By Richard Hatfield on May 15, 2016
NEW YORK – The
NBA Board of Governors would like to announce a reformatting of divisions,
schedule and overall playoff seeding within the NBA. The Board has been
discussing conference imbalance for a couple of seasons now and we have
finally come to an agreement on how to move forward with a solution. Last
season we decided to seed
playoff teams in each conference by record compared to divisions. The
idea of doing away with the current division format leads us to a region
format. The NBA has known that the biggest roadblock is how to evenly schedule
an 82 game season between 30 teams across the United States. By moving teams
into a travel friendly region we can cut back on travel time and move towards
our ultimate goal of have the top 16 teams in the NBA compete in the playoffs
for the championship.
The new
format will break our teams up into the following regions
Ziller, Tom (Nov 26, 2014) This proposal will fix conference imbalance
and the NBA schedule.
Image retrieved
from http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2014/11/26/7280545/nba-schedule-reform-regions-map-playoffs
By re arranging our 30 teams in regions we will break up the
schedule to a more travel friendly listing. At the beginning of each season we
will do a lottery of which teams will play each other within a specific
formula. Each team will, at random, play two teams in a region 5 times in a
season and then the other 3 teams twice. The remaining 18 games will be at random.
This allows for less back to back games and will employ lighter travel loads on
our athletes.
With the
new schedule format we will be changing into a brand new playoff format as
well. The top 16 teams in the league will be going toe to toe in the playoffs.
Imagine seeing Anthony Davis and his New Orleans Pelicans playing the Cleveland
Cavaliers and Lebron James in the first round.
Simmons, Bill (April 4, 2014) Fixing the NBA Playoffs
Image retrieved
from http://grantland.com/features/fixing-the-nba-playoffs/
It is thoughts like this that makes us excited for this
announcement. For too long has their been a indifference between the Eastern
and Western conferences and rarely do we see both conferences equal in
competition. In the 1980’s the Eastern Conference ruled the world of Basketball
and now in the 2000’s the Western Conference has hoisted the Larry O’Brien
trophy 11 times while the eastern conference has only hoisted it 5. This new
format will help even the playing field as well as bolster the NBA draft for
teams that require high lottery picks. The playoff format will move back to a
2-3-2 format to help travel plans. The overall goal is to even the playing
field across the board to increase the competitive nature of the NBA as well as
adhere to our athletes health needs with travel instances, to give you the fan
a better entertainment experience all the way into June.
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