Guest columnist Brendan Wilson
Every team plays 82 games in an NBA season. Those 82 games are over a seven-month time frame (Nov. 1 – May 31). Major League Baseball’s season is 162 games over a six-month time frame (April 1 – Sept. 31). That is almost double the games in almost the same time. The significance? I follow baseball from opening day until the last week of the regular season. Does anybody really follow the NBA season from game one to game 82 anymore? As of right now, 13 of the 16 teams I predicated to make the playoffs would currently make the playoffs. In addition, most of those teams are within one or two seeds of where I also predicted. It is very possible that 13 or 14 of the teams who made the playoffs last year will make the playoffs once again this year.
The NBA playoffs have three rounds within each conference before the NBA finals toward the end of June. Although it is likely to never happen, if a team wins all four playoff series’ in seven games, that team would win the NBA finals playing 28 playoff games. That is 34 percent of the games they play in the NBA season. Furthermore, if the team that wins the NBA title wins two series’ in five games, one series in six games, and one series in seven games, which seems much more logical, they would still play 23 games. To me, this seems like a lot of games for just the playoffs.
However, because the NBA season has become so predictable, maybe this is a good thing. For the majority of sports fans who spend most of the NBA season watching college football, college basketball, NFL the bowl games and March Madness, the NBA playoffs are actually pretty entertaining. By the time the NBA playoffs begin, college football and basketball are over. The NFL season is far past over. The only other sport that is going on at that time in baseball. Although the NBA playoffs seem pretty long, they can be very entertaining. For the majority of sports fans who do not watch much of the NBA season, the playoffs can be fun to watch. A 20-28 game season sounds pretty good to me, doesn’t it?
