Proposed League Changes

[Dejay]

A few years ago, Sturt and I had a long discussion on a thread here about changing things up in terms of league scheduling, new playoff formats, and the like. And what do you know, the league is looking into bringing this into action. Some of our original ideas that are now being looked at via ESPN (see Zach Lowe this morning) are as follows...

-Shortening the league schedule from 82. I think that we narrowed it to around 78 games instead.

-A play-in tournament to motivate middling teams to try harder and below .500 teams not to job out for more ping-pong balls in the lottery. I got a little hogwild with this concept by having tiers; the top five teams would play each other twice and the next five teams would play each other twice. The ten teams after them would play each other in a one game play-in, with the five winners automatically going and the last playoff spot going to the losing team with the best record. The extra games, gate receipts, and TV revenue created would be split amongst the participating teams, giving the bottom-rung guys even more incentive to do better a lot sooner. I once had them playing a tournament to determine lottery selections but who torture themselves watching that?

Now, why I break these tiers up in fives? Well...

I eliminated conference designations and went with six divisions or regionals instead (Atlantic, Southeast, Mideast, Southwest, and Pacific). Memphis and NOLA would join the SE, Washington would head to the Atlantic, Minnesota would finally go to closer locales in the Mideast, OKC, Denver, and Utah would join the Texas trio in the SW, and the Trailblazers would rejoin the Pacific. Everyone would play each other twice and six times within their own regional, creating a 78-game season. That's how I came up with the tier system. And yes, after tier play (which can also be used as a championship cup competition for the top tier teams), there would be a 16-team playoff tournament for the NBA Title.

In light of our boys having a rough time so far this season, I thought that bringing this up and thinking of what else the league could do would help lighten things up a little. Any more ideas out there???

Edited November 26, 2019 by Dejay