The NBA Playoffs Will Be Dramatically Different In 2016

The NBA Playoffs landscape will look decidedly different come next year, according to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.

USA Today is reporting that Silver is moving ahead with his plans for realignment within each conference regardless of whether or not a team wins their division. For example, in years past, the team with fewer wins who happened to win their division would get the higher seeding. Such was the case this past season when the Portland Trail Blazers nabbed home court advantage despite having fewer wins than their opponents who weren’t fortunate enough to win their own division. Silver’s proposed changes would eliminate that edge.

“We are very focused on the divisional seeding process,” Silver said before Game 1 of the NBA Finals, which concluded last week with the Golden State Warriors defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers. “I think we are going to take a very close look at whether we should seed at least 1 through 8 by conference as opposed to giving the division winner that higher seed. So that is something we are taking a close look at that, and we may change that fairly quickly. As I’ve said earlier, that is a vestige of a division system that may not make sense anymore.”

Mark Cuban went on record at the beginning of the NBA season that he believes division realignment is not enough in regards to the NBA playoffs. Cuban told ESPN in November that he believes the top 16 teams should qualify for the playoffs regardless of which conference they’re in.

“It’s not like it’d be the first time we’ve ever realigned,” Cuban said. “It’s happened many times before, so there’s precedent and I just think it shakes things up and makes things interesting.”

He also stated that he thinks the long-term benefit to the NBA would be great.

“It just changes things up and it changes the thought process of a lot of teams. It makes both conferences very competitive, at least for the short term and I think, based on the history of the teams, for the long term as well.”

But Adam Silver stopped short of endorsing that dramatic a shift in the NBA Playoffs landscape.

“Ultimately where we came out is this notion of 1 through 16 seeding, while it seems attractive in many ways, because of the additional travel that will result, it just doesn’t seem like a good idea at the moment,” Silver said. “This notion of, for example, this team (Golden State) would have played Boston in the first round under a 1?through?16 seeding and would have had to crisscross back and forth across the country, which does not seem like a good idea, especially based on the earlier question based on the health of our players, and focusing on actually reducing the amount of travel and back?to?back.”

[Photo credit by: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images]