Zach is the Business Director for The Warrior.

By Zach Stubblefield ‘15

The NBA regular season is a drag. There are simply too many games for regular season wins and losses to actually mean something. The long season leads to many star players getting injured, which lessens the NBA’s appeal overall. An easy solution to this problem would be to shorten the season to 60 games.

Russell Westbrook, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, Lamarcus Aldridge, Rajon Rondo and Dwight Howard are some of the many stars that have been plagued by the injury bug this season. These are not no-name bench players; these are the NBA’s money makers. These players have over 30 all-star appearances between them and have not been in the lineup for a good chunk of the season.

The NBA shortening its season to 60 games would help eliminate this problem. A shorter season would allow players to rest and give their bodies time to recover. There would still be enough games for the average viewer to watch. Plus the 60 games would eliminate the dreaded back to back games that ravage a player’s body.

A shortened NBA season would also enhance the overall product the NBA puts out. Stars like Lebron James and Dirk Nowitzki have come out and said that they cannot perform at a high level every game due to the number of games they have to play. As it is now players take plays off during back-to-backs or when they have to play too many games during the season. In other words, they will not give it their all when they are on the court. When players are not playing to their full potential, the NBA loses its glamor and that’s not good for both the NBA and the fans.

The playoffs would not drop in quality either if the season was shorter. A 60-game season would still give teams more than enough games to show who the top sixteen are. As it stands now the top six teams in each conference are usually decided by the time the All-Star break starts. So, the NBA loses a lot of appeal for about 40 games after the break, because fans can predict what most of the playoff teams will be and stop watching. The NBA shortening the season to 60 games will allow the average fan to maintain interest after the break, because there will not be as many games, and still give ample time for the lower tier playoff teams to fight for a spot.

The rest a shorter season would offer players and appeal it would offer fans is reason enough to make a change to a 60-game NBA season