Adam Silver had a press conference recently. Think of it as a ‘State of the Union’ address for the NBA. And there were some key things to talk about. The Playoffs and the Draft were the top 2 issues. Among new regimes such as HGH testing and lengthening the season by a week. It’s not a month like I wanted but whatever.
But when it came to the Draft Lottery and the Playoff system. There was no change.
“When we presented all the data to the teams,” Silver said, “what becomes clear is that there is no obvious solution because we play, for example, an unbalanced schedule in terms of you play your division members more than you do other divisions, you play in your conference more than you do the other conference. And I’ve said in the past, one of the competing issues is do we reduce the number of back-to-backs, reducing the amount travel for our teams. Of course, if we have a fully balanced schedule, that will increase the amount of travel.”
“So what the basketball people pointed out,” Silver said, “and they’re right, is that of course the draft lottery and the draft are just one component of team building. There’s also free agency and then there are trades, and that it’s very difficult then to look at that one aspect in the abstract. So my sense where we were coming out is that there’s still a sense that we need to make a change, but until we see what the team behavior is going to be with all this new cap room, we should hold it and wait and then look holistically at the whole system. This one again on the draft lottery, we agreed to continue looking at it, but it seems highly unlikely at this point that we’re going to make a change for next season.“
These are two very delicate issues for the Association. We have to find a way to stop tanking. It’s a disease to the game. And the Playoff Seeding is tragic. Good on teams like Boston and Milwaukee for making it. But it’s sad that people like Russell Westbrook has to deal with being in the West.
