Dave

JUST IN: President Trump tells Maria Bartiromo that if Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell doesn't resign, he will fire him.

Engelbert on the Sun sale to Houston: "We did not receive a bid from the Boston/New England market... I would say to the fans, support CT Sun this season and it's a great basketball state obviously... stick with us, stick with the WNBA, we know that fandom won't go away."

I think one way to get at the NBA's problem is to start w the question: What would it look like for a professional sport's regular season to be the equivalent of a pre-season exhibition period—that is, something that genuinely, truly does not matter at all? 1. For starters, seeding wouldn't matter ... bc home court advantage would barely exist, in which case the best teams could win the championship as an 8th seed just as easily as they could win as the 1st seed. 2. The playoff series would be long enough that (a) the best teams had ample opportunity to prove their superiority [unlike in March Madness, or the NFL playoffs, where 20 bad minutes can end the best team's season] and (b) you're giving casual fans a LOT of basketball to watch so they don't feel bad about skipping most of the regular season. 3. Also, you'd let the vast majority of the teams make the playoffs -- maybe by adding a "play-in" that extends potential playoff qualification to, like, 2/3rds of the league. 4. You'd have several teams that recognize (and practically celebrate!) the futility of the regular season by spending much of this period *actively and flagrantly trying to lose* bc the draft is so much more valuable than the outcome of any particular week, or month, of regular-season competition. In fact, you'd have fans actively rooting for about 1/3rd of the league to throw away most of the regular season bc they only really care about getting a high draft pick. 5. Finally, you'd have a sport where it was basically impossible to win a championship without a top 10 (or, really, top 5!?) player, in which case many franchises are rationally fixated on throwing away regular seasons to maximize their chance to draft or trade for a top 10 guy. ... okay, I think you get my point :) I love listening to basketball podcasts in the autumn and winter, and I love watching playoff basketball in the spring. But I think there are very deep structural reasons why the NBA regular season, for many casual fans, feels like a prolonged preview of an actual sport that begins in April.