There’s been a lot of talk recently about how the regular season just isn’t exciting anymore, that players are load-managing and taking games off too much, and that something needs to be done about it. The talk increased dramatically after the 2023 NBA all star game, which Denver Nuggets coach Mike Malone said was the “worst basketball game ever played.” The effort of the players and the nature of the contest was highly criticized by both former players and spectators alike. Several solutions have been floated around NBA circles to address these problems, such as shortening the regular season, adding a mid-season tournament, and so on. 

Now as for the All Star game, I don’t have any ideas on how to fix that, but I do have a potentially stupid, yet still intriguing idea for a reformatting of the regular season where we no longer use the standings and normal win-loss records to determine conference seedings, but we instead use a points based system. Here’s how it would work:

Every win for a team would count as 4 points in my scenario. To give extra meaning to the more important games to incentivize star players to play in said games, the winning team will get an additional point for beating a conference opponent, another additional point for beating a division opponent, and another additional point for beating a playoff team (any of the top 6 seeds, play-in teams are not included in playoff teams). For example: if the Los Angeles Lakers played the Charlotte Hornets and beat them, then that would count as 4 points to the Lakers. Charlotte is neither a conference or divisional opponent, and they’re not a playoff team, so all the Lakers would get for beating them is 4 points. However, if the Lakers played the Sacramento Kings and beat them, then that would count as 7 points to the Lakers since Sacramento is a playoff team, and they’re both a conference and division opponent of the Lakers, which makes the game matter more. I think this would give players more incentive to play, especially in the big games that matter the most. 

The play-in would stay as it is now since I think it has done good in keeping some teams competitive that otherwise wouldn’t have been, but I’d also change the playoff format to something more exciting as well. My idea would be to do 1 of 2 things:

Turn the playoffs into one single 16 team double elimination bracket. The higher seed will always play at their home arena. Any team loses 2 games, and they are out of the tournament. The Finals will be a best out of 2 games. The team that came out of the winner’s bracket will need to win just one game at their home stadium to win the championship, but if they lose, they then go on the road to the loser’s bracket winners home stadium where it becomes a winner take all game to decide the championship. 

Instead of a single 16 team double elimination bracket, the East and West would have their own 8 team double elimination brackets where all the same rules apply, the conference champions would be decided based on a best of 2 series with the winners bracket team needing to win just once on their home floor and the losers bracket team needing to win twice, once on the opponents home floor and once on their own. The Finals would then be decided in a 3 game series. If one team made it through their winners bracket and the other made it through their losers bracket, then the winners bracket team would get home court advantage. If they both made it through their winners or losers bracket, then home court would be decided based on their regular season head to head record, then their regular season point totals, then their division record, then their conference record, and so on. 

Now, is this a good idea? Probably not, but it’s definitely a different one that I think could turn out to be interesting in a different universe. What do you think?