NBA looks toward big changes
Season to end week later; draft reform may be looming
MIAMI — The drama came Tuesday and Wednesday, when the playoffs races were decided. The sizzle was reserved for Saturday and today, with the start of the NBA postseason.
But what was deliberated Thursday and Friday at the NBA’s Board of Governors meeting could have the greatest impact on the league going forward.
There were not minor tweaks or subtle adjustments discussed. This was stuff that could change the game.
SCHEDULING
Commissioner Adam Silver has proven to be an adept listener. And clearly, the gripes about the unforgiving NBA schedule did not fall upon deaf ears.
So, starting as soon as next season if formally agreed upon by early May, the 82-game schedule will run a week longer in 2015-16, in order to provide more time off between games.
“We would still stay in the month of June, our draft would still be in June, but we have about a week to play with at the end of the season,” Silver said.
Silver said there will be “an all-time low” in the number of back-to-back games scheduled during the regular season, with no more than a single set of four games in five nights for each team.
In addition, Silver said the league would explore reducing the preseason starting in 2016-17, in order to potentially start the season earlier, as another means of creating time off during the regular season.
Silver said the issue of “resting” players would be one on which he would continue to defer to teams, but easing the schedule likely implies a goal of getting featured players on the court more often.
DRAFT LOTTERY
Lottery reform again was discussed, and it appears likely change eventually will come, particularly after a tank-a-palooza season for a variety of teams.
But Silver said the league now needs to consider lottery reform in the greater team-building context of the massive infusion of salary-cap space about to enter the equation with new broadcast revenue starting in 2016-17.
“My sense where we were coming out is that there’s still a sense that we need to make a change,” Silver said. “But until we see what the team behavior is going to be with all this new cap room, we should hold it and wait, and then look holistically at the whole system.”
The thought here is that lottery reform tends to come when one team gets too lucky too often (the Orlando Magic in a previous era, with Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway; the Cleveland Cavaliers in recent years) or when tanking proves truly worthwhile (the New York Knicks or Philadelphia 76ers winning the May 19 lottery).
PLAYOFFS
Silver said there was a “robust discussion” regarding the imbalance between the two conferences, but that seeding the teams with the 16 best records, regardless of conference, likely would be left for future deliberation.
But Silver said there was discussion of “the notion of a play-in tournament.”
While Silver mentioned it as a means to open competition for the No. 8 seed in each conference, here’s our suggestion:
Seed the top six teams in each conference directly into the traditional fourround, best-of-seven playoffs.
The next four teams play a single-elimination “playin” round on the Thursday and Friday during the otherwise dead period after the end of the regular season (East on one night, West on the other).
The two winners in each conference then begin their playoff series with one guaranteed day off afterward, to at least allow for a one-day turnaround.
While one-and-done might sound drastic, it is how the NCAA Tournament runs its opening round and how Major League Baseball has handled its wild-card playoffs.
This season, it would have had the Boston Celtics, Brooklyn Nets, Indiana Pacers and Heat in the East “play-in” bracket, and the Dallas Mavericks, New Orleans Hornets, Oklahoma City Thunder and Phoenix Suns in the West bracket (the winners then seeded into the playoffs based on higher seed going into the play-in round).
The approach not only would create additional races at the bottom of the playoff standings, but also more desperation to finish among the top six seeds in each conference to avoid the one-game elimination round.