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.