The NBA season is a long and grueling process. Teams play 82 games a season, and then the top teams continue to play more games in the playoffs. Over the past 5 seasons, the number of games missed due to injury has nearly doubled from the previous five seasons. Why? Well, many believe the NBA’s long season is the issue.
Now, another reason to shorten the season has been brought up by Kobe Bryant. Per Baxter Holmes and Tom Haberstroh of ESPN:
“You can’t [just] lose five-to-10 games,” Bryant says. “If you’re going to do it, you’ve almost got to go quality versus quantity. If you’re going to shorten the schedule, then you’ve got to shorten the schedule and look to enhance your TV numbers substantially … because now every regular-season game is worth a sh*t.”
Kobe is one of the fiercest competitors in league history, so if he is calling for a shorter season, it may need to be shortened. To make games more worthwhile for fans to watch, he thinks the NBA should shorten the season. With less games, teams records will be more similar, and each game will factor into playoff standings more than before. Also, once the playoffs come around, players won’t get injured as easily as they do now.
In the playoffs this season, many players have fallen to injury. All-Star caliber players either didn’t play at all during the playoffs or were injured during them. For the Grizzlies, Marc Gasol was hurt before the playoffs started. Hassan Whiteside and Jonas Valanciunas both went down in the same series. Most notably, the league’s MVP, Stephen Curry, sprained his MCL during the first round, and he hurt it again during Game 2 of the NBA Finals. Injuries have been an issue this postseason, and it may be because of the long season.
During the 2011-12 season which was shortened due to the lockout, players were fresher than ever during the NBA Playoffs. Maybe shortening the season would be good for the NBA. They could generate more views on TV because games would have more meaning, and it would help out the players because they would get more rest and their bodies won’t give out during the playoffs.
