How Much Does the 2020-2021 Regular Season Matter

With so much uncertainty every night in the NBA, how important is this year for each subset of teams?

The virus that continues raging through a country has predictably started wreaking havoc on the NBA. The NBA itself said they expected this and prepared the schedule accordingly for future flexibility. But just because the league “prepared” and “expected,” this doesn’t make it any less of a storm raining down with the unforgiven force only matched by mother nature. So how much does the season itself matter when everything normal has gone out the window?

Due to contract tracing, the past few weeks, teams have found themselves fielding the mandated minimum of 8 players and giving minutes to guys who weren’t expected to play at all this year. The Miami Heat’s rotation on back-to-back games against the Philadelphia 76ers featured guys like Gabe Vincent and Chris Silva being relied upon to help beat a team starting Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid. And not too long before that, the 76ers were trodding out Dakota Mathias and Isaiah Joe in the starting lineup against a mostly healthy Nuggets team. It’s almost like teams are having mini-preseasons throughout an irregular regular season. The competitive integrity is obviously being hurt now as it was in the NFL and MLB. But it’s far more severe in the NBA due to the rosters being so constricted, despite them getting expanded to 15 available players a night. The NBA has continued postponing games and even “tightened” some of its own policies. But at what point will either the league or players budge and pause the season? Well, I don’t think that’s happening any time soon because they’ll try closing their eyes and swimming in the muddy waters, hoping to come out of it as clean as possible. But they want this swim to feel more like a 50m freestyle instead of a grueling 400m medley. A lot of sacrifices will have to be made on the way.

The league doesn’t want to lose any more money, and both parties want to get this over with without explicitly saying it. So what kind of importance does that put on this whirlwind of a season? If the league is acting as if these games can be tossed about like nothing, the teams sure as hell shouldn’t feel bad if they want to sit out guys for rest. How important will a game a contender plays in January against what’s left of the Sixers matter when the playoffs will more than likely involve 0 fans and might have to take place in a bubble all over again?

But how will each team traverse their way through? It will be about getting through it for contenders, avoiding the play-in tournament, and getting as healthy as possible before it’s whatever the playoffs will look like. It’s been like a long training camp/preseason/somewhat regular season/shitshow so far. These teams will continue using it more to get a sense of familiarity amongst each other. Trying not to get screwed over by a virus that doesn’t care who you are. While years prior, some teams were doing this to an extent, there’ll be a hell of a lot more of them due to all the circumstances involving this year. The product will suffer and dilute what is already a diminished protocol-induced season. Instead of TNT flexing out a game due to players resting or being injured, we’ll see it for virus-related reasons. But no one cares. That doesn’t mean all the contenders will be fine with it. Imagine if the Clippers get hit with problems next? That’s a team that wants to get extremely familiar with each other after having so many chemistry problems last season and taking the regular season less seriously than Will Ferrell in a non-comedic role. Teams like the Lakers and Bucks want to continue a groove while also getting their timing together with so many of their new additions. They know they’ll make the dance but want to know the steps before they get there. Even teams with some form of continuity like the Heat, Nuggets, and Celtics still have these questions hovering over them. But they’re not too worried about if they’re 2nd or 6th in the standings, only that they’re still standing in one piece on the final day of the season. Miami just finished getting to the finals as a 5th seed last year, and they’re not worried about where they’ll end up. Other teams saw that, and I imagine they don’t care as much either. It’s just about getting a foot in the door of what might be another bubble. But injuries aren’t going away, and now that a virus is involved, there’s no telling what any of these teams will be at the end of the season compared to what they look like now. It’s an unknown fog that everyone hopes to drive through at 90 miles per hour, hoping to come away unscathed along the way. No home court and another possible bubble for the playoffs cloud an already cloudy season.

Meanwhile, this year will function as a measuring stick year for other teams of how much growth they’ve made or failed to make. Teams like the Hornets, Hawks, Cavs, and Grizzlies all want a chance to make it into at least the play-in tournament. They’re the teams who’ll be hurt the most if any form of outbreak hits them. They’ll be scratching and clawing against each other to prove they belong while also fighting against a virus. Sounds like fun. Add to that the uncertainty of injuries, other teams not playing as hard, or just not fielding actual teams, and it’ll make it hard to evaluate what they truly have. The regular season matters most to these teams, especially since most hadn’t played a game since March. Even if they don’t make the play-in, they’re happy to be playing at all. No surprise, many of these teams have been fun to watch for the first few weeks of the season. I’ve actually enjoyed watching the Cavs and a non-Kemba Hornets team for the first time, it seems. And that’s good for the league. When your lower-end and small-market teams are this fun, it helps show that the season is still worth watching.

You have half the league half-trying and the rest trying dearly while not trying to die. It’s a recipe for some miserable basketball and sporadic season. But this is what the NBA was “prepared” for, and now we all have to hope it somehow leads to playoffs that were just as fun as last year’s. The regular season will still matter this year; it just won’t matter as much to most of the top end, given everything going on and what might be in store come playoff time. So much is being held in a dark abyss of questions and will remain there until the dust of the season is settled. It’ll feel more like a relief when/if it ends. Similar to when you get to the end of a bad movie, you found yourself too deep into to stop watching because you didn’t want to feel like you wasted your time. Good luck to everyone involved, and I hope no one gets hurt in the process.