Each week during the 2024-25 NBA season, we will take a deeper dive into some of the league’s biggest storylines in an attempt to determine whether trends are based more in fact or fiction moving forward.
[Last week: The NBA is ridiculous (in a good way)]
Fact or Fiction: The NBA season is too long
Injuries, load management and tanking. They might be the three worst aspects of the NBA.
And all of them could benefit from a shortened season.
Whatever data you examine, injuries are being diagnosed with greater frequency in the NBA. The percentage of games missed per season has risen from roughly 15% to 20% — or about four more games per player per season — over the past 25 years, according to a New York City Data Science Academy study. Other studies show a steady increase since the 1980s and a spike in recent seasons, including this one.
We can debate how much of that is the result of medical advancements in the reporting of injuries, but there is no doubt that the increases in 1) demand at the youth level, 2) athleticism of the players and 3) the ground they have to cover in the pace-and-space era have all contributed to a heightened injury risk.
Not only would there be fewer instances in which a player could be injured, a shortened season would decrease the amount of fatigue that leads to further instances of wear and tear. Even shortening the season from 82 games to, say, 72 — two games each against every interconference opponent and three apiece opposite each intraconference rival — could eliminate back-to-back games from the schedule.
This should also address load management. The NBA recently instituted a 65-game rule for players to qualify for All-NBA and other awards statuses, which gives you an idea that the league believes this — an 80% threshold — is a pretty good snapshot to assess someone’s season. Why not just make that the length of the season and aim to get everyone to play 100% of a campaign. Shouldn’t that be the goal?
It stands to reason that tanking would decrease in a shortened season, too. Teams would be in the hunt deeper into the year, and we could eliminate the tail end of that stretch of each season — the time period we are currently in — when a large contingent of teams have committed themselves to losing.
If it makes so much sense to shorten the season, why hasn’t the NBA done it already? Money.
The answer is always money.
Depending on the market, teams can generate as much as $5 million in revenue per game. Eliminating even 10 games would cut into the profit margin for some teams or could erase it entirely for others. That is a problem. Team owners are not about to set fire to their income, even if franchise values are absurd.
However, a scarcity of games, combined with an increase in frequency of player availability, would improve the product greatly, and better products sell for more money. That may not be great news for a consumer that is already paying a small fortune to attend a game, but it is better than the alternative.
Because right now a lot of people are paying for one product and receiving another, far worse one.
The Denver Nuggets played a pair of nationally televised games this week against the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers; Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray missed both to nagging injuries. Games across the slate at this time of year feature a litany of player absences for injuries, load management or tanking, and the combination of all three makes for a watered-down league struggling for air space amid March Madness.
A total of 21 players who made an All-Star or All-NBA team in this or the previous three seasons did not participate in Wednesday’s 11-game schedule, according to Yahoo Sports contributor Tom Haberstroh. Imagine paying hundreds of dollars to see the Philadelphia 76ers visit the Oklahoma City Thunder, only for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, Joel Embiid, Paul George and Tyrese Maxey to miss the game.
Pick most any random game from the NBA’s mid-March slate, and you will find a similar scenario. Over time that sends a message: Do not invest in the league at this time of year. The gamble is not worth it. It does feel like we are just playing out the remainder of the season with few stakes but a higher seed here and there. The title favorites and, for the most part, the playoff field have long since been established. Shortening the season does nothing to eliminate the thrill of a playoff hunt; it only heightens it, in fact.
Why not instead invest in the overall health of the league over that time? Shortening the season would not only make more players available in the immediate; it should in theory extend their careers. For a league that prides itself on selling nostalgia in real time, that is no small auxiliary gain from fewer games.
It makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons and no sense for one reason — the financial gain of a league that sold its latest franchise for $6.1 billion. Which is why it won’t happen. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t.
Determination: Fact. The NBA season is too long.
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