How can we replicate this in the regular season?

[meekrab]

Cancel the regular season

Okay, good-faith response: create series' in the regular season. Have teams play each other 3 times in a row so that adjustments can be made, mimicking small playoff series'. You can't fake the urgency but you can at least create more nuanced and less broadstrokes basketball.

Right now most teams are just on auto-pilot all year and hardly even practice.

They do this in baseball simply because of how many games they have to play during the months where it's above freezing outdoors in Chicago, does it improve the product there?

[Chuck Everett]

Get league pass. That way you'll see more good games through the years than just relying on the national television games.

[pr0wler]

Beyond surface-level answers, how can we replicate more of a playoff atmosphere during the regular season?

We can't. The playoffs are 7-game series that determine which team's season ends. The regular season are 82 games that only determine whether you make the playoffs or not and which team you're playing against.

They aren't supposed to be the same. One is a marathon, the other is a duel.

Part of me wants to agree, but part of me remembers the Bulls/Knicks games in the 90s, which were just as intense as the playoff games. Maybe the added aggression to the game naturally created more competitiveness though.

Then again, Miller, Ewing, and Jordan were some of the fiercest competitors and maybe it was for that reason.

Pro sports won't have the same competitive fire as before, if nothing else due to the rise of social media and the familiarity effect. Players are all buddy buddy with each other now, following each other on Insta and Twitter, they know about each other's personal lives and habits via photos, videos, podcasts, and stories online. The more you see someone, for better or for worse, the more you tend to like them. And the more you know about someone, the less you fear them.

[bledredwine]

Go back to having 95% of the games only shown on regional TV so fans get a massively skewed view of what a regular season game looks like because players used to get up for the national tv games more so because it was the only time people saw them. Now every game is available to anyone with internet and google. So they don't get up for the massively biased selection of games we as fans got to see.

That's a damned good point and maybe the best yet. That hadn't even crossed my mind. TV coverage was prime time and before the streaming boom, we all had it.

Just to add to this, but I remember one year the Kings were looking pretty good and I wanted to watch Mitch Richmond to see how good he really was. They had ONE national game! 25 points per game guy who was making allstar games and had been all nba. We got to see him once unless you had regional coverage which I did not. Now how good would I think Mitch was if I based his career on that ONE game a year where you KNOW he played his best?

BTW I'd add, I've seen some NON national games that made it to youtube...I think most of those games were just as trash as trash can be. But most of us didn't see those. So I still think 90% of regular season games were terrible back then. We just didn't see those games, unless it was our local team (and a LOT of us weren't in a market with a regional team).

Yeah, man. Mitch is, to me, the most overlooked player of all time. Many players even stated that he was the second best shooting guard in the 90s. He did an excellent job defending Jordan as well. He had the speed and strength along with his skill set.

It’s sad how little notoriety he’s gotten and yet he’s still a class act to this day.

[dhsilv2]

That's a damned good point and maybe the best yet. That hadn't even crossed my mind. TV coverage was prime time and before the streaming boom, we all had it.

Just to add to this, but I remember one year the Kings were looking pretty good and I wanted to watch Mitch Richmond to see how good he really was. They had ONE national game! 25 points per game guy who was making allstar games and had been all nba. We got to see him once unless you had regional coverage which I did not. Now how good would I think Mitch was if I based his career on that ONE game a year where you KNOW he played his best?

BTW I'd add, I've seen some NON national games that made it to youtube...I think most of those games were just as trash as trash can be. But most of us didn't see those. So I still think 90% of regular season games were terrible back then. We just didn't see those games, unless it was our local team (and a LOT of us weren't in a market with a regional team).

Yeah, man. Mitch is, to me, the most overlooked player of all time. Many players even stated that he was the second best shooting guard in the 90s. He did an excellent job defending Jordan as well. He had the speed and strength along with his skill set.

It’s sad how little notoriety he’s gotten and yet he’s still a class act to this day.

See, I think the opposite! I didn't get to see him, but his teams SUCKED! I think he's the worst big number guy ever! OK a bit extreme but you get my point. He was fools gold, and that's why his teams always were terrible! And I admit it...I'm judging stats because we never saw him play! And you cant tell me you saw 50 SAC games of Mitch! Cause I know you didn't!

[Dr Aki]

1. Reduce games to increase importance of each game. - Won't happen because of money
2. Introduce pro-rel. - Won't happen because of money
3. Disconnect relationship between record and draft position. - Won't happen because small market teams

[Clav]

Financial guarantees.... with massive contracts in the NBA, perhaps they should not be 100% guaranteed. Maybe 50%, then the rest paid out based on league standings. #1 team in each conference during RS wins 100% of their contract. Non-1st place teams, but those that win their division get 80%. Playoff teams that aren't division winners get 70%. Everyone else, including play-in losers, receive 50%.

Its a weird carrot to use, and the NBAPA would never accept this, and I can't fathom the CBA issues either.