As the NBA restarted its season in Orlando one of the major on-court questions was: What would the actual basketball look like after four months off?
No one knew exactly what the rust levels would be on either end, and on top of that, there wasn’t really an understanding of how quickly teams would get into an aggressive, competitive mindset as the playoffs loomed. The resounding answer after the first weekend of games has been that the quality of play has been very good, particularly on offense, and, maybe most importantly, the games have been, with a few exceptions, wildly competitive and entertaining to watch.
In hindsight, the latter point might should’ve been expected, at least early on, as we’ve trimmed the fat, per se, off of the league by bringing the 22 best teams. Now, not all of them are at full strength and as such games involving the Nets and Wizards (and Kings, for less clear reasons) have been pretty rough when they aren’t playing each other. But otherwise, the games have been terrific, with some overtime action, a number of games decided on the final possession, and just generally tense, competitive hoops despite the layoff.
When the bubble was first being discussed, I floated the idea of using it to test out a potential format for the midseason tournament that the league seems insistent on trying to make happen. After a weekend of games, I’ve decided that the bubble has shown us a great format for how to bring more excitement to the end of the regular season, without needing to add more games and a tournament for prizes no one really cares about.
This concept was borne out of a brief Twitter discussion I had with Matt Moore of the Action Network, after he noted how the games were benefiting from being among the very best teams. Instead of bringing soccer’s in-season tournaments to basketball, I propose instead to bring in-season relegation, of sorts.
people love talking about bringing relegation to U.S. sports and i think the real answer for how it could work is to do something like this with in-season relegation, essentially, rather than 2 leagues. https://t.co/GFEbUWJqm4
— Robby Kalland (@RKalland) August 3, 2020
American sports fans have long been fascinated with the concept of relegation and promotion, but the way leagues are structured here makes it impossible, given the lack of a second division. My thought is, given that NBA teams would never go for creating two full on different divisions, why not do it in-season and effectively lock in the playoff races earlier in favor of a second half push for seeding, with the rest of the league scrapping for a few remaining playoff positions.
They could choose one of two options, the first being resetting the table like they did with the bubble and bringing the 20 or 22 best teams to the next round and playing for seeding and position. However, an idea Matt floated that I too am partial to is making the cut even higher and separating the best teams from the NBA, regardless of conference, and having them play each other on a balanced schedule close to the season to determine seeding, with the others battling for playoff position.
The general idea is this, the teams play a balanced, 58 game season, playing every other team in the league twice, before a two-week break that includes the All-Star Weekend festivities — typically, teams have played right around 54 or 55 games at the break, so it might push things back one week. The two weeks off allows players to get extra rest, but also for rescheduling to occur and teams to get ticket sales going for their closing schedule.
The 13 top teams by record, regardless of conference (because with a balanced schedule conference designations don’t need to exist), then play 24 games, a home and home against the other 11 teams, to determine playoff seeding. Meanwhile, the other 17 teams play a 24-game schedule, facing each team at least once, to determine the three teams that will take the final three playoff spots. (Note: This is the scenario that keeps things at 82 games, they could probably make scheduling easier with a different combination of teams but it would require more games or a non-balanced schedule for the best teams.)
It would keep the season at 82 games and create the sense of urgency among top teams to hopefully produce games like those we’ve seen thus far in the bubble, as they jockey for seeding rather than simply trying to make it through the second half of the season unscathed so they’re ready for the playoffs. We’ve seen that teams will approach these games with some playoff intensity, and at least until seeding was set (which would take longer without conference designations) we’d see some incredible, playoff-caliber hoops long before the postseason.
Meanwhile, the games in the second-tier would still be meaningful, with teams trying to play their way into the postseason and allowing or movement up and down the standings, while also likely being more competitive as we wouldn’t see the wild mismatches between top and bottom teams — an example being how the Nets and Wizards game on Sunday was actually quite fun, despite them both struggling against other bubble teams.
There are certainly major logistical hurdles to clear here from the perspective of scheduling, ticket sales, and travel, but for a league that struggles to keep fans engaged from the All-Star break to the playoffs throughout the league, when so often playoff positions are reasonably well in hand, this would seem to provide a fix. It encourages teams to play out the season a bit harder at the top, giving fans better games to watch, and still allows for the playoff hunt among teams on the fringe — while bringing more teams into the mix by excluding conference designations.
Bubble basketball has been a pleasant surprise, and while it’s something the league will hope to never have to do again, it does offer a potential model for how the league can balance their desire or an 82-game season with making the stakes higher and the product better towards the end of the season, rather than it being a slog to make it to the playoffs.