Let’s hold a thought experiment, shall we?

Think about the last basketball game you watched on television.

If you can’t remember, that’s fine—keep reading, because I have something for you too.

For those of you that remember, what do you remember hearing? What do you remember seeing? And lastly, what do you remember NOT seeing?

Before I started writing this piece, I asked myself the same three questions. If you’re like me, your answers more or less followed this pattern:

• You heard “A three, kaboom. That’s a three. Bang, from three. A three. Another three. That’s a three.”

• You saw empty seats and drab jerseys.

• And finally, you didn’t actually see your favorite players on the court, did you?

Of course, only some of you were able to complete this exercise. Some of you couldn’t remember the last basketball game you watched, could you? And how many of you answered my questions, but failed to realize I was asking about televised games, and not online streams riddled with gambling ads?

Let’s face it, you can’t remember the last televised basketball game you watched because in 2025, basketball is not fun.

In 2025, basketball is boring.

From dull play on the court, to a lack of televised games, and to load management plaguing the league, it’s a dead product. “Cooked”, as the kids might say.

And I say this as a basketball casual, who watches seldom watches any regular season game that doesn’t involve the Miami Heat. However, I’d argue that this doesn’t invalidate my opinion on the matter, but rather enhances it. Diehard fans are diehard fans—they’ll watch 82 games of slop and beg for more each season, like a pig to a feeding trough.

But the NBA doesn’t care about those people. The NBA cares about me. The NBA cares about bringing the casual viewer back to the couch. And like it or not, the numbers say the NBA has lost the casual fan since the turn of the century.

Now, some might say that fans are turning to illegal online streams instead, and that’s why viewership numbers are down.

To that, I say: Isn’t that part of the problem?

Why are casual fans turning to illegal streams to watch basketball games? Why can’t casual fans come home from work, flip on their local ESPN, ABC, or FOX channel, and watch some hoops?

A more empirical argument against such claims is that in the same television landscape as the NBA, NFL ratings have never been higher. It’s never been easier to find an illegal stream on your phone or laptop, yet NFL television ratings are through the roof. Interesting, right?

So, we’ve not only established that NBA ratings are down, but also established that the issue lies solely with basketball, with television ratings for other sports at an all-time high. I take these facts to mean one thing—the NBA is boring. In 2024, sports fans still love sports, just not basketball.

At this point, I’m sure you may be asking: “Sumeet, so what? Basketball is boring, yada yada, what does this have to do with the Democratic Party? What does this have to do with politics at all? Did you just clickbait us?”

My friends, I would never.

Let’s turn back to clocks to November 5th, 2024.

In the first populous victory by a Republican candidate since 2004, former President Donald Trump secured his second presidency over Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris.

Nearly 70 million voters turned up at the polls for Donald Trump, yet Democrats were left stunned on Election Night.

How could this happen? How could 70 million people vote for a convicted felon and accused rapist, over the sitting Vice President of the United States, a former District Attorney, and Senator of California?

By the same decree, how could the NBA lose nearly 30 million viewers in just 5 years?

And so, here we are at last. The question you’ve all been waiting for:

What do the Democratic Party and the NBA have in common?

They don’t listen to their base.

If that answer felt disappointing, that’s because it is. Truth often stares us in the face, yet we sift around it for answers. We worry about the seeds of tomorrow, ignoring the roses in our garden. Occam’s razor is not something to be scoffed at.

The answer really is that simple, in that neither group listens to their base. Neither the Democratic Party nor the NBA have the best interests of the American people in mind.

As a member of both of these bases, that makes me upset.

NBA fans are telling you that they don’t like load management. NBA fans are telling you they don’t like watching 40 three-pointers every game. They don’t like the All-Star game. They don’t like the NBA Cup. They don’t like the lack of televised games.

And how does the NBA respond? Do they make wholesale, administrative changes across the board. Do they listen to their fans?

No, they just paint the courts a different color.

