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.
If the regular season doesn’t matter, then how come bo team outside of the top three seeds has ever won the Finals barring a few teams that were back-to-back champs?
The regular season absolutely matters.
This isn’t true at all.
52 of the 78 champions have been a #1 seed. Only two have been lower than 3rd. The only one below 4th was the Rockets who were defending champions and Hakeem was injured during the regular season.
https://www.landofbasketball.com/championships/champions_by_seed.htm
So after a generation of sports talking heads tell us regular season accolades and accomplishments don’t matter over and over. That only rings matter!
The same talking heads are now asking why fans feel the regular season doesn’t matter?
NBA Regular season matters just as much as it always did.
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
Less games, teams play internationally. FIBA is not as hype as FIFA
The nba has had 4 different champs the past 4 seasons and the premier league has had 1. The whole regular season doesn’t matter argument was valid during the lebron vs the best team in the west days, but it’s not like that anymore
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.
Because the culmination of the season in NBA is playoffs or the draft if you’re missing them. In European sports regular season. At least in football/soccer is the main goal of the league. Top places get opportunity to play in Europe wide competitions like UCL. Playoff format in domestic leagues usually is reserved for cup tournaments that is free for all to enter as far as I remember.
Regular season in NFL football matters a ton. Get your shit right! 😋
Besides the relegation deal (this doesn’t matter for the upper teams that realistically will never get relegated), Euro soccer leagues typically don’t have playoffs in their own leagues. So having the best regular season record means you win your league, which means all regular season games carry a lot of importance. There are inter league playoffs and tournaments (Champions League being the big one) that happen in season. THESE tournaments are the playoffs for Euro soccer teams.
You can do such a thing when you’re living in a multi-league universe like Euro soccer does. Can’t really do such a thing when you’re a 1 league universe like the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL. It’s apples and oranges.