3 outlandish suggestions for the NBA upon its return from hiatus
The NBA is about due for a brief change to the playoffs
In November, Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe reported that the league was considering re-seeding the top four teams once the playoff bracket worked its way down to the conference finals. While certainly an interesting idea, the NBA has allegedly pulled back on this possibility for the time being.
All this tells us is that, yes, the NBA is strongly considering a playoff reformat. However, after implementing as drastic a change as the previously mentioned play-in tournament, it is imperative not to go all-out in reformatting the postseason. We don’t want to muddy the waters too much.
The only reformat that almost everybody could get behind would be to reduce the number of games in round one.
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How often do we see the top-two seeds in each conference dominate the bottom-two seeds? Is a sixth and seventh game ever necessary in those situations? Respectively, the answers are ‘always’ and ‘no.’ The 2006-07 Warriors might disagree, but they were an extremely rare exception.
Overall, the playoffs could be made more interesting by limiting first-round matchups to five games. Think of every benefit a five-game series presents:
Faster sweeps by dominant teams playing inferior opponents.
Potential injury prevention and energy preservation by reducing the number of games.
Increased intensity between comparable teams.
Every contest begins to feel like a must-win.
And most notably, upsets become more likely due to lower-seeded teams only needing to win three games instead of four.
It’s easy to conclude that the positives significantly outweigh the negatives in this situation. Unfortunately, however, this is one of the more unlikely changes the NBA could make. After all, the NBA—like every other business—is, was, and always will be an organization trying to make as much money as possible.
When you decrease the amount of possible first-round playoff games by roughly 30 percent, a significant chunk of change is sure to be taken out of the league’s pocket. Maybe that ingenious playoff play-in tournament could make up for the lost revenue? I digress.