George Karl Thinks the NBA Should Eliminate Conferences for the Playoffs

Denver Nuggets head coach George Karl has never been a conventional thinker. So, it shouldn’t be a total surprise that he’s not a huge fan of the traditional NBA Playoff format. Instead of relying on geography, Karl suggests pairing teams up in the postseason based entirely on their regular season records. Per the Denver Post (via PBT): “So he was asked: Do you think you should wipe out divisions and just have conference standings? ‘I’m even crazier than that,’ the Nuggets’ coach said. Oh, yeah? What ya got? ‘I think you should put all top-16 and do it that way, and then reseed for the next round,’ he said. So basically, here’s Karl’s idea: The top eight teams from the Western Conference and the top eight teams from the Eastern Conference are put into a playoff pool. At this point, conference affiliation no longer matters. Instead, it’s all about record. The team with the best record plays the team with the 16th-best record and so on. And then, like he said, they reseed hockey-style for the next round. And so, the NBA’s ‘Final Four’ could be four teams from the same conference — but, as proven by this system, perhaps the four best teams in basketball. ‘I think it would get fans excited, man. It would be crazy,’ Karl said. ‘And we travel with private jets now, so I think you can schedule it to where you’d get two days of rest between games. I think it would be really fun and interesting to see the matchups.'”