Excitement of NBA playoffs contrasts with regular season

Changes often occur in life while we are looking the other way. This NBA season may be the latest evidence of that in sports.

After a regular season that was lost on the sports radar screen, the NBA playoffs have had nightly battles decided by last-second shots and often going to overtime. That does not mean the level of play has improved beyond the dunk and a 3-pointer, but there has been an excitement that was not here in the regular season.

The NBA has joined the other major sports in reducing the regular season to a daily grind supported by season ticket holders watching players who divide games between those where they will work and those where they will float.

It’s not the players’ fault. The seasons in all sports are too long. It is impossible for players to compete at their peak level of performance game after game, especially with the endless travel. Some players use that as an excuse to loaf, but for the most part it is just fact.

Long gone are the days of Joe DiMaggio, who said he played every day because there would be someone in the seats who bought a ticket who had never seen him perform before and he owed it to the fans.

The transformation looks like this. Regular-season games are supported by season ticketholders who want first dibs on postseason tickets. Their purchases are counted in attendance figures, and so is the money, whether they show up or not.

Regular-season games have become marketing tools around which innumerable activities exist in the stadiums for fans to partake of instead of watching the games. You can measure your pitching speed, shoot free throws, play video games, look at memorabilia, and, of course, drop big-time dollars at endless concession stands.

Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are exceptions because there is so little room to add anything. Still, the Monster seats in left and the rooftop bar in right are Fenway attempts to give the fans more to do than watch the game.

The transformation does not end at the arenas. While the idea of games telecast as pay-per-view would raise a howl from fans, all sports have a vast number of regular-season games on some cable outlet. In effect, that is pay-per-view, only you pay for the cable tier necessary to see your team on a monthly basis.

When the postseason comes, big contracts with networks put millions of dollars into the league kitties, and play is ramped up by the players.

Fans have seemingly come to accept this as modern day sports. There are fewer complaints about the length of the regular seasons and the numbers of days off players take during the year.

Cable coverage of teams is now a given and fans have been willing to pay even more to hear or watch games on other download platforms like a computer.

All of this happened with little discussion. The leagues have kept the tempers of fans down by keeping the postseasons generally on over-the-air outlets and highlighting the regular-season matchups that are exciting, i.e., Red Sox-Yankees.

The test of time will be whether sports can continue to generate the dollars from regular-season games that increasingly become less meaningful to fans and players.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and ABC sportscaster.