AROUND the NBA:

[SleepingHero]

Wow, that’s wild… I‘m coming back to my proposal after the Olympic final which would be the only way to get the best players competing for 48 minutes in a meaningful way:

Let‘s play for homecourt advantage in the NBA finals, East versus West. The coaches come from the two best teams so they‘re really into winning this thing to maximize their chances for a championship.

And the format right now isn’t fair anyways, with the very good Eastern teams getting handed a lot of wins from the trash teams in the East while the Western conference is carnage, with all the good teams beating each other.

I actually sent that to Adam Silver in the summer but didn’t get a response, to no surprise…

I don't really like tying playoff implications to an All-Star game. That's a bit too much on the line for what is really a fan engagement event. I don't mind this new format but, the NBA of course had to f up the implementation of it imo. Whenever you run a pickup game, who wants to have 3 subs? Why not make 4 teams of 6?  

5 starters and 1 sub. It can also coincide with each division as there 5 teams per division. That way there is still some flavor of that East vs. West format. And instead of rewarding guys, I'd rather find a task that losing teams have to do for the winning team. Like all losing teams have to post on social media that the winning team was better and they were better players.

Harmless, but it taps into the ego's of players. I think that alone is enough motivation for guys to try their asses off. Imagine Joel Embiid admitting that Jokic was the better player? Plus it plays into the NBA's obsession with social media engagement.