One of the main criticisms of the NBA is that the season drags out too much. Basketball is looked at as more of a winter sport, but professionally the schedule goes from October through the end of June. 9 months of one sport is a lot for anyone to follow, especially if there's other sports that they're interested in following as well.
College basketball has about a five month season, and is relevant during the time period when football isn't the source of every story on sportscenter and baseball is also in the offseason. So basically it serves as a winter-only sport like it should. Most NBA fans tend to like the college game atleast a little bit if they don't love it. But there are a lot pf college fans that rip on the NBA for having lackadaisical play and letting egos of the players take over with all of the drama throughout the season.
It's been said for awhile that "nobody in the NBA plays any defense." It appears this way for three reasons.
It's been said for awhile that "nobody in the NBA plays any defense." It appears this way for three reasons.
- The league banned hand checking, along with adding three seconds in the lane rules to make the game less physical.
- With an 82 game schedule, it becomes a tiring, grueling season
- Talent in the NBA is better than college, therefore playing defense will be much harder as well with all of the isolation plays that are run
Now to address these three. Back in the 80's and 90's, it would legal to basically beat an opposing player up and steal his lunch money while you were at it. Hand-checking meant that guards couldn't just drive into the lane whenever they wanted to. Bigs were more important because they positioned themselves closer to the basket anyways, which resulted in more hard-nosed, physical play.
An 82 game schedule is pretty ridiculous considering that teams may only play up to two games a week. A season that starts before halloween and runs all the way to the Fourth of July can be expected to be a pretty taxing season.
For every thousand of so players in college every year, under 80 of them make to the NBA and less than half of that end up seeing playing time. Truth is, the talent level is far superior to that of college or any other basketball league, and if anyone not named Lebron or an athletic big guy wanted to play defense every single night there's no way they'd be able to.
The NBA is a league that's run by superstars. The last three NBA champions have been the Heat, Mavs, and Lakers. Lebron James, Dirk Nowitski, Kobe Bryant. It would be in the best interest of both the league and the fans to shorten the season to 66 games, if not fewer. Imagine almost every game mattering in the NBA like it does with the NFL, where players go all out on defense and truly showcase their skills instead of coasting through the season until the playoffs start.
