The NBA is the highest level of basketball in the world and now that the playoffs are on, the whole world is watching. Some may know, but the NBA has been on a viewership decline the past few seasons, but every season, fans come back for the playoffs. 

The reason for this is the effort level given by the players during the regular season. Although each team plays 82 games, it seems like the majority of players don’t care and do not try. If you turn on a game in the regular season, you are likely to see far too many three-pointers casted up, no set plays, and lackluster defense. 

Let’s start with the defensive issue. Every night during the regular season you are likely to see three or more highlight plays on social media. Yes, these athletes are talented and can do amazing things with the ball in their hands, but it’s not that hard to create a highlight play when you are allowing free driving lanes to the basket for your big man to take on a high flying dunker. They also rarely guard the three-point shot, allowing the offense to just keep casting up three’s and they just pray it misses. This adds up to about 90-100 three pointers attempted per game by both teams combined. Basketball shouldn’t be played that way. They also run no set plays and basically just play isolation basketball and it looks like a pickup game at the park.

The one other big problem is load management. This is where players take the night off to rest their bodies. This hadn’t been a huge issue until a few years ago. This is not fair to the fans at all, as they expect to go to games and see their favorite players play. Worst of all, some fans might only have money to go to one game in their life, just to see the stars of the show sit out. Players like Anthony Edwards, Mikal Bridges, and Jayson Tatum have spoken on this issue and do not believe it is right to sit out to rest. Bridges has played for three organizations so far in his career and still has never missed a game, ever. Kobe Bryant was also big on this rising issue in the NBA. Kobe’s reason for never wanting to miss a game was “What about the kids that save up money to watch me play one time.”

Now that the playoffs are here, these issues are reduced because everything is on the line. Three-pointers are shot less, better shots are taken, plays are run and defense is high intensity. This is good basketball to watch, but I wish players would play like this all season like they used to.