Friday is expected to be an important day for the NBA as the Board of Governors will have a conference call to discuss potential plans to restart the season, but the NBA also finally got desired feedback from general managers about potential formats.