By the same decree, Democratic voters made clear how they felt about Kamala Harris, way back in 2020. As one of the first Democratic candidates to drop out of the 2020 primaries, Harris peaked at a national polling average of just 19 % in July of 2019. By October, she’d fallen to just 8%, trailing behind the likes of Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders.

Yet 4 years later, the Democratic Machine, without even the slightest consideration of holding a primary election, put forth Harris as the party’s presidential nominee. Gee, how’d we lose that one?

Thankfully, the Democratic Party learned their lesson. Post Election Night, they got younger, more progressive, and started listening to the average American. They made these changes across the board, and are now primed to win the 2024 election in a landslide.

Oh, wait. No, they didn’t. They didn’t do any of those things.

Instead, just months after the most brutal Democratic loss in two decades, Democrat lawmakers put forth Rep. Gerry Connolly, 74-year-old cancer patient (seriously, look it up) and lifelong politician, as the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. Connolly was chosen over the young, and uber-progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (not my preferred choice, let the record be shown) by a vote of 131-84.

Other notable Democratic Committee leaders who were voted in include:

• Maxine Waters of California, 86, Financial Services Committee
• Gregory Meeks of New York, 71, Foreign Affairs Committee
• Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, 76, Homeland Security Committee
• Nydia Velazquez of New York, 71, Small Business Committee.

Sense a pattern?

I know you do. I see the pattern too, as does the rest of the country. The only group that doesn’t, is the one group with the power to do anything about it. The NBA exists in the same vacuum. Commissioner Adam Silver refuses to listen to fans, and the NBA is in danger of losing millions of fans and dollars alike.

This all begs the question, how do we fix it?

(Basketball, that is. Fixing the Democratic Party is far above my pay grade.)

Enter, Commissioner Sumeet Jena.

For the rest of our time together, I will propose changes to the NBA that I believe will increase TV ratings, drive fan engagement, and create a better product on the court.

I will group these changes into two categories, administrative and drastic.

• Administrative Changes: These are changes that can be made at the commissioner level, that do not affect the purity, sanctity, or very nature of the sport, but simply aim to increase television ratings and fan engagement. Of the changes I will propose, these are the most realistic and doable.

• Rule Changes: These are changes that would change the sport as we know it. They would require buy-in from players, coaches, and owners alike. Whether these changes are for better or for worse, who knows. But it’s change. And change is needed.

First, let’s start with the administrative changes.

Implement Stricter Load Management Measures

It’s very simple-—fans pay to see stars. I don’t come home from work, exhausted, hungry, and mentally drained to watch Terry Rozier. I want to watch Lebron f*cking James. I want to watch Kevin Durant.

The NBA has attempted to curb load management in the past, as part of their Player Participation Policy, or PPP. First introduced in 2023, the PPP requires players to appear in at least 65 games to qualify for All-NBA honors. The fine for violating said policy is a measly $100,000, chump change for some of these players.

And though player health is important, the soft culture in the NBA has allowed players to take advantage of weak sanctions. By contrast, other sports with stricter cultures surrounding player availability have not suffered from the same problems. Just this past NFL season, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson took himself out of a game in Week 8 against the Houston Texans.

“I ain’t gonna lie, I was tired. That was a lot of running.”, Richardson said after the game. Richardson was immediately benched the following week, faced a wave of scrutiny in the media by analysts and former players alike, and apologized for his actions.

So then, where’s Kawhi Leonard’s apology for missing 290 regular season games over the last 8 seasons?

An obvious solution to limiting load management would be to shorten the NBA season. With a longer regular season, each game matters less. However, with a shorter regular season, each game matters more. This is very simple math, and would increase the stakes during the regular season. Higher stakes makes for a better product, which means more eyeballs on the screen.

My recommendation is to reduce the season down to 58 games. Each team would play each other twice, with one game at home and one on the road. With just 58 games, players have less of a reason (genuine or not), to pull themselves out of games.

Change The 7-Game Playoff Series To Sudden Death

In line with my previous proposal, the issue with a 7-game playoff series is that it dilutes the significance of the regular season.

