the NBA.


1. Expand to 32 teams. Move Memphis to the East, add expansion teams in Seattle and Las Vegas. This would give 2 conferences with four 4-team divisions (just like the NFL).

2. There are 2 options I see for reworking the schedule at this point:

a. Every team plays their 3 division opponents 4 times. They play the other 12 conference opponents 3 times, and they play opposing conference teams twice. That is 12 + 36 + 32 = 80 games. I know that doesn't reduce the season much, but 2 games shorter would at least get rid of a couple of back to backs I guess.

b. If you want to drastically reduce the length of the season, you could take some drastic steps by: (1) get rid of conferences; Everybody plays the teams in their division 4 times and they play the teams not in their division twice. This reduces the season down to 68 games. This would be a reduction of 14 regular season games, which may be a bit extreme. If you want to get it up to around 75 games or so, then add 6 games against other conference members (so you play 3 division teams 4 times, 6 conference teams 3 times, 6 conference teams twice, and non-conference teams twice for a total of 74 games).

3. Expand the playoffs to 24 teams. With 32 teams and 8 divisions, I would give the 8 division champions an auto-bid into the playoffs. They would be seeded 1-8 based on overall record. Seeds 9-16 would host seeds 17-24 in the first round of the playoffs, which would be a best-of-5 series. (If you wanted to keep the conferences, you would simply make seeds 1-4 in each conference go to division winners and 5-12 play in the 1st round for each conference). The 2nd round (round of 16) would essentially be the same as it is now. I wouldn't mind seeing that reduced to best-of-5 as well, but that's not a huge deal for me either way.

4. With 24/32 teams making the playoffs, there would only be 8 lottery teams. These 8 teams would all be given equal chance to win the lottery, and all 8 spots would be determined by lottery (so all 8 non-playoff teams have just as good of a chance of picking 8th as they would to pick 1st).

5. This one doesn't have to do with scheduling, etc., but I would like to see the NBA move back the 3-point line. Specifically, I think they should move the line every few years to place it at the point where the average shooting percentage behind it (among all 3-point shots in the NBA) is 33%. This would reward players like Curry who can shoot it well from deep range, but would also bring back some value to the mid-range game. It would also likely completely eliminate the corner 3 which would make for an interesting change in strategy and spacing (no more parking a guy in the corner and hoping you can move it around to get him an open 3 in the corner).

6. In addition to the above, I would also remove the hand-checking rule. Allow players to hand-check their opponents so long as they don't actually push them or inhibit their ability to move (holding them, etc.). I understand that the rule was removed as an effort to move the game to being more offensive oriented, but at this point I think the pendulum has maybe swung too far towards the offense and making changes that allow players an easier time to defend would be nice to see.

Overall, I don't really have an issue with the length of the season. I mostly have an issue with the back-to back games, 3 games in 4 nights, etc. The schedule needs to be shortened enough to eliminate those issues entirely (teams should be playing no more than 4 games in a week (and probably 3 times a week is best), and if the season is about 25 weeks long after considering all-star break, etc. then that would make about a 75-game schedule as the ideal length IMO which is what one of my above scheduling ideas achieves.