Silver: NBA not ready to change playoff seeding format
NBA commissioner Adam Silver made waves over All-Star Weekend when he suggested, in his annual state-of-the-association press conference, that the league office had seriously discussed shifting the playoff structure to ignore conferences, instead seeding teams 1-16.
Silver has since walked that back a bit, saying that while the league is still considering a change, it's a long way from untangling the logistical knots that would be involved in implementing the proposed format.
"We're serious about looking at it; we're far from (being) at a place where there's a solution," Silver told Denver Nuggets radio commentator Jason Kosmicki during a guest appearance on Thursday night's broadcast.
"Of course it makes sense to seed teams one through 16, but we have two conferences that are geographically apart. Many fans may not focus on it but we play an unbalanced schedule, meaning teams in the West play each other more than they play teams in the East and vice versa. And we do that to cut down on travel. ... The issue for us is, in order to seed one through 16 based on record, the records have to be based on a balanced schedule. And to move to a balanced schedule would require a lot more travel ...
"So, we're not there yet. In fact, we're going the other way, because we added another week to the season to cut down on the number of back-to-backs, to reduce the number of four-games-out-of-five-nights. And the last thing I'll say real quickly: You could also end up in the first round with Portland playing Miami. And to crisscross the country ... it adds enormous fatigue ... It'll cut down on the quality of the competition and also potentially lead to more injuries. So, all of those things take me to the point where we're not ready to make a change yet."
Of course, even if Silver's office were to put it on the table, instituting such a change would also require a two-thirds voting majority from the NBA's board of governors. For representatives of the 15 teams in the eternally inferior Eastern Conference, that might be a tough sell.