“If they put me in charge, I would at least go to 70 games,” Simmons said. “I mean, you could talk me into 60, that would be even better, or 62, but they won’t. This is something that Steve Kerr did at one point. I think he like hand wrote a long letter to Adam Silver in the last year like it was the 1840s.

“Like ‘Dear Adam, it is Steve Kerr I am here on the outskirts of Wyoming. I write you a letter with a feather and a pen.’ But he wrote a letter just like basically begging him to cut the schedule down.”

Can Steve Kerr and Bill Simmons’s ideas fix the NBA ratings?

For starters, not many players can play in a full 82-game season. Whether it’s injuries or preparing for the playoffs, a full 82-game season is almost unheard of now. For example, only 17 players were in every game last season. Plus, the play-in tournament means that a team who is the No. 9 or No. 10 seed can make the playoffs. It limits the effectiveness of the regular season.

Although it promotes more competition, some teams might not take the regular season as seriously. An example would be the Miami Heat. In the 2022-23 season, they made the play-in as the No. 8 seed and went all the way to the NBA Finals. Although they fell to the Denver Nuggets, an eight seed hadn’t been in the Finals since the 1999 New York Knicks.

Furthermore, many others have commented about the decline in viewership. Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla gave his explanation as to why people don’t watch. He even mentioned that he was part of the problem. Although Mazzulla described the influx of threes, the root of the problem might be deeper than one shot. A culmination of factors, like the amount of games being played per season, could be the tip of the iceberg for viewership concerns.