In the same way that a 72-game regular season incentivizes load management, a 7-game playoff series incentivizes a lack of care towards the regular season.

To put it plainly, the concept of load management didn’t arise from thin air. A few years ago, NBA players quickly realized that the regular season just didn’t matter.

On a personal level, their contracts are guaranteed, and not contingent on appearances. On a team level, playoff seeding is less important than simply getting into the playoffs. Numerous studies have been done on the advantage of home court in the playoffs, and the advantages are slim.

In a 7-game playoff series, the lower seed’s schedule looks like this: Away, Away, Home, Home, Away, Home, Away. This means that a No.7 seed playing the No.1 seed in the NBA Playoffs is still guaranteed to host two of the first four games.

So, if playoff seeding doesn’t matter, that means the regular season largely doesn’t matter. And if the regular season doesn’t matter, then playing through injury doesn’t matter either. This all leads to a boring regular season, where players are eager to take games off, and teams are already looking 2-3 months ahead.

So, how would a sudden-death playoff format change this?

Well, you know that study I linked above? The one you skipped over and didn’t read?

The study argues that although home-court advantage is quite insignificant over a playoff series, it actually does matter in a standalone game.

With a sudden-death playoff format, holding home court advantage becomes extremely valuable. Every playoff game would have the feel of a Game 7 (more on this later), and suddenly seeding becomes a lot more important. In turn, the regular season matters a lot more, which can only increase popularity and fan engagement. Teams would be fighting tooth and nail to secure the No.1 seed, which may be the difference between winning a championship and not.

Restructure The NBA’s TV Deal

My second proposed administrative solution to “fixing” the NBA, is to restructure the NBA’s TV deal.

One of the biggest issues I have with the NBA is that fans generally have no idea when their favorite teams or players are taking the court. If you have a favorite team, tell me right now—when do they play their next 5 games? 8:00 PM on a Tuesday? 3:00 PM on a Saturday? You don’t know, do you?

If I asked an NFL fan the same question, they’d probably be able to give me an answer that looked like this: “1:00 PM on Sunday, 1:00 PM on Sunday, 1:00 PM on Sunday, 1:00 PM on Sunday, 1:00 PM on Sunday.”

Point being, fans won’t be drawn to the television if they don’t even know when to turn their television on. With a TV schedule that’s set in stone, I’d argue that fans would be able to build their weeknights/weekends around their favorite teams.

My logic here is that Americans are drawn to events, not games. Paul-Tyson is an event. Mahomes-Jackson on Sunday Night Football is an event. Pacers-Raptors at 4:00 PM on a Thursday…is not an event.

As I alluded to before, this is another reason why I’d be in favor of changing the 7-game playoff series to a sudden-death, standalone game. Game 7 is an event, and as much as you may disagree, TV ratings suggest that in the eyes of the average American, Games 1, 2, and 3 are simply not events.

By holding games at the same time every week, games become events. But of course, holding games on the same day and time every week won’t matter much if fans can’t watch the game to begin with.

Once again, let’s look to the NFL for advice. The NFL shows the vast majority of their games on channels broadcasted to the entire country, such as FOX, CBS, and ABC. Sure, a few primetime games are thrown on Amazon Prime, Peacock, and Netflix, which would require additional subscriptions.

But overall, the vast majority of games (221 of 272 NFL games, or 81%) are available to anyone with a TV and an antenna.

In contrast, the NBA’s TV deal is enough to make Harvey Specter and Mike Ross drown in paperwork. You can pay $60+ a month for cable, yet only get access to nationally televised games (again, held at random times) and your local team. Or, you have the option of paying $150/yr for the NBA for League Pass, which DOESN’T include the aforementioned national games OR playoffs. If you want to watch every single NBA game this season, the total cost would run you just north of $1,000 a season.

In other words, the average fan is completely priced out of the game, and will resort to watching illegal streams. And if pirating basketball games is both cheaper and easier than using the NBA’s service, something is terribly, terribly wrong.

This concludes the administrative section of my proposed changes.

Now, onto the juicy stuff—the rule changes.

