INDEPENDENCE, Ohio _ Changing the NBA playoff qualifiers to the 16 teams with the best records instead of the top eight in each conference has been seriously discussed at the league office over the last few years, Commissioner Adam Silver said Saturday night.
But Cavaliers star LeBron James disagrees with that suggestion and said he believes the league "has been built the right way when it comes to the postseason."
Western Conference teams have won three of the last four titles, with the Cavs in 2016 the spoilers in a run that includes two victories by the Golden State Warriors and one by the San Antonio Spurs.
"It just changes the landscape of the history of the game," James said Wednesday after practice at Cleveland Clinic Courts. "If you start messing with seedings and playoffs and then you start talking about, 'Well, if this team would have played this Western Conference team, what ...' It's cool to mess around with the All-Star Game _ we proved you can do that _ but let's not get too crazy about the playoffs."
James, who has been to seven consecutive Finals and won three championships with the Miami Heat and Cavs, said conference dominance is cyclical.
"In the '80s you had the Lakers who dominated the league at one point, then you had Boston. In the '90s you had Chicago. San Antonio also had its run. We had our run in the East with Miami, Golden State is having their run."
If the playoffs ended Wednesday under the proposed change, nine of the top 16 teams would be from the Western Conference.
James said he doesn't take it personally when the East is criticized as the weaker of the two.
"No, of course not. For what?" he said. "I've been a part of the Eastern Conference my whole career and we've been very, very competitive. There's been years where we weren't as good. If I can think from once I got into the league, it's been us, I've done it three times, Detroit, Boston, Miami in '06, that's like seven championships out of 14 years. That's half, right? So what are we talking about?"
It's actually six of 14, but James made a good argument as a counter-point to what Silver said Saturday at Staples Center in Los Angeles.
"The obstacle is travel, and it's not tradition, in my mind at least," Silver said of the possible change. "It's that as we've added an extra week to the regular season, as we've tried to reduce the number of back-to-backs, that we are concerned about teams crisscrossing the country in the first round, for example. We are just concerned about the overall travel that we would have in the top 16 teams.
"You also would like to have a format where your two best teams are ultimately going to meet in The Finals and, obviously, if it's the top team in the East and top team in the West, I'm not saying this is the case this year, but you could have a situation where the top two teams in the league are meeting in the Conference finals or somewhere else. So we're going to continue to look at that."
Silver said the scenario might include lengthening the regular season again, while noting, "Maybe air travel will get better."
