With the opening of the NBA pre-season tonight (“yawn”), Clear Thinkers favorite Bill James (previous posts here) provides this interesting article on how the study of professional leagues has lagged behind the study of professional teams and how the lack of competitive balance may ultimately undermine a league such as the NBA. David Berri provides this blog post analyzing James’ article in which he suggests that the NBA’s lack of competitive balance is not really that much of a problem after all. Skip Sauer makes the same point here.
At any rate, regardless of the competitive balance issue, here are my suggestions for improving the NBA, which is often unwatchable before the playoffs:

1. Limit the regular season to 50 games and begin play during or right after the Thanksgiving holiday. Who watches basketball before then anyway?
2. Use the regular season to seed the playoffs and to determine home court advantage.
3. All teams make the initial round of the playoffs and all playoff series are best of seven games except for the first round, which would be the best of nine.