SO YOU’RE SAYING THERE’S A CHANCE
PROPOSAL WOULD ACTUALLY PUT KNICKS INTO EXPANDED PLAYOFFS: BERMAN
The Knicks could break their six-season playoff drought after all in a post-coronavirus restart scenario — but it would come with an asterisk.
According to a source, one of the many plans of an NBA restart is having additional teams not mathematically eliminated from the playoffs stage a short play-in tournament in July to advance to an expanded playoff.
One discussed plan is teams ranked 9-12 in each conference staging a four-team single-elimination tournament. The winner of that event gets the right to play the current No. 8 seed to get the final spot inside the formal 16-team playoff.
Normally, the playoffs include the top eight from the East and top eight from the West. Commissioner Adam Silver said recently he is hopeful of holding best-of-seven series in each round without fans and at two sites (likely Orlando and Las Vegas).
The Knicks would make it to the play-in event, as they stand in 12th place at 21-45. The Nets (30-34) would clinch a spot as the
No. 7 seed.
The play-in model would be
Silver’s attempt to incentivize some teams bound for the lottery to return to action this season. Some NBA bottom-dwellers, however, would be officially finished. Simply adding additional teams to the playoffs is another concept.
“That would be a median between finishing the season with all of the teams and just teams still mathematically alive, no matter how unrealistic their chances were,” one NBA source said.
On a conference call with players on Friday, Silver claimed all owners are on board to play again.
However, Silver’s sentiment flies in the face of a comment made 10 days ago to Stanford students by Nets owner Joe Tsai, who indicated a divide exists among the league’s haves and have-nots.
“There is a chance for them to go to the championship,” Tsai told students about playoff-position clubs. “Of course they want to play. If you are in 28th place, maybe this season isn’t that important. There is a difference in opinion among the owners, as well.”
The NBA’s stance is it’s too early to discuss specifics on how a play-in event would work. Silver said he may not know anything until June.
A play-in tournament featuring teams not in the top eight could slop up the traditional lottery. Under normal procedure, the 14 teams who do not make the playoffs are seeded with probability odds before pingpong balls are drawn.
A solution is using standings from the
March 11 shutdown and discounting the results of the play-in tournament — unless current No. 8 seeds, the Magic (East) and Grizzlies (West) don’t make it to the main event.
The Knicks currently have the sixth-worst record and would own a 9 percent chance of winning the lottery — scheduled for May 19 but postponed indefinitely.
Last Friday, teams were permitted to open practice facilities for limited, voluntary workouts in states in which lockdowns had ended. The Knicks and Nets have campuses located in areas in which the lockdowns may continue until June 1 or beyond.
However, a source said Nets players with serious injuries to rehab were given exceptions by the league to visit their Brooklyn training facility for treatment. Kevin Durant (Achilles tear), Kyrie Irving (shoulder tear) and Joe Harris (ankle sprain) figured to qualify.