The solution would be to reduce the games....by a lot. Every other major professional basketball league in the world plays far fewer games than the NBA. It would increase the stakes of each game and "schedule losses" would go away.
Of course this will never happen, so I suspect the NBA will keep experimenting with things, like the in-season tournament, to incentivize competitive play. But with the 3-point pace and space era, players are covering more ground than ever before in terms of miles ran, so teams will either rest guys or they will do it themselves in games where they simply don't try as hard.
FNG...
What do you mean when you say "the NBA product has never been worse?"
I know tanking has always been an issue, but I can't recall a season where so many teams have no interest in winning basketball games. I was thinking about going to the Utah game last night, but I decided it wasn't going to be a real NBA game. I sort of watched the first three quarters of the game, but I wasn't really watching very closely. So many of the "injuries" seem phony to me. And now we hear Giannis wants to play, but the Bucks aren't going to let him. I don't know...something needs to be done.
It aint great. It sucks. But bad teams have figured out ways to lose deliberately for a very long time. Wolves fans are not immune to watching it year after year after year. I've chronicled just how poorly the Wolves finished lottery seasons for almost a decade straight.
Are today's shenanigans that much worse than a team having Mark Madsen play the final 20+ minutes of a game and take 7 three pointers in the 4th quarter and OT to deliberately lose?
As for the Nets scoring 24 points... the Utah Jazz once scored 54 points in a game... in the NBA Finals. Personally, I think while there are plenty of issues in today's league... I don't think talent is one of them. There are talented guys up and down rosters. There's superstar talent. Budding talent. Old talent.
Last edited by AbeVigodaLive on Fri Mar 20, 2026 7:56 am, edited 2 times in total.
there is a talent deficit in the league, definitely enough to not want 2 more teams.
at the end of the day, we see all this supposed top end talent and these teams take em and still think it's not enough and many times they're right. Nobody wants to take a guy, go full steam ahead only to find out the ceiling is low.
The Nets are in a position where they have a really good coach and the team is super green. They play anywhere from 3-5 rookies at a time. They're just searching for a top end talent. At their best, they're feisty and might steal a win. At their best, 25-27 wins is doable, but what does that do?
Whenever the new CBA happens they need to get rid of the Super max related to making all nba. The pistons could get screwed because Cade got hurt so he might not hit the games limit making Duran have a legit shot at making All NBA making him super max eligible
