In a recent survey sent to the NBA’s 30 general managers, several different proposals for play formats were proposed as the league weighs resuming the 2019/20 season, The Athletic’s Shams Charania reports.
Ranging from a direct-to-playoffs format to resuming the regular season, a number of different scenarios are mentioned. As the NBA zeroed in on Disney World in Orlando to resume play sometime in mid-July, the following scenarios are on the table:
- Playoffs: The top eight teams in each conference would advance directly to the postseason.
- “Playoffs Plus”: Increasing the number of teams that receive a chance to continue playing through either a play-in tournament or replacing the playoffs first round with a group stage.
- Note: The number of teams to return in this scenario would be either 18, 20, 22, or 24.
- Regular Season: Under this proposal, all 30 teams would resume the season where it ended and continue on as scheduled.
- Regular Season + Play-In: All teams play the same amount of games which would then include a play-in tournament and conclude with a traditional postseason.
- Playoffs Plus play-in: A play-in tournament which includes bubble teams playing for the eighth seed; a play-in tournament for the seventh and eighth seed; or a stage that replaces the first playoff round and all groups. In this scenario, every team would play two games against each group opponent and the top two teams from each group would advance to a traditional second round.
Further discussions in the survey include the amount of scrimmage games that would be played before a restart (between two and five), the total number of regular-season games that would be played (72 or 76), whether or not to do a traditional playoff format or reseed all teams, and when the season would end (Labor Day, Sept. 15, Oct. 1, Oct. 15 or Nov. 1).
Discussions continue on how and when the NBA season could be resumed safely and without fans in attendance.
I don’t see a big issue with playing the rest of the regular season and the regular playoffs IF they cut down on days off. Since there will be no travel, I see no reason why they shouldn’t play 5 games a week. Earn their money. You could get the regular season over in a month and a month and a half for the REGULAR playoffs. There is zero need for a play in tourney. They’d be done by the end of September, have a month for free agency and the draft and then start a shortened training camp in November.
sure let’s have the players risk physical injury too.
How are they ever going play basketball without risking physical injury?
@hiflew
I couldn’t agree more with you! No travel means they can play a ton of games & with 2-3 months have done the RS + playoff, no need to cut anything out, too true too true!!!
Problem with your scenario is the league has to get the on the same page as the players union and there’s no way the players will ever agree to play 5 games a week
They will if that is the only way they get full pay. If the options are full pay with a full schedule playing 5 games a week or a truncated schedule with substantially reduced pay, which would you choose?
Lebron has to much power in the league. At his age no way they agree to give games a week. Before it comes to that the season will drag into October sometime
I don’t understand Playoff Plus play-in format.
Can anyone give me an example?
6 groups?
how many teams in each group?
east team vs west team in the first round?
Please clarify.
forseen NHL format is not bad? What do you think, could also work in NBA?
It seems to me to be a lot like the World Cup group stage. Probably 4 in each group with 2 advancing. Doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.
So much priority is going into having a play-in tournament. Nowhere will be stated the ugly fact: That would make it a playoff with 24 of 30 making it with nobody getting a homecourt advantage (except Orlando).
This is like the NY plan: they don’t want to be in it, and they want a few others excluded so they don’t feel bad about it.
They should include all teams if they’re going that way, since they’re changing the rules about getting in.
Shortened regular season (to get all teams over 70 games)
Regular playoffs- If you want to shorten Rd 1 to best of 5 coo, nothing else different-
Playoff teams get those 10 regular season games to warm up, other teams step up to get Tv money and keep Rev rolling for NBA. They leave Orlando once regular season has ended as do eliminated playoff teams once so
We now have Survivor Island Orlando QT stage set- It truly will be the greatest place on Earth.
Almost perfect.
At the end worst teams plays 6-8 games
I would like everybody think about 7 games series in PO has NOSENSE: there is not home away issue, so 3 games is ok.
Final i would do in a Only One game… A superbowl like
So 6-8 games for RS, you finish before middle August…
18-30 August 1st round PO (3 games)
1-9 sept 2 round
12-18 sept conf finals
23 sept THE FINAL
Why do you need 13 days to play 3 games in the 1st round? There is no travel.
TV Show, only 2 games/day.
How about this? Each team has a representative pick a number from 1 to 30 out of a hat. Then the bottom 14 are eliminated.
Repeat with 16, bottom 8 eliminated.
Repeat until there is a champion.
It would make about as much sense, and you can televise it, with a big 2 hour show with announcers offering their opinions on how it will go and the implications for each team.
Probably could all be done over zoom, using some sort of hat-number app and the announcers streaming from their living rooms while the rest of us watch it from ours.
forseen NHL format is not bad? What do you think, could also work in NBA?