the regular season is probably 7-10 games to much as it is--to many guys get hurt--to many teams trying to tank it late etc..

but after such a long season, i always liked the first round best of 5

it gives the underdog a legit chance and the superior teams an avenue of acheiving rest to keep players fresh for longer tougher rounds.

now they have an expansion team coming in when the talent pool seems to have been severely diluted by the last expansion years ago. Couple that with the draft becoming a futures market with many unkown european players and guys who havent finished honing their talent in college only makes the product worse.


one thing the NBA HAS to do is use a much more vigorous approach in detremining who will be the top 30 guys or so picked, and detering the HS as much as possible. Kwame Brown is a perfect example--hes a guy who came in to early--clearly not mentally fundamentally etc.. ready for the game and he goes number 1 --but really has taken 3 years just to start showing signs that he has that talent. What he needed to do was go to school for 2 years---go learn how to play basketball--be able to dominate a certain level--grow up like a normal kid a bit and then go.

On top of that you have Shaq swearing into the camera again, a lot of guys acting like spoiled brats i.e iversen mcgrady and everything that the Bird's and Magic's of the world did for the NBA is now slowly regressing back to pre 1980.

I think everything is correctable, but the NBA has to take a lesson from the NFL on how to collectively bargain.

I like it. It's more legit and gives us more Knick games to watch We just have to win lol

actually I thought the shorte series gave the inferior team a chance to win because all a team had to do is steal a game and they had a great chance of winning a series that they had no business winning. But with a longer series, usually the superior team will come out on top...

Kwame would've gone pro regardless of what people said becuase his family was dirt poor and his mom had like 15 jobs. Some guys leave for financial reasons, you can't blame them for that.

I liked the best of 5 series as well, it made things interesting. Rarely did underdogs win so you can't say it made things unfair for the favored team becuase the favored team won most of the time. I think they changed it because last year the Lakers were doing so bad and they wanted a Lakers/Kings 7 game series, which is kind of sad.

Hopefully LeBron and Carmelo will solve the NBA's problems. I agree, some of these guys act like total idiots.

I kinda liked the best of 5 too, and am worried the playoffs will be diluted. Already so long. At the very least, they should have chopped the regular season back. I thought it was plenty during the strike season when they played 50, but at least should be cut to 75.

Posted by fishmike:

the NFL CBA is joke, and its ruined the sport. Some will argue that there is parity, but the truth is every team just dumps about 1/3 of their roster every year because of the cap, resigns equal talented players that were cut for the same reasons and the result is ugly penalty layden games that take 3 1/2 hours, not to mention the fact you have a totally different team each year, except for the QB.

I do agree with the reg season being too long... I loved the 50 game shortenend season. The NBA is a playoff league, plain and simple. I like the 7 in round 1.

50 game shortened season? wow. i don't agree with that. it usually takes longer to find out what kind of team you are. the knicks in 99 as the example. we squeaked into the playoffs and that was with incorporating 2 integral players (spree and camby) and losing starks and oakley. if it was a full season, we definitely would've gotten a higher seed. the playoffs are definitely awesome, but we need more than 50 to see what are the top 16 teams in the league.

I liked the short series for the first round.
the nba just wants to have more games to make more $$$$
the playoffs seem to go on forever anyway.

Am I the only one who would love a single elimination playoff system?

... and bracketts based on a coaches poll instead of record?