The NBA tournament system works as follows. The 30 teams each play a total of 82 games across the country over a period of 6 months. The top 8 western teams and the top 8 eastern teams then enter a single-elimination tournament--that is, they go to the playoffs. The teams are paired off and play a best-of-seven series. The teams who had better regular-season records are awarded with weaker opponents and home-court advantage--that is, if a seven game series lasts a full seven games, four of the seven will be played on the home court of the better team. The winners advance. The champion of the playoffs is declared that year's champion.
If a team's only major goal is to win the championship, then it appears that the optimal strategy may not be to try as hard as possible to win regular-season games. The NBA season can be hard on a player if they have to play a lot in each of their team's games. A good strategy would be to limit the amount of time that player would play, even if their team might perform better with them playing longer. Additionally, a younger player may be given more playing time than their performance merits in order to give them more experience. If all that matters is the playoffs, a good team would be well-served to focus on making their team as strong as possible and just try to win the playoffs. The regular season seems to mostly serve to produce a profit.
A more satisfying system is the system most worldwide professional soccer leagues use. A soccer league typically has a fixed number of games in which the teams play each other. The team who does the best wins. There isn't the high-stakes excitement of a playoff, but on the other hand (1) it is much more likely that the best team wins and (2) each game actually matters.
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