NBA must fix its regular season schedule to improve quality of playoffs

Before the NBA spends too much time plotting its next money grab with an in-season tournament, would it be too much to ask for commissioner Adam Silver to spend a little bit of time fixing the playoffs?

Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals on Tuesday was yet another game fans could have turned off at halftime, a trend in these playoffs that is either a massive fluke or an indictment of a league that plays too many games, gives its players too little time to recover and prioritizes television windows over the quality of its product.

Facing a 3-0 series deficit, the Dallas Mavericks stayed alive Tuesday and beat the Golden State Warriors 119109 in a game that was pretty much over from the second quarter on. The Warriors will attempt to wrap up a trip to the NBA Finals at home Thursday.

But unless the Mavericks pull off one of the biggest miracles in league history, this series will go down a massive dud.

And it will not be alone. The Eastern Conference finals, which are tied 2-2 between Miami and Boston, still have a chance to be salvaged. But four completely lopsided blowouts – two for each team – have made it difficult for fans to invest any more time than they have to. It seems likely we will reach the NBA Finals with just one series from the entire playoffs, the East semifinals between Boston and Milwaukee, being interesting enough to remember five years from now.

Sometimes, that’s how it works in sports. Not every game, every season or every playoff is as exciting as we hope it will be.

But it’s also important to recognize how much injuries have shaped these matchups. Whether it’s Memphis’ Ja Morant being unavailable at the end of the second round against Golden State, Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid physically collapsing against Miami, Milwaukee’s Khris Middleton being unable to get on the court for even a minute of the playoffs or Miami’s Kyle Lowry battling a hamstring injury the entire postseason, too many of these teams have not been close to their best at the time of year that matters most.

A rational league whose priority is entertaining fans and putting its best product on the floor would take that information and ask whether an 82-game schedule with a postseason that demands teams play every other day is an optimal construct. Instead, the NBA’s answer is apparently to add even more games to the schedule, more physical demands on its players and more risk of injury for a prize that has no organic value.

The Athletic reported last week that the NBA is moving further toward implementing an in-season tournament as early as the 2023/24 season, which has seemingly been one of Silver’s high-priority agenda items the last few years.

Silver, a fan of European soccer, envisions a world where NBA teams have multiple trophies they can win, including one in the middle of the season. Of course, the NBA is not like the UEFA Champions League, which provides a platform for the best teams from the various European leagues to play each other.

For the NBA, an in-season tournament will be nothing more than the same teams repackaged with manufactured stakes. It will allow the NBA an opportunity to sell a new television package and fill the owners’ pockets with money, but everyone will know that there’s only one championship awarded in June.

If the NBA used the in-season tournament gimmick to radically reshape its scheduling approach, perhaps it would be worthy trying. If the money from an in-season tournament allowed the NBA to have a shorter season and more time in between games, it would be worth the trade-off for a better playoffs with healthier star players.

But if the in-season tournament is going to make the season even longer and more demanding, adding more injury risk and diminishing the actual playoffs, it’s hard to see what the league is hoping to accomplish.

The NBA postseason is often compelling, but this spring has shown it is not impervious to the physical challenges it places on players. If enough key players are injured or compromised, the best teams won’t advance and the games won’t be worth watching. Are you trying to identify the best team or host a battle of attrition?

If it’s the former, then the obvious answer for the NBA would be cutting down the number of regular season games from 82 to at least 72, eliminating back-to-backs during the regular

season and giving teams at least two days in between games during the playoffs.

But the potential addition of a mid-season tournament suggests that the NBA wants its best players to play more frequently, not be healthier and better rested heading into the playoffs that actually matter.

Given how uninteresting and uncompetitive these conference finals have been so far, that seems like the wrong direction.