NBA Lockout: Inevitable Shortened Season Will Increase Fan Interest

The NBA is dutifully preparing to have one of their most exciting seasons ever. The lockout is ensuring it.

A carefully planned and executed lockout can go a long way towards driving a fan base into a rabid mob ready to devour the sport once it reopens for business. We saw it in the NFL and now we will see it in basketball.

This aggressive marketing tactic can only be achieved with the wise motivations of insanely greedy people stubbornly holding out to make as many millions as possible.

This ensures that the two key ingredients for a proper lockout are in place. You have a group of people that won't cave into the other even when the differences appear small, and you have a group of people that will cave in once they begin losing money in the present.

That is exactly what we have in the NBA, and exactly why I am confident there won't be many more tweets like this.

Or press conferences like this:

Soon, cancelling games will give way to adjusted schedules and a shortened season, and when they do, people are going to be starved for the NBA.

The NBA hasn't been gone long enough to kill interest as fans are obviously still suffering through withdrawals.

And when it does end and the games get rolling, all will be forgotten. The NFL saw a huge rise in interest once the lockout ended and gave way to a shortened free agency signing period. And now that the season is going, the lockout seems like a distant memory.

So, when the lockout ends, we will have a hungry fanbase devouring basketball, and finding that it is even better than it was because the season was too long to begin with.

This is a common critique of the NBA. One that has even been made by the game's greatest coach. Here is Phil Jackson's thoughts on the subject in 2007, and agreement by author Marcel Mutoni on AOL.com:

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"Our league has to discuss the number of games we play. Eighty-two games is too many," Jackson said. "They train year-round. During the season they play 3 1/2 games a week or seven games in 14 days. They play when they are fatigued and that's when they get hurt."

Jackson is going to lose points here because he probably never made a similar suggestion when he was collecting championships like they were baseball cards, but that doesn't mean he's wrong. I'm with the Zen Master on this one; the NBA season is waaaaaay too long. There's no reason playoff seeding couldn't be decided somewhere between 60-70 games.

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The shortened season will give more meaning to every game, and more satisfaction to fans in the process. After all, no one has ever said...

...in game 20 of 82 for a game in Minnesota as the T-Wolves battle the Wizards.