As I’ve said above, these changes would change the sport as we know it.

That said, far less research has gone into these changes on my end. In fact, many of these changes are based off little or no empirical evidence in particular. In other words, vibes, and vibes only.

As such, I’ll keep this section much shorter.

Make 3s Worth 4, and 2s Worth 3

Many NBA fans are tired of the recent three-point surge that’s swept over the league, but few have any idea why it began. Circa 2011, some whiz kid sat down and did the math, and discovered the hidden value of the three-pointer. Any by some whiz kid, I mean anyone who passed 9th-Grade Algebra.

The math is as follows: 3 is 50% more than 2, so if you shoot 33% from the three-point line, the expected value of making that shot is equivalent to shooting 50% on a two-pointer. In other words, the three-pointer is 50% more valuable than the two-pointer.

Now, that may seem like a large gap in shooting percentage at 17 percentage points. But it’s not. Midway through the 2025 NBA season, 152 players are shooting at a three-point percentage of 33% of higher. The list starts with 3-time MVP winner Nikola Jokic at 47.9%, and ends with the 15-year NBA journeyman Spencer Dinwiddie at exactly 33.0%.

In other words, it’s far too easy to shoot above the necessary positive expected value threshold of 33% from the three-point line. In turn, the midrange jumper has effectively disappeared from the NBA.

However, if three-pointers were worth four points, and two-pointers were worth three, the math changes. Suddenly, since 4 is only 33.33% more than 3, you’d have to shoot 37.5% from the new “four-point line” to match someone shooting 50% from the new “three-point line”.

So how many players are shooting at or above that percentage? Just 76, exactly half of the previous number of 151.

With such a rule in place, the recent three-point surge would effectively stop overnight. Players would shoot less “four-pointers”, and we’d see the game transition back to the 2000s/2010s era of basketball. More dunking, more midrange jumpers, and more ways to score.

Bring Back The Hand-Check

Okay, I know I said that these sections would be shorter, and the last rule change was anything but short. This time, I’ll keep my word.

Simply put, hand-checking adds physicality to a sport where literal giants are afraid to make any sort of contact with one another. It’s basketball, not ballet. Let’s bring back the hand-check.

Allow Each Team To Design Their Own Three-Point Line

*Credit for this idea goes to the great Kirk Goldsberry, who came up with this idea in 2019. I’m simply the messenger here.*

Once again, I’m going after the three-pointer.

You already know the math, but this one is simple.

Teams would be allowed to design their own three-point line, creating a true home-court advantage across the league. If you have Stephen Curry on your team, why not push the three-point line back from 22 feet to 30 feet? And if your team is inept at shooting threes, you can remove the line altogether?

Essentially, this rule would bring variety to the league and create the environment for a heterogenous product. Each game would be different from the next, and teams would fight to the death to secure home-court advantage for the playoffs.

What Now?

And….breathe. Whew.

Fundamentally, above all the issues I’ve presented in this piece, one stands above all—the regular season does not matter in the NBA. Every single one of the solutions I’ve proposed are simply ways to fix that, in some way or another. Some of my solutions attack the problem directly, and others are simply putting a Band-Aid on a bullet hole. Either way, the core issue remains. Make the regular season worth watching, and you will fix basketball.

I hope you enjoyed reading this piece as much as I enjoyed writing it. Though entirely my own work, I would like to give credit to the following people for inspiring this article:

• Colin Cowherd, for his ability to look beyond the “what”, and ask “why” instead. I am still searching for a job on FS1, Mr. Cowherd.
•  Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt, whose book “Freakonomics” largely inspired the political theme throughout this article.
• Kirk Goldsberry, for starting the conversation about the three-pointer. As they say, one can only follow in the footsteps of great men before him.
• Jimmy Butler, for ruining his relationship with the Miami Heat fanbase and giving me the motivation to finish writing this.
• Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, for losing the 2024 Presidential Election and giving me the perfect title.
  

Thanks for reading this far. It will always mean more to me than you’ll ever know.