The Heat is back on

Competitive balance benefits playoffs, but what about the regular season?

Enhanced NBA competition is refreshing, but parity has a few issues

Jerry Brewer

5 Jun 2023 - The Washington Post

Denver — For the fifth straight season, the NBA will crown a new champion. Keep up the madness, and even the Charlotte Hornets will need to keep their June schedule open.

The pursuit of sustained competitive balance might be the greatest experiment in league history. The character-driven sport didn’t need it to become a global success, but the superteam era made rival franchises determined to codify parity. A half-decade into the massive shift, change feels strangely normal.

As the first-timer Denver Nuggets and the eighth-seeded Miami Heat tussle for glory, the NBA Finals are neither the sexiest matchup nor the Connecticut-San Diego State insomnia fest that ended this year’s anarchic NCAA men’s tournament. There are superstars who belong on this stage, diverse playing styles and storylines that carry some appeal. If the series manages to go long, it could grow on you. This is fine. Not spectacular — fine. And in a marathon two-month, four-round tournament, there aren’t many fluke outcomes.

With a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement and stronger competitive balance wrinkles taking effect in July, consider this season the end of the first phase of Project Parity.

“I’m pleased with it,” Commissioner Adam Silver said. “I recognize that there’s a bit of randomness to it, too. But we’re seeing a really, I think, positive trend line in terms of competition.”

There are challenges ahead, however. The biggest issue with parity isn’t the postseason. It’s the fact that the NBA has a regular season problem: Much of the competitiveness is the result of teams ambling through it, not some supercharged, compelling race that holds interest for the bulk of the 82-game grind. Load management continues to be a conundrum, which is why the league will incentivize availability with a 65-game requirement to be eligible for most major awards and honors. Silver is also introducing an inseason tournament to try to create more excitement, and even though the league’s play-in tournament concept has been a gem, there’s significant doubt that this idea will be popular.

Silver lauded the fact that 26 teams were still competing for the playoffs with just over a week left in the season. It was a record number, he said. On the other hand, it diminishes the luster of the Finals if more 44-38 teams such as the Heat play for the championship. A year ago, when the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics met, they had regular season records of 53-29 and 51-31. The Warriors struggled for nearly the entire second half of the year. The Celtics were under .500 in the first half.

Right now, the enhanced competition is a refreshing change for a league that, despite an abundance of dynasties, pivots with greater ease than other sports. The greatness of repetitive champions and unstoppable legends has carried the NBA through constant transience for 77 seasons. Ever since Larry Bird and Magic Johnson raised the league’s profile and Michael Jordan helped it soar higher, that model of marketability has anchored the league. Forty percent of its teams have never won a title, but fascination with the other 60 percent dominates the perception.

As the sport makes a deeper commitment to balance, a tricky part involves influence. Marquee NBA players have the most freedom and power of all teamsport athletes because a single talent makes a prodigious impact on a five-on-five game. History demands that the best of them win multiple championships to earn a seat among the immortals. So they push their franchises never to be satisfied. In a league more intentional about spreading the wealth, organizations can take back a major chunk of that player leverage. Left to their own decision-making and a fleeting sense of urgency, plenty of teams — good ones, championship ones — have shown over and over that they can’t sustain winning without ample pressure.

There’s no inevitability about it — just concern. No one knows how the new policies will play out, but it would be naive to think the NBA can fully transform without hardship. Under the new CBA, roster building will become more onerous for the best teams unless there’s an unprecedented slew of championship-caliber squads that break through, NFLstyle, with players on rookie contracts. But the NBA is a suffer-learn-thrive league, which dictates that most winning rosters are expensive and full of veterans. Without delving into CBA granularity, teams too far above the luxury tax, even those built with players they drafted and rewarded with contract extensions, must navigate a maze of restrictions to improve their rosters. Some could be limited to signing free agents to minimum salaries.

One undeniable positive is that the draft and player development will be more important than ever. The CBA will be a deterrent for reckless teams to throw handfuls of future draft picks into win-now trades. It will force coaches to value and trust inexperienced players.

“I think this increased parity we’re seeing around the league is fantastic,” Silver said. “It’s part by design, too, through successive collective bargaining agreements and the one we just negotiated — there’s some new provisions in that one as well that we hope will help even the playing field to a certain extent.”

Silver emphasized the players’ willingness to change the league. The player empowerment era lasted for a decade, but in their negotiations with the owners, the players didn’t value the ability to create top-heavy rosters as much as perceived.

“We only can make those changes with the partnership and cooperation of the players,” Silver said. “We sit down with them. In a way, they’re not that different than fans. You have the greatest players in the world coming together on 30 different teams. They want to compete, too. At the end of the day, they want a level playing field. They, of course, also want the opportunity to become free agents and the opportunity to potentially move to a different market depending on the circumstances. But we both have the same interest at the end of the day.”

Silver loves the phrase “parity of opportunity.” It’s the perfect way to describe competitive balance. There is no guarantee that bad teams can benefit from tweaked rules; it’s on them to capitalize. And it’s hard to legislate true greatness from rising to the surface. But those teams may not linger in the limelight for as long as they once did, and that could be a problem when the league experiences one of its periodic lulls.

Instead of going in one direction, perhaps the future of the NBA will include some toggling between parity and dynasty. How’s that for balance?

“I get the question asked, too: Are dynasties good for the league?” Silver said. “My ultimate view is competition is great for the league, and if as a result dynasties are made, I think that’s great, too. So I’m not against seeing repeat championships.”

He’s against complacency, it seems. It’s a good thing the commissioner is a thinker. Making this version of the NBA work will require constant adjustment.