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.
I think the 2016 and 2019 seasons really hurt the reputation of the regular season in the NBA.
2016 because the Warriors tried super hard, set an all time record, and ended up losing the Finals in embarrassing fashion and their season is treated as a failure.
2019 because the Raptors championship really reinforced the idea of load managing and rest as a smart and winning strategy.
Take those two together and you have these examples of there being something of an inverted correlation between putting maximum effort in the regular season and playoff success. Playoff success is weighted so much more heavily when it comes affecting reputation, money, and fame. Even if you could flip a switch now to make teams maximize effort in the regular season, the reputation hit extended to the media and fans as well, who are now prone to discount regular season results.
Absent any outside intervention, I think if regular season success became more consistently predictive of playoff success, like the way it was for Boston this year, it would make those games feel more meaningful.