than 2 hours to complete.

·      Enough with thugs posing as ballers. Insert moral turpitude clauses in every contract. These can be restricted to serious offenses. Smoking pot isn’t one, but gunplay in nightclubs and domestic violence are. Any player who violates the clause can be released from his contract and forfeits his pay. He also forfeits free agency for the length of his original contract, cannot be resigned–for a negotiated lower contract– until one year after his first suspension (assuming he’s not in jail) runs out, and is then on a three-year probation. Two strikes and you’re out. Punishment is meted out by an independent board, not the club, league, agent, or players association.

 

Random Thoughts:

 

­–– Luka Doncic is the likely MVP for this season, but let’s be honest: Giannis Antetokounmpo is the best player in the NBA by a wide margin. LeBron’s star has faded and the “Greek Freak” rises.

 

––I seldom take management’s side, but there’s a decided imbalance right now. Players are fond of justifying everything they do as, “It’s just business,” but management is excoriated when it unloads broken-down point guards–looking at you Isaiah Thomas and Kemba Walker. Why is it okay for players to “demand” trades? A lot of them have cash compensation clauses if they are traded during a long-term contract. How about this? If a player demands a trade, he has to shell out dough to the team trading him. Otherwise, just STFU and play out the contract. That’s what free agency is all about.

 

––African American players should bolt voter suppression states when they become free agents and sign for teams in places where their suffrage is protected. Drafted college players should also force the issue. I’m betting FL, GA, IN, NC, TX, and UT won’t be able to cobble together a competitive team of white boys.

 

––The sooner the Brooklyn Nets unload “I’ll-bail-whenever-I-feel-like-it” Kyrie Irving, the sooner they will win a championship. Kyrie is gifted, but he’s a prima donna who doesn’t back his swagger. Send him somewhere nobody cares, like Sacramento or Orlando.

 

––Not sure about Brad Stevens as the new GM of the Celtics. I am sure, though, that that franchise has work to do before it raises another banner–like learning those fundamentals I mentioned above. Too much isolation ball.  

 

 

Rob Weir