NBA - Main

Before the season starts, hear my crazy idea to stop tanking and other meaningless games. I got this idea from swiss format in esports.

At the start of the season each team will just play two games for each teams in their conference. This would result to 28 games per team. Bottom 3 teams for each conference will be eliminated. So if your team is injured early on, goodbye season.

After that, teams would play all teams remaining once, with 51 games at this point. bottom 4 teams will be eliminated resulting to 8 teams per conference remaining.

Remaining teams will face other teams twice this round and eliminate bottom 4 teams for each conference. With this change, if a team makes it until the last round, they would have played 81 games, just 1 game less than the normal format. although this change will shorten playoff by 1 round, it would make for a higher stakes during regular season.

Now you might ask, wouldn't the upper teams just load manage if they clinch a spot for the next round. NO, they would not because after each round W-L record will be reset, making all games meaningful. So, injuries and load management be damned.

Another question you might ask, wouldn't tanking teams still tank in this format and the answer to that is also no. If your team is eliminated, goodbye player salary for the season. Get the players expected salary for that year, divide it by 81 and that would be the players salary per game. For example, Jaylen Brown, he'll make almost $29M next year which would mean he'll make ~$352k per game. if they get eliminated 1st round, he would only get ~$10M for the season. Sponsors would also get mad if teams don't make the next round since they won't be anywhere anymore.

So yeah, this is my crazy idea to make all games meaningful. I know this won't happen but a man can dream