Fact or Fiction: The NBA season is too long

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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.

LeBron James has missed seven games with a groin injury. (Brad Penner-Imagn Images)

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…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/fact-or-fiction-the-nba-season-is-too-long-160011407.html

Author : Ben Rohrbach

Publish date : 2025-03-21 16:00:00

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