Adam Silver is open to playoff seeding changes

Conducting an in-game interview with Spurs broadcasters Bill Land and Sean Elliott during the telecast of Friday’s Spurs-Suns game at AT&T Center, Adam Silver said the league needs to consider changes to the format that puts the top eight teams in each conference in the playoffs.

This season, that means one Eastern team with a losing record will make the playoffs while one Western team with at least 47 wins will be left out.

The Suns, who left Friday’s game with a 47-32 record after absorbing a 112-104 loss to the Spurs, would be third in the East with that record. The bottom four teams in the West all would have home court advantage in the East were the playoffs to begin on Saturday.

“I don’t know that there will be movement,” Silver said about changing the format. “My initial thought is we will take a fresh look at it. When these conferences were designed it was in the day of commercial (air) travel. It was very different moving teams around the country.

“In this day and age when every team is flying charter it changes everything. It’s one of the reasons we moved back to the 2-2-1-1-1 format for this year’s Finals.” San Antonio Express-News

Grizzlies are 9th in the West but would be favored the beat the 1st place Pacers in the East. #facepalm

— aaron lanton (@alanton11) April 10, 2014

I expressed this sentiment last week and remain frustrated that the Grizzlies could miss the playoffs; let’s not dwell on that.

The other situation that must be addressed would be scheduling for teams. Currently, the Western Conference teams have a much more difficult regular season schedule because they play each other so frequently. A new playoff format for the top sixteen teams makes it necessary to balance the regular season schedule for everyone as much as possible. The abolishment of divisions is probably not necessary but we have no indications of what the league plans to do. – AL