<i>you get the feeling players sleepwalk through the season until it gets closer to playoff time</i><p>I&#x27;ve also had this feeling. What I think should happen (so of course it won&#x27;t) is for players to only get paid their absurdly high salaries for the games they win. Lose and only get league minimum. This would give players an incentive to play hard each and every game. I&#x27;m sure there&#x27;s a lot wrong with that idea, and I haven&#x27;t really though it through.<p>I don&#x27;t think that sort of salary structure would work quite as readily in the NFL. There&#x27;s much less guaranteed money, and marginal players are always getting cut. So most on an NFL team do play pretty hard. Also coaching decisions affect football far more than basketball. Suck for Luck is more on management than on the players. How do you disincentivise management from doing that?<p>And, every so often in the NFL, an Albert Haynesworth comes along and stops playing after getting a lot of guaranteed money. But that&#x27;s mostly owner stupidity at work. Probably a little of that going on this year with Ndamukong Suh. Certainly a lot lot more of that going on in baseball and basketball with their ridiculously high guaranteed contracts.