Breaking up the NBA Season

The NBA is unlikely to reduce the number of games due to revenue reasons, but breaking it up into different parts could lead to a better experience for both the fans, the players, and the teams. Here’s my vision:

NBA Draft (June)

NBA Cup season (July-August)

-instead of group play just straight up seeding, every team plays every team of their own conference once (14 games per team)

-single elimination tournament for top 8 teams from each conference and finals between winners of each conference (15 games total)

Trade Deadline (September)

Regular Season (October - February)

-each team plays one another 2 times, seeding for playoffs same as current season (58 games)

All-Star Week and Break (February)

Draft League (March)

-bottom 5 times of each conference (from NBA cup record only) play each other once (9 games)

-more wins = better draft position

-Draft positions outside of the top 10 will be by lottery as before

Play-in tournament and Playoffs (April- June)

Reasons:

-Teams in this structure will play minimum of 72 games, and with draft league and expanded cup games we get near the same amount of total games and higher stakes in each game

-Breaking the season up and having top drafts based on NBA cup record minimizes tanking during regular season

-Players get long breaks between each leg of the season, hopefully leading to less injuries

-Teams get a chance to re-evaluate after each part of the season and fans get an improved team to look forward to after each