The NBA is always having issues with a meaningless regular season because it never seems to matter who’s the best in the regular season. All that matters is rings.
In European soccer the best team in the league is usually the one that’s the best across an entire season and not the one who wins their various tournaments.
It does seem unfortunate that a team can play at such an elite level for a long haul but their season is ultimately meaningless because they lose in a much shorter format of games.
I think it’s actually a little less dumb in the NBA where you honestly are probably still getting the likely best teams usually winning the championship anyways, and really dumb in say baseball which plays 162 games and are suddenly playing a sample size of 7 games. Like the Dodgers deserve more credit for how much they win given how often mediocre wildcard teams win there, but I think overall in NA there’s that issue for regular season games.
The regular season in European soccer matters because of the tiered league systems they have. Bottom three teams get relegated and the top 3-5 teams earn a spot in international competitions. This incentivizes teams to try and do their best and not fail, rather than rewarding the worst team with the best draft spot. Additionally, the team that finishes first actually wins the league. The playoff system is also present in the domestic cups that are simultaneous to the league season. So they get the best of both worlds as they experience knockoff competition (cup games) and being consistent is also rewarded (league games).
In sum, it’s apples and oranges.
It’s also important to mention that securing a spot in the said international competitions (Champions League and Europa League) provide absurd amounts of money for the team. Just qualifying for the CL is rewarded with 17 million dollars which is a significant amount of money- for any team not located in England- that can lead to a series of very successful transfers.
This will be blasphemous for some but for my team in the Turkish league, I’d rather have them go to the Euros than be league champions.
This but even for PL teams, the champions league money in terms of revenue is insane and it has a huge effect on teams budget