This NBA playoffs this year was fantastic as far as big market, A-list franchises going deep into the playoffs. The ratings reflected how much people like to see the Bostons, New Yorks, Chicagos, Miamis, Dallas’, and LAs of the world in the playoffs.

I’m sorry to say this, but people just didn’t tune in as much when it was San Antonio in the finals.

With a shorter season, every game would mean more. With more rest between games, you’d get consistently better performances from the players. Fans wouldn’t have to deal with watching players mail it in sometimes on the second night of a back to back at the end of a long road trip.

Everyone would also be healthier and fresher when the playoffs roll around, leading to better games then too.

Ditto for ticket prices. You raise ticket prices to reflect the decrease in the number of games so that, at the end of the day, season tickets cost what they do now.

I guess that’s why they pay David Stern to be commissioner and not some of you idiots who think we should contract a team because they have sucked since 2004.

When 1 small market team does well and that is all we can hang our hat on it is a problem. Unless we are satisfied with only 8 of the 30 teams making money. I guess then it isn’t a problem.

Name me a name free agent that went to the Bucks, Pacers or any cold weather city other than Chicago, which only got guys the past year and during the Jordan era.

Did Carmelo Anthony and Leon Rose ties up 3 teams last year (Nuggets, Nets, Bucks) so he could go to Portland?

What you don’t seem to get is that the landscape is changing…and that’s my point. If I paid the outrageous bucks for a season ticket with the Nuggets, Nets or Knicks last year, I’d wonder why the heck I’d put the money down. 2/3′rds of the season was where Anthony would go – and as Knick fans are about to find out…..he’s not that good.

MLB is all about trading deadline rumors as well. One reason the fans love the NFL so is because once the teams start playing the season, there are few, if any, major trades. Fans can concentrate on the games being played.

F what Winderman says, the length of the season is fine and so is the number of teams in it. If anything why dont they have owner relegation. Get rid of owners like Sterling and you will see drastic improvements in the NBA’s sub par franchises.

I’m sorry but putting the names of owners that had 2 teams in the finals and another who has a large market team soon to be moving into a new arena does not get the point across. Maybe throw up a name of a team that the owner spends in a small market? The 3 are spending but getting plenty back other than being “viewed as winners”. I’m sure Bill Gates and Paul Allen’s hobby and passion was computers but they didn’t invent windows just so they could feel like winners when using it.

I don’t see Memphis finally having one good season as a valid reason to keep them around.
New Orleans should have NEVER gotten another team and to make matters worse you put another expansion team in Charlotte to replace the team that moved to New Orleans.
Dumb.

Pull the plug on 6 teams and have two 12 team conferences.
Break them up into 3 divisions of 4 teams each and have one wild card from each conference.
That is it.
8 teams make the playoffs and you don’t have to snooze your way through these boring # 1 seed vs. # 8 seed match ups before the real action starts.

The NBA is at a tipping point. Either it becomes like MLB where the good players migrate to half a dozen glamour markets where they’re guaranteed gobs of national hype so that ESPN can get interest in the teams and score viewers on the national broadcasts, or the NBA becomes like the NFL where all teams have a legitimate chance of winning and 60% of a teams starters don’t decide that they’re buds and want to go to a glamour city and play together.

Last years Super Bowl featured teams from Green Bay and Pittsburgh – two areas that don’t even have an NBA franchise. Two areas that basketball players would laugh at playin in if they had NBA franhises there. Yet the public gave the Super Bowl record TV ratings, while the league sold too many tickets to the game due to demand. MLB has franchises in Pittsburgh and Milwaukee, and the players that establish themselves always leave. As one reporter said – “these guys are making $16 million dollars to play basketball for 8 months. They can play in Sacramento if the team has their rights.”

The D-League, granted it’s the only “legitimate” minor basketball league in America. But the D-League is a terrible model unless you have a one team per NBA team system, with that D-League team being somewhat close to the NBA team. The Warriors just bought out the N. Dakota franchise and everybody seems to think they’re moving the team to San Jose after this next season. One of those two things needs to happen.

As to the season itself, 70 games is fine, it’s baseball that needs to shorten it’s season the most. The NBA numbers are not that bad, except for bad owners who make bad business decisions. I mean really, $20 million for Darko? That’s not the players’ fault. Promotion and relegation would punish bad owners more quickly, which will force them to be better smarter owners or get out of the business.

With West and Gray leaving New Orleans and Paul dying to get out, New Orleans should be the first team to go. The Atlanta Hawks have too good of a roster to simply pull the plug, but I could easily envision the Los Angeles Hawks of Anaheim happening before the start of next season if no new owners step up to buy the team (there’s plenty of money in LA to find a buyer to relocate the team).

For scheduling purposes, you need to keep an even number of teams, so who else do you contract along with New Orleans? Too bad tiny market Memphis made the playoffs last year, because they would be #1 on my list, followed by Sacramento, but now neither of those moves seems likely.

Cleveland just got a much needed infusion of talent so at least for now seems safe. The hapless Nets are of course now owned by a goofy Russian billionaire. The bickering Pistons just got a new owner too. Looks to me as if contraction is now out of the question.

I don’t like the idea of a 60 game regular season at all, and the players would have to agree to their current contracts pro-rated for a significant drop in game day pay checks. That ain’t gonna happen either.

If any of you think that teams who have huge season ticket bases are going to simply give up 20-22 games at the gate, you’re sadly mistaken.