Why the NBA Should Seriously Consider Shortening the Season

The league may be running out of other options to incentivize star players to suit up more often.

For years now, the NBA has run into the ultimate challenge: find a way to increase both fan interest and revenue at a time when several teams have clearly found it more beneficial to rest their star players rather than floor the gas pedal over the course of the long campaign.

A couple of the league’s efforts to promote winning have been well chronicled. Back in 2019, the NBA flattened the draft lottery odds—giving each of the three worst teams a 14% chance at winning—to disincentivize heavy tanking for the No. 1 pick. Along the same wavelength, league officials made things more interesting by placing a premium on clubs finishing within the top six spots in each conference by giving those squads a guaranteed playoff spot while teams that finish in seventh and eighth place have to play their way in.

Still, even that rationale isn’t totally foolproof, as some teams will look at their future reality and decide to retreat rather than compete for one of the last playoff spots. The Mavericks took this route by benching Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving at the end of last season, preferring to hold onto their lottery pick rather than scrape into the postseason. The NBA fined the franchise $750,000 for “conduct detrimental to the league,” a move that served as a relatively toothless public reprimand.

The NBA fined the Mavericks for sitting Dončić and Irving against the Bulls on April 7 :: Jerome Miron/USA TODAY Sports

And now, with the addition of an in-season tournament that yields no true reward for teams—and Monday’s news that the league plans to implement stricter rules and fines on clubs who sit out healthy star players for nationally televised games—we seem to have hit a breaking point that raises a key question: At what point does it make more sense for the NBA to simply reduce the number of games played each season as opposed to using a stick-and-carrot approach with so many things?

It’s abundantly obvious that taking that step would be seen as a last resort for team owners and league officials. Ticket sales for each game generate millions of dollars, and that’s without even factoring in the in-arena concession sales. (A report from intelligence firm Team Marketing Report suggested NBA teams would lose about $13.5 million of total revenue for every five home games lost.) And of course the league’s TV-rights deals—which would almost certainly come down in number if fewer games were played—are worth billions each season.

There’d be an undeniable cost associated with not having as many contests, and we’ve seen instances before where the league puts it foot down to capitalize off the windfall that accompanies certain parts of the season. At the end of 2020, after COVID-19 disrupted the NBA calendar, the ’20–21 campaign began a few days before Christmas in an effort to cash in on the most heavily watched day of the regular season. The league estimated that it takes in about $500 million as a result of that day’s games. That argument was an enormous driver behind why that season began so early when many players, superstar LeBron James included, felt it was less than ideal considering how late in the calendar year the bubble season concluded.

It’s easy enough to suggest that some superstars, who are now in line to make upward of $60 million per year in the late stages of their current deals, would be willing to take a bit of a financial haircut if it meant playing 72 games as opposed to 82. It’s not as clear whether more fringe, marginal NBA players would do the same if it meaningfully ate into their nonguaranteed salaries.

The benefit of playing fewer games, backers argue, would likely be higher-quality performances and fewer mind-numbing blowouts—particularly after the All-Star break. There’d be more chances for teams to practice if they want, and there’d be less need for players to load-manage since the schedule itself would build in more of those rest opportunities, with fewer back-to-back scenarios. Travel would be far less compounded. And with fewer games—and more value placed on each contest—teams would have more natural incentive to use their best players more often, perhaps eventually driving more fan interest, given that the players would be better able to perform at their peak.

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It’s worth mentioning that the approach of shrinking the number of regular-season games would represent a shift away from what other leagues are doing at the moment. Seizing on the massive TV-rights deals that keep coming up, the NFL added a 17th regular-season game in 2021. College football has expanded its playoff system, which comes years after the men’s NCAA tournament broadened from 64 to 68 teams. Major League Baseball added a third wild-card team to its postseason last year. And, as previously mentioned, the NBA has found success with its play-in round as a bridge to the playoffs.

Still, at some point, the league will run out of real estate when it comes to the idea of wringing even more out of a season that players already feel physically and mentally drained from. And beyond requiring that stars suit up for at least 65 games to be eligible for postseason awards—something the new CBA stipulates—there may not be much else that can be done to incentivize players and teams when the ultimate prize is hoisting the Larry O’Brien Trophy at season’s end.