NBA Season Should Be Shortened, But It Will Never Happen

By Anthony Beers @AnthonyBeers on October 23, 2014

In economics, the question of quality over quantity comes up time and time again. Applebee’s makes a ton of money, but there’s no way it’s better than that Italian bistro you like. Of course, a quesadilla burger is a lot cheaper than the fancy chicken Parmesan. This odd metaphor aside, the same dilemma is occurring in professional sports, and it cannot be clearer than in the NBA right now.

The latest buzz from Commissioner Adam Silver is the concern of the game becoming too slow and losing viewers. The NBA as a result has experimented with ideas of shortening games in length and limiting the amount of mandatory timeouts. This procedure will be practiced in the Brooklyn Nets and Boston Celtics preseason game on Sunday.

While the amount of timeouts in a basketball game are certainly gratuitous, it’s not the real root of the issue in the NBA. Quite frankly the season is just too long. There are games over the course of the season that do not showcase the NBA in a good manner. Quite often teams can sit on dominant records without having to worry about moving up or down in the conference. Naturally as a result, you just see less effort on the court.

If you don’t agree, you’re just not watching. Whether a team is way ahead in the conference or behind, the severity of games in between presents some off nights in the NBA. The quality of the content is nowhere near it’s true potential. Shortening the NBA season would remove these embarrassing games from the picture, be more beneficial for the health of players and give fans better basketball.

The evidence to support this claim lies within the shortened season that occurred as a result of the NBA lockout. The season starting on Christmas day was kind of perfect, giving fans something to be happy about again. Imagine Christmas brought in the beginning of the NBA season every year? This could replace the empty void you lost as a child when (spoiler) you learned the real truth about Santa Claus.

Of course reality must sink in. If the NBA shortened a season intentionally, the quality and intensity of the game would go up, but the quantity would go down. Several arenas, such as Madison Square Garden, sell out regardless of how well the Knicks are even playing. That’s a serious amount of money lost that the NBA would never agree to.

But there is a line where the quality of a sport overrides the money surrounding it. Take professional baseball for example. Now that the sport has cleaned up, ball park attendances are down due to the lesser amount of power and home runs in the game. It’s a more honorable game to true baseball fans, but it’s less exciting to the everyday average Joe.

The NBA is not willing to get to that point just yet. Inking their $24 billion television deal whilst simultaneously driving for advertisements on NBA jerseys makes that extremely clear. But for the true fans who want a better quality of the game, shortening the season is quite obviously the answer.

Anthony Beers is a contributing writer for RantSports. You can follow him on Twitter @AnthonyBeers