The Problem

One of the defining characteristics of the most recent NBA Playoffs were the injuries. It has lead to plenty of handwringing from both inside and outside of the league, with players, coaches, and fans speaking about the intense grind of the playoffs. The arguments aren’t without merit to me, either, and we’re seeing similar discussions happening in soccer, which has the most in common with basketball in terms of calendar and athletic requirements. Players are enduring long regular seasons and potentially playoffs with their clubs, with some then participating in offseason tournaments. We saw several NBA stars play a full 2023-24 regular season, have deep playoff runs, and then represent their countries at the 2024 Summer Olympics - Nikola Jokic ended up playing in 104 basketball games in this stretch.

And of course offseason training has become a huge part of players’ lives, too, as they must keep up with the competition. It’s not just that the schedule has gotten cluttered, but also that the pace and demands of the modern game have increased in ways not seen before. While there may be less banging in the paint than in the 80s and 90s, players now have to defend a wider area of the court thanks to the 3 point revolution.

This combination of increased schedule density and on-court demands mirrors what’s been going on in the soccer world. Players are speaking out against the Club World Cup as well as increased national team responsibilities. It’s also possible that in the pursuit of finding an optimal way to play, analytics have done so without regard to the possible health repercussions of playing a certain way.

But as we see similar issues pop up across basketball and soccer, I think we can take inspiration from another part of the European soccer world to counter them. And it’s even something the NBA has already started to tap into!

The Solution

We need to expand the In-Season Tournament - and not count those games towards the regular season schedule. The only things keeping this from happening now are that expansion to 32 teams would be necessary and the ever-present money question. Unfortunately it looks like expansion has been put on the back burner, but it does seem imminent, if pushed back from five years to ten years.

The schedule would change to where each team would play one home game and one away game against each of the other 31 teams for 62 regular season games. Teams would also be drawn into four groups of eight for the overhauled IST, where they would again play one home game and one away game against each team in their group. The top two teams in each group - 8 total - would advance to the single-elimination portion of the IST. This means each team would participate in between 76 and 80 games, which is pretty close to 82! Overall for the league this would mean only 18 fewer pre-playoff games, which feels pretty negligible. On the other hand, it would be 182 fewer pre-playoff games compared to keeping an 82 game schedule after expanding to 32 teams, or 5.7 per team.

Conclusion

I think the crucial part of this is that teams could follow a common practice for domestic European soccer cups and rotate their lineups, allowing their bench players a chance for more minutes and their stars a chance to rest, without risking the wrath of the NBA or fans. Combined with expansion potentially cutting down on travel, it could reduce the load on players and allow the league to relax the player participation rules and minimum games played rule for awards. Those solutions are over-legislated tweaks that focus too much on the players themselves, whereas this one adjusts the system by looking at the league and team level.

My hope is that this gives players more rest, teams more opportunity to develop their whole roster, the league a change for a competitive midseason tournament, and fans a better on-court product. Hopefully, fans could prioritize the regular season games over the IST games if they want to see a particular opposing team. Non-playoff teams could make runs in the IST to play more competitive games and get experience in what Marc Campbell calls FEP, or fully exploitative play, getting information on how their players and coaches might respond in such situations.

The main hurdle is of course the need for expansion, though I think it could be tweaked to fit a 30 team league, too. Otherwise the loss of games feels pretty negligible to me, though it’s tough to say how the owners and their greed would respond.