Peering Into The NBA Future

OK, my wife and I got up this morning and started discussing this.  With all the changes in the league over my lifetime, there's really only three major things I see left for the league to do to catapult the NBA for many, many years to come.  All thoughts for and against are welcome.  

1)  This one is so obvious, I'm surprised no one ever brings it up.  When you have an OT game, every player that is in the game gets one more foul.  College and Pro fouls are based upon minutes.  NBA you have 48 minutes in a game, 6 fouls, that's 1 foul per 8 minutes.  College, you have two 20 minute halves for 40 total minutes, 5 fouls, that's again 8 minutes per foul.  OT is 5 minutes in each domain.  It's not 8 minutes, but round up.  No argument.  It's stupid to have your best players foul out in OT.  Teams don't plan on OT so there's no way to position or gain an advantage.  OT is rare.  Don't have the numbers but just from observation, OT is unplanned for.  

2)  Come the playoffs, it's time to drop the East vs. West Finals format.  The league is emulating a combo NCAA/World Cup Soccer format with the In-Season Tournament, which I'm warming up to.  The best from the East vs. the best from the West does not guarantee the chance for the best two teams to meet up in the Finals.  The current format is quite antiquated and designed/based upon a much smaller league.  Other sports you can have the worst seeded team make and win the Finals.  A lot of things figure into this, especially scoring, margins, points, etc. (last year's Finals was a fluke and you had an awful, drop off in viewership because of it.  That will never happen again.  Hockey, this year's WS?  That's commonplace for the worst teams having a greater chance of making and winning the Finals.)   At some point, the world wants to see the best vs. the best in the Finals.  Actually, I always thought that was the case but now I'm not so sure anymore what people want in the playoffs rubric.)  Line the playoffs up like the NCAA does but do it by record. 1-16. Otherwise you have a WS like you did this year.  Unless you are a Texas Ranger fan, your league will capture no new market share.  The NBA has set themselves up with the Best of 7 format to pretty much force the best of the West vs. the Best of the East.  Not always guaranteed like the Bucks losing to the 8th seed last season, but you do consistently get the best of each conference showing up in the Finals.      

3)  I have to agree with other athletes from other disciplines when they complain about our eventual Finals winner claiming that they are World Champions.  Yes, I know the league has great international players but that's not the same thing.  At some point, the NBA is going to be called a fraud for claiming that dubious distinction, if not already.  The NBA is not taking on the world in basketball.  We're still a US league plus TOR.  That doesn't make you international.  I don't know how the league will accomplish actually making a true World Champion, but with all the changes the current Commish has made, these things have to be on his mind.  

OK, that's enough.  Fire at will.  (Hi, Will!!)  Please fell free to add any other changes you would like to see either grand in scale from the top down or from the minutia and bottom up.  Looking forward to hearing all viewpoints.  

db

1) Possible.  

Foul out in regulation, come back for the 1st OT.  Foul out again, come back for the 2nd OT.  Rinse and repeat?

2) Never.  

For the most part, the W-L records for the East were made against Eastern teams and the same goes for the West teams.  If a couple strong teams in one conference feast on the other 13 weak sisters, that would inflate their win totals.  Likewise, a conference with 5-6 strong teams could beat on each other, suppressing the win totals, with a weaker team with a better record being seeded ahead of them.

The fact that the Heat made it all the way to the finals out of the play-in could be called a success by the league.  That gives hope for the other not-rich teams living on the fringes of success.  You know what they say, once you make the playoffs, anything can happen.

The league has seen the error of their ways with the All-Star game and are now going back to the original E-W format.

so, Never.

3) A total non-issue.

The NBA has players from all over the world play in the league.  The best players in the world play here.  You don't see any of the top young players deciding to stay in Europe, or China or anywhere else.  Their DREAM is to one day play in the NBA and not some other lesser league.  The NBA is the cream of the crop.

Some day perhaps, the Comish will reach out to the other leagues and have an international tourney with the best from each league.  Maybe an "International Final Eight", made up of two teams from the NBA and six teams from other leagues.  My predictions from that scenario?  The two NBA teams always play in the finals.

4) IMO, the best thing the league should do is fix the referee issue.  They need to call the rules on the floor just as they are written.  The most recent backsliding of rules is the total ignore of a guy coming down in the landing space of the shooter.  A couple years ago, it was an automatic flagrant 1, but now, you may as well flip a coin.  

What do they need to do?  Add another ref (or two) so they won't miss anything?  Then we will have more refs on the floor than players.  I don't know what the answer is, but when they go to replay and still get it wrong, it lessens the value of the final product, IMO.

Good thinking/reasoning on this gyso. Never thought of it that way on the 2nd one. Just like this year is shaping up with 5 legit teams out West and only 2, maybe 3 if PHI gets their act together.

On the first one, you very rarely see an NBA player foul out during the first 48 unless they are a rookie or you have a ref with a wild hair and he/she's probably a rookie trying to make a name for themselves.

As for refs, that does need to be fixed. Always an ongoing saga. I don't see how they see everything they see. I'm surprised they don't miss more than they do. I'm guessing there are tendencies that are obvious, some that are not so obvious and then you have the LeBrons/whiners who complain after every play trying to distract you from doing your job.

Do they put a clock on the refs for these challenges? I know it's at least a commercial block worth, which is 2-3 minutes. They need a challenge clock.

Since the top players in the world play in the NBA, yes, NBA Champions are World Champions.

As long as we are off topic and not talking about Wednesday's blowout - anyone, someone, please do a reality check for me. In years past, players used to come onto their court and wipe of the bottoms of their shoes, one at a time. Often. Bird was always doing that. Every game. Now I don't see it as much. What happened? Better court cleaning or am I just not as observant?  Here's what I found online about it:

https://ballunlocked.com/why-basketball-players-wipe-shoes/