There's lots of teams that would wind up in the title picture if they went undefeated... or, depending on the year, just losing one... so, if you're talking about games *after* a team has lost a couple, then sure, most of them don't matter... but so what?
A big playoff makes the regular season *way* less interesting to me... it means the watering down of the season, to the point where most games that would matter don't...
Just because most people here are too young to remember when the NBA regular season meant something, that doesn't mean it didn't... it used to mean a lot... the way things are now, I don't see why anybody would go to see a regular NBA game... and I imagine most folks offering opinions about this don't ever go see one... how many folks here even care about the NBA at all before the playoffs?
Disclaimer: Not dissing Pedro's Pickz... (even though there's a silly "z" in it... )
As for the first part, I mostly agree with you as I've stated in this thread.
As for the NBA part, I watch a ton of regular season NBA games and go to a couple games a season as well, and that's for the same general reason you watch Georgia Tech, or people watch NFL, MLB, and college football or basketball games when they aren't that revelant to the title picture, and that's because it's very entertaining to me. Now most people on here don't have an NBA team they're that passionate about for an obvious reason which leads to more disinterest and sometimes bashing of the sport. However, I'm going to question the self-awareness of anyone who says something like why bother watching the NBA regular season when they often watched Maryland football or even basketball in many years, or Georgia Tech football, or the Orioles in that horrid 14 year stretch, or regular season hockey, etc. Everyone on here has watched plenty of games that can be considered far from meaningful to the championship picture in their given sport, they just generally have a team they're passionate about so they watch anyway, or they have money on the line.
BTW, I was not that informed on how many teams made the playoffs in the NBA compared to how many team there were in the older times, but I don't see any evidence that the NBA regular season meant all that much more than it does now. A lower percentage of teams actually make the playoffs compared to much of the NBA's history.