So in case you haven’t heard, the NBA could be changing the way the game is played forever.
On Saturday morning, Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe of ESPN revealed that the league is working with the NBA Players Association on a massive overhaul that would include a reseeding of the four conference finalists, a 30-team in-season tournament, a playoff play-in and a shortened regular season (to 78 games). The alterations would be implemented in 2021-22.
Basically, Adam Silver wants to make the league more like European soccer, and that is something that is going to rub a whole lot of people (including myself) the wrong way.
The only idea that I can really get down with here is the potential changes to the conference finals.
You know how people always complain about the Eastern Conference Finals not really meaning anything because the best team generally comes out of the West and at least one of the East participants is well below the rest of the clubs (well, not always, but historically)?
Well, now, we might see a finals matchup that genuinely features the league’s two best teams, as the NBA is proposing to essentially get rid of conferences for that round and seed the clubs based on record.
That’s perfectly fine. I take no issue with that.
But everything else? My goodness, this is bad.
Let’s start with the in-season tournament.
The tourney will begin with a divisional group stage of regular-season games. Then, the six division winners, which will be based on home and away records in the group stage, and the squads with the next two best records would move on to a single-elimination knockout round.
There would then be quarterfinals, semifinals and finals.
The tourney would take place just after Thanksgiving and bleed into mid-December. So, fundamentally, a prelude to the playoffs.
But why? I understand the NBA will offer a financial reward to whoever wins the tournament, but do Silver and Co. seriously think that these teams are seriously going to care about winning an arbitrary regular-season tourney?
Spare me the “it will come with tradition” line; this is just ridiculous.
If you didn’t think it could get worse, it does.
As NBA fans, we tend to scoff at the 16-team playoff system, deriding the idea of a sub-.500 team making the postseason only to serve as a sacrificial lamb in the first round.
But guess what? Now, you might even get into the playoffs with the 10th best record in your conference! Fun, right?!
This new proposed postseason play-in would feature seeds 7 through 10 in both conferences. The No. 7 and 8 seeds would then battle to determine who wins the 7 seed (to then probably lose in four or five games to the 2-seed), and then, the loser of that contest would then face the winner of the matchup between the No. 9 and 10 seeds to determine who notches the eighth and final playoff spot.
I mean, have you seen the Eastern Conference this year? There are six good teams: the Celtics, Bucks, 76ers, Raptors, Pacers and Heat. That’s it. Even the No. 7 seed is likely going to be terrible. So just imagine the 10th seed in the East making it to the playoffs.
Is the league really this desperate? Are we really going to completely destroy the framework of what has been a very successful sport for decades?
No offense to soccer fans, but there is a reason why soccer is not popular in America. So why would we want to suddenly model one of the top sports in the nation after it? Seriously?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the NBA the way it is. Some minor changes are certainly acceptable, like reseeding the conference finalists and things of that nature. But giving the league a complete makeover and instituting pointless tournaments is not the way to go.
Not only that, but these proposals would all be implemented at once. That is pretty crazy. It would be one thing to make these changes one at a time, but stuffing them into the NBA simultaneously is like asking someone to shove turkey, pumpkin pie and Sour Patch Kids topped off with Tabasco into their mouth all at the same time.
Maybe that wouldn’t bother some of you weirdos, but anyone with functioning taste buds knows that would be nasty.
The strangest part about all of this is that this all kind of came out of left field. Some of these things have been mentioned in passing before, but never to this level, and I never thought it would occur this fast.
A complete reconstruction like this could ruin the game of basketball as we know it. And there’s probably nothing we can do about it.
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