If they were really worried about the players health as they claim they could drop preseason games. That's 8 games.
82 might sound like a lot but it's really not. Take a physical job like a hod tender. I'd say 250 8 hour days.
Further evidence would be the workout and training that NBA players do. If they don't they get out of shape. Pretty hard to argue that the season is too long if you have to workout on your off time to keep from getting fat imo.
OK, but I didn't say that it was too hard on players, though I believe it might indeed help to increase the intensity of the games if they played a little bit less games. But what I meant was that 82 regular games make some games just so ordinary or irrelevant. It kinda decreases the weight of the games.