Adam Silver Talks Possibly Shortening NBA Season, Says 'Nothing Is Off the Table'

NBA commissioner Adam Silver didn't dismiss the idea of shortening the regular season from 82 games.

Appearing on Numbers On The Board, Silver said that "nothing is off the table" in terms of adapting to the needs of the modern game. The commissioner went on to discuss the merits of an 82-game slate, though, and added "there's no data" supporting the idea that having fewer regular-season contests lowers the injury risk.

Arguments over whether the NBA season is too long are nothing new. Back in 2011, ESPN's Kevin Arnovitz proposed cutting the year nearly in half to 44 games.

The rationale behind scaling back the season is predicated on multiple factors.

Teams may be less inclined to rest their star players if the schedule is 70-plus games or fewer, and it's common sense that every game you take away from the 82-game standard is one game in which a player isn't getting injured.

From a fan perspective, there's a scarcity aspect. Each game is going to instinctively feel a little more meaningful when there aren't as many to watch.

Spinning off that, the effects of tanking could be somewhat mitigated.

"Teams would be in the hunt deeper into the year, and we could eliminate the tail end of that stretch of each season — the time period we are currently in — when a large contingent of teams have committed themselves to losing," Yahoo Sports' Ben Rohrbach posited.

Alas, that Arnovitz article is nearly 14 years old, and we're still having the same conversations. That offers pretty compelling evidence that the 82-game format is in little danger of changing.

The Athletic's Sam Amick and Josh Robbins recently polled NBA players on a number of topics, including the length of the regular season. Of the 153 respondents, 130 said they'd oppose a shorter calendar if it had an accompanying effect on their salaries.

"I still gotta play 60-something games and get paid less? Hell no," one player said.

That's certainly a far different tone than the one Silver expressed, and it probably offers more insight into how plausible the general idea of shortening the season is.