The NBA Podcast Bryan Toporek and Morten Jensen

I like this pod, they cover everything NBA, post sometimes several times per week, the one thing I don’t like is the quality, all my other pods have great sound but this one is consistently too low

First off I want to say this is one of my favorite NBA podcasts (I don’t listen to other kinds anyway) and I listen to a LOT of NBA podcasts. I’ve been listening for quite a while at this point and it’s consistently good. It’s made it to my “automatic add to playlist” list of pods. Both give very different perspectives, especially with one being from Europe and one being from the US, but they have amazing chemistry. Healthy debates, and plenty of all kinds of everything about the NBA, not just a singular focus such as just games or stats.

Now re: the 30 team play in tournament that was proposed around Thanksgiving 2019. I think the only way this can ever succeed, is for there to be both $ incentive, and non $ incentives. You need the players to care a lot, way more than a regular season game. Maybe not quite the intensity and atmosphere of like a conference finals game, but great basketball where everyone is giving it their all and it’s levels above 99% of regular season games.

People will watch if the product is very good. Great NBA games are the best, the NBA playoffs are so awesome. They’re my favorite post season of any sport by far. But the regular season does get boring, and I’m in the more hardcore fan demographic (although not where I watch every day, but most days I consume NBA content).

$ will incentive the role players, the people on smaller contracts in general. It’s going to incentivize most players a decent amount, and some a lot. Some not as much though, mostly the stars on big/max deals especially if they’re on a contender or even a team that’s likely to be say a 5 seed in the west or something (so a team that has a shot, and obviously players think they have a better shot than they do in most cases I think).

To incentivize those people, how about something that helps the team? A lot or most of those guys are going to be on that team for at least a couple years, likely a few, and possibly longer. They want to win the championship. So it has to be incentive that can make their team better. Maybe a trade exception for the amount of the average player salary? This could allow a team like the Rockets or Lakers to maybe attach a 2nd or two to that and get like say a Jae Crowder type as an example this year. Some role player on an expiring deal.

That would help a team like LAL/HOU and many other playoff bound teams who otherwise maybe couldn’t get a player like that because they don’t have the contracts to match. I think league average salary is a good $ figure, that allows for a team to get like I said a Jae Crowder type who’d be a role player and wouldn’t drastically change your chances, but it’d help for sure. Imagine if LAL won it? They don’t have 1sts, and don’t have 2nds until like 2024 or something, but I bet what’s essentially an expiring deal and 2025/2026 2nds (maybe it takes 2 maybe 3 but I doubt a Jae Crowder esque role player on an expiring is going for more than a couple 2nds and an expiring). The exact logistics of how many 2nds it’d take doesn’t matter, I think you get my point. It allows for a team to possibly add a decent role player that can help their team immediately, or maybe for the future by acquiring their bird rights in that trade as well.

Another non $ incentive idea could be some sort of draft capital. Maybe you add a 31st pick in the 1st round for the winner of this tournament, and on top of that, the pick comes with a very small % chance of a top 4 pick (a couple ping pong balls essentially). Maybe like the 31st pick and it has say a 1% chance of the #1 pick as well. You can take away tiny slivers of %s from the lotto teams to where it’d be a negligible difference to them. Taking away 1% if you do it right, teams might have literally 1/200th or whatever less of a chance of #1 depending where they are in the lotto. I’m sure they could find a way to give 1% where all owners would agree.

Now if you manage to incentivize by making the team have a better chance in the future to win or that season, AND money, maybe that’d be the right formula to where now players would all care more. And it being single elimination would mean not just the top teams can win. I obviously don’t know the exact structure of the tourney but it’d need to be something with a lot of variance (hence single elimination) where the bad/mediocre teams have a shot, but the best teams obviously still have an edge.

Also by naming it, giving a trophy or medal or something like that, etc. it would eventually become tradition if the level of play was high. Again it doesn’t have to be as high as the conference finals, but if it’s noticeably higher than a standard regular season game, and stars play, it’s well presented, etc. then consumers will watch.

Anyway that’s a really long post but I wanted to give you guys an idea. Oh also ratings would be higher meaning revenue is higher, and it could lead to a way to shorten the regular season eventually to where every team is guaranteed to play at most 78 and some 75, that’s a start!

Can’t believe I wasted my data on this trash pod