While it seems almost insulting to half the teams in the NBA, there are many fans who believe that the league should realign the Eastern Conference and Western Conference because of how strong the West has become. In the ‘90s, it was the Eastern Conference who dominated with the Chicago Bulls winning three straight NBA Finals on two different occasions. However, now it is the Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs who have ruled the last decade with teams like the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder making a lot of noise as well. Despite this, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the talks of NBA realignment is on hold.
NBA realignment
The idea of realigning the NBA is almost a move that is just based on the NBA today compared to looking at the history of the competitive balance of the league. The Boston Celtics, who won the most games in the Eastern Conference regular season last year, is one of the greatest franchises in NBA history. The Cleveland Cavaliers have been to the NBA Finals for three straight seasons and won it two years ago. The Miami Heat were dominant before that and was the best team in the NBA for a number of years.
However, looking at the NBA right now and fans see the Golden State Warriors as unbeatable and teams like the San Antonio Spurs and Houston Rockets getting stronger while teams in the Eastern Conference don’t seem to be keeping up.
While the idea of NBA realignment just based on the strength of the team right now seems presumptuous, there is an idea that the NBA would consider realigning based on the impact of travel and location.
The NBA playoff structure
Another item up for discussion in the NBA is the playoff structure and Adam Silver said that idea is on hold for now as well.
According to Silver, the idea of changing up the playoffs is something that many in the NBA favor. This would also help level out the imbalance in the Eastern Conference and Western Conference because the best two teams would play for the NBA Championship, regardless of the conference.
The way that Silver explained it would work would be to seed all the playoff teams from one to 16 and then set up a 16-team playoff bracket.
If the three best teams in the league are all from the Western Conference, they would rank from one through three and if they really are the best teams in the NBA, there could be two Western Conference teams in the NBA Finals. However, the ideas are too immense to move forward on without discussion about possibly reseeding after each round or not.
