MORE than a century ago, the game of basketball was invented as a winter sport in the United States.
But don’t tell that to the organizers of the National Basketball Association, the ultimate professional basketball circuit in the world that plays a four-season tournament annually from fall to summer.
It takes five months and three weeks – or a total of 1,230 regular-season games – for the NBA to eliminate 14 of its 30 member clubs from the “real” seasons that is the playoffs. The fourtier playoffs last for another nine weeks.
All in all, an entire NBA campaign is played for eight months yearly, starting in the last few days of October. And this does not include a month of training camp and an eight-game exhibition schedule beginning in the first week of October!
The NBA season is so arduous and tortuous that player injuries have affected the fortunes of some teams.This season, the league and its players union, through a collective bargaining agreement, put in more “rest” time just after the NBA All-Star Weekend in mid-February for players to heal their bodies from exhaustion if not injuries.
In the years past, there have been suggestions that the NBA reduced its games during the regulars to only 60 – instead of the traditional 82 for each club – but the idea was shut down because the loss of game revenues by the league owners can be very significant.
It also was quickly scuttled after the league owners suggested that the players take a salary cut for such a proposal to be mutually acceptable to both parties. Another idea being floated around is for the preseason schedule to be reduced to five or six games in lieu of the current maximum of eight.
Regardless, both the NBA and its players association presumably believe the current season format is a bit too long.Allow me to accompany you to NBA memory lane as we travel together as far back as a half-century ago.
Time was when the NBA regular wars concluded in late March and the playoffs were completed before Labor Day.The earliest finish to an NBA season came on April 7, 1956 when the Philadelphia (now Golden State) Warriors were crowned NBA titlists following a 4-1 victory over the Fort Wayne (now Detroit) Pistons in that year’s NBA Finals.
During the 1966-67 campaign, the title playoffs between the eventual champion Philadelphia 76ers and the San Francisco (now Golden State) Warriors ended in six games on April 24, 1967. Had there been a seventh game, the series would still have been over by April 26 on the basis of an every-other-day schedule.
The most recent seven-game championship duel that concluded in April came during the marquee Finals matchup between the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers in 1966. That series ended on April 28, with the Celts gaining a 4-3 decision over their perennial Finals nemesis.
Of course, the playoff format at the time was far different from what it is now with the addition of various expansion teams.The NBA roster has been composed of 30 clubs since 2004-05. Moreover, since 1984, the league has been employing a 16-team, four-tier playoff system and there were no first-round byes for all the participants. The division winners also got in regardless of their win-loss records.
Starting this season, however, all the six divisional winners are not guaranteed a playoff berth unless they rank among the top eight in their respective Eastern and Western conferences. The division races factor in only for tie-breaking purposes. To boost postseason revenues, the eight first-round playoff series were stretched to a best-of-seven (from a best-of-five) starting in 2003.
The move has made the season longer as a champion potentially could play as many as 28 games (seven each in the first round, conference semifinals, conference finals and NBA Finals) before securing the required 16 victories and winning all the marbles.
Add that number to the 82 regular appearances and a team may play as many as 110 games before it is crowned as the NBA champion. The 2016 NBA Finals, which will determine the recipient of the Larry O’Brien championship trophy, will get underway on June 2 (June 3, PH time) and conclude on June 19 (June 20), granting that the best-of-seven titular showdown stretches to the
maximum.