NBA Season Shouldn’t Be Shortened Despite Player Outcry

By chriscruz on October 16, 2014

There have been times in the past five or six years of LeBron James‘ career that Michael Jordan has simply been a nuisance. It’s almost as if he is an all-time great trying to protect his “GOAT” status (obviously).

However, on the issue of shortening the NBA season, I think that he is right. LeBron and Dirk Nowitzki came out in favor of shortening the season, Nowitzki stating that it should be somewhere in the “mid-60s” because we can tell which teams are going to make the playoffs by then.

Jordan has stated that he always liked to play and would never yield the opportunity to play, somewhat taking a jab at LeBron. This is akin to the grandpa who fought in Vietnam stating to their grand kid, “you kids have it so easy.” You’re right grandpa, we do. But I think that the NBA shouldn’t shorten the season for a number of reasons.

The first that comes up clearly is that the NBA has built a wonderful brand around an 82-game season that runs from October to June. Why mess that up? Why mess with the money that the league and, by proxy, the players are making? And players have been doing it already for decades.

It is not as though the regular season needed to be shorter because players are just dropping like flies or they have been dropping like flies. No, players have played under the same conditions for less money in the past. If a player can no longer keep up with the pace of the game due to the longevity of the game, is that a reflection of the season that has been there for years or the player’s conditioning/age/abilities? It also goes without saying that it affects the acclaimed TV deal that the NBA just signed, which is the league’s golden goose.

The other reason why the NBA shouldn’t shorten the season is because Nowitzki’s insinuation that the league can figure out the eight best teams of each conference is simply false. There have been a number of times when teams have gone down the wire into the season, fighting for playoff spots.

Sure, you may shorten the season, and have teams straggling into the playoffs in the same manner if you shorten the season, but the league wouldn’t be giving teams their best shot to make the playoffs.

Consider the New York Knicks and the Atlanta Hawks last season. The Hawks made the No. 8 seed last season with 38 wins, while New York missed with 37 wins. They both went 7-3 in their final 10 games of the season. The two teams, quite literally, made or missed the playoffs in the last leg of the season. If Atlanta loses one more game, then Indiana plays New York, not Atlanta.