Can we just chill when it comes to Adam Silver? I’ve seen a lot of hate being projected at him. And most of it isn’t exactly fair. There are so many problems coming his way in the coming years. We cannot expect results straight away. It’s going to take time. He got everything right when it came to Donald Sterling. But we all can’t bat 1.000. He’s going to say some things that won’t be in your favor. So. Take a breathe. And let’s hear the guy out.
Silver recently talked to Bleacher Report Radio. And the issue of divisions came up. Mainly answering the question, “What’s the point of divisions?”.
In terms of the fact that a division winner may get a higher seed than a team with a better record in its conference, as you know, that’s the way it’s been. It raises the larger issue of if we should have divisions. My view is, if we’re going to have divisions, we should be rewarding the division winner. And maybe, people can fairly say, you have divisions, you reward the winner, but you don’t make a big enough deal out of the fact that they won the division, and fans aren’t even that knowledgeable about what the divisions are, and that’s a very fair point.
Now the problem is. NBA divisions are not like MLB divisions. They aren’t as publicized much. They’re just there for tiebreaker reasons. The winner doesn’t get anything. So what can the NBA do to make it relevant?
I think we should go one way or the other. There’s very little you can win in this league as opposed to, for example, European soccer leagues where there’s multiple cups throughout the season. There’s very little you can win here. You can win your division, you can win your conference, you can win the championship. But if ultimately, people’s view is, “Who cares who wins the division?” We should take a fresh look at it. Or make a bigger deal out of the fact that they do play a very long regular season, competing in an unbalanced schedule, playing teams in their division more than the rest of the teams in their conference, playing teams in their conference more than other teams in the league, and maybe those rivalries should matter and it should be a big deal that they end up winning.
Now obviously when it comes to baseball, the teams play in their division a lot more than teams in the NBA. In my mind that shouldn’t be changed. Inter-conference matchups don’t irk the NBA fans compared to the MLB fans. I don’t think there is a clear-cut solution when it comes to NBA divisions. I wouldn’t mind if it was gone.
But then again. Is it really that much of a problem? It’s not like it’s affecting the quality of the game.
