The NBA has informed its 30 teams that it will continue to explore possible changes to the league’s schedule but no longer plans to hold a vote on those changes at this spring’s Board of Governors meeting, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (via Twitter).
Last month, the NBA sent a memo to its teams detailing proposed schedule changes for the 2021/22 season, including an in-season tournament, a postseason play-in tournament for the seventh and eighth seeds in each conference, and the reseeding of the conference finalists — the league was later said to be reconsidering its idea to reseed the final four teams.
The initial plan was to fine-tune those proposals in the hopes of taking a formal vote at April’s Board of Governors meeting. Instead, it appears the NBA will be a little more patient with the process. That doesn’t mean the proposed tournaments won’t eventually happen though, perhaps still even as early as the 2021/22 season. An April vote would have given teams more time to prepare, but Wojnarowski tweets that the league hasn’t ruled out implementing schedule changes for ’21/22.
According to Wojnarowski (via Twitter), the NBA has been working closely with teams, the players’ union, and stakeholders and wants to continue studying how its ideas could be best implemented and monetized over the long run.
Details like broadcasting rights, arena scheduling, incentives, and timing all need to be worked out, making it a complicated process, as Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer points out (via Twitter). The league hopes to give owners an update at April’s meeting, Woj adds.
In order to institute the proposed schedule changes, the NBA would need 23 of 30 teams to vote in favor of them. Howard Beck of Bleacher Report (Twitter link) notes that commissioner Adam Silver isn’t expected to move forward with a formal vote unless he’s confident he has enough support to approve the changes.
I hope they just drop this
I hope the league listens to the fans and drops this ridiculous concept.
This is a really stupid idea, but I at least give the league some credit for being creative…
I think Silver planned on the playoff reseeding idea being a kind of beachhead on his invasion of traditional ways. It was not the most important change but it wasn’t as useful as he thought.
I would prefer that Silver skip to his most radical change, the in-season trny, and gradually install it keeping 82 games all over somehow. That will keep him busy!
Ditch the in-season tournament and play-in playoff format….playoffs are already too long….and we don’t need anymore meaningless games midseason
Play in tournament for the 7th and 8th seeds is probably the stupidest idea of all. The playoffs are already too long and the 7th and 8th seeds almost always get steamrolled. NBA should go to NFL style playoffs with six teams per conference with the best two getting first round byes. The NBA is an extremely talent top heavy league and it makes no sense to have more than half of the teams make the playoffs.