Adam Silver says NBA Has to ‘Make a Change’ to Its Playoff Format

If the Playoffs started today, the 21-28 Miami Heat would be in and the 26-23 New Orleans Pelicans would be out. That doesn’t seem right, and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver agrees. In an interview he did on Comcast Sportsnet Bay Area during the Warriors-Mavericks game on Wednesday, Silver took some questions from fans posted for him on Facebook, one of which was about the current Playoff format. Here’s what he had to say, via Pro Basketball Talk

“Ultimately we want to see your best teams in the playoffs. And there is an unbalance and a certain unfairness. There is a proposal (from one of the broadcasters)…  where the division winners would all automatically go into the playoffs and then you’d seed the next 10 best teams. I think that’s the kind of proposal we need to look at. There are travel issues of course, but in this day in age every team of course has their own plane, travels charter. I don’t think the discussion should end there. And as I’ve said, my first year I was studying a lot of these issues and year 2 is time to take action. It’s something I’m going to look at closely with the competition committee. I do think it’s an area where we need to make a change.” 

Silver’s certainly not messing around. Who knows whether he can pull this, or any of these other changes, off, but NBA fans have to feel good about the fact that he’s interested in improving the NBA in any way he can.