Changes to the NBA

[bigfoot]

The bubble has been a lot of fun and the NBA should make changes based on some of the stuff we have seen. For example, a play-in for the 9th place team should always be an option in the future.

Also, I think it would be cool to have a lottery playoff. For example, at the end of the season the 15 teams who did not make it would receive X number balls where X is 30 for the worst team, 28 for the second, 26 for the third, ... 2 for the best team that didn't make the playoffs. Then each team plays each other once. That is, each team is guaranteed 14 more games. For every win, you earn an extra ball. The worst-case scenario is the 30th place team wins 0 games and has 30 balls and the best team wins 14 games and has 16 balls. An unlikely scenario but still could happen. Then play the lottery for picks 1-15 not just top 3.

Why do this:

1) It would allow the NBA to shorten the regular season
2) It would really help eliminate tanking
3) It would give non-playoff fans something to get excited about
4) These losing teams with younger players would get to experience playoff level intensity

[WeekapaugGroove]

Reposted from the other thread.

I'll put this here because the bubble got me thinking about how the NBA could adjust schedule to do away with conference inequality and make more fun games throughout. This idea would also cut 6 games off the 82 game regular season which is about all the owners would ever allow.

So heres my half baked idea:

No conferences and 16 teams still make the playoffs.

You start the season in Phase 1 where you play home and away against the 29 other teams. That's 58 games totally balanced schedule for everyone. At that point you take a week off for the All Star game and give time to reformulate the schedule for Phase 2.

Phase 2 - the top 10 teams from Phase 1 have clinched the 1-10 spots in the playoffs and they now play each other home and away (18 games total) for seeding of the 1-10. You'd have a ton of good team vs good team games to close the season and teams would have to keep trying to win for seeding purposes.

The 11-20 teams play each home and away (18 games) for the final 6 playoff spots. Lots of competitive games with evenly matched teams.

21-30 teams are eliminated from the playoffs and also play the 18 games against each other. You either make these games meaningless towards lotto seeding so teams have no incentive to lose or maybe give some lotto ball bonuses for wins I'm open to either. These would obviously be the worst games of this idea but this way these teams aren't actually playing against other teams with playoffs on the line and they can go young and plan for next season.

Thoughts?

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Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using RealGM mobile app

[cberry78]

NBA All-Star game determines home court for the Finals. Give it some actual value.