NBA playoff formatting options in a shortened season
By Alec Liebsch
Here are some tournament styles the NBA can consider in lieu of its original four-round, best-of-seven series per round format.
The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting everyone around the world. Though basketball is not as important as many of the other industries impaired by this event, it still feels the effects on a significant level.
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There is no telling when the season will resume. The NBA has laid out all kinds of scenarios with which to go forward, one of which may be canceling the season entirely. That would cause a significant loss this season, but it would also have the smallest impact on 2020-21.
Per Daniel Marcus of Forbes, the rumor is that the league office wants to finish the 2019-20 season by Labor Day. This is an optimistic gauge, but it’s not unreasonable. There would likely be a shortened offseason in September, October and November, with the 2020-21 season starting in mid-December.
That estimate also means the season has to start by early July. Assuming it’s allowed to resume by then, there will be two months left at best to finish it. The regular season will be cut substantially, possibly altogether, and the playoffs will also be shortened.
If the season can truly resume by July 1st and also be allowed to go until September 7th (Labor Day), that’s a 69-day window to complete it. The standard format can’t happen in that timeframe; last season’s playoffs alone took 62 days.
Even though the last few months of the regular season are meaningless for most teams, there will still need to be a tune-up period before the playoffs get underway. A shortened postseason will be a huge financial loss, but it’s better than nothing at all.
How the NBA goes about a shortened postseason is up in the air. In the upcoming slides I will outline different formats the league could implement, ranging from status quo to way outside the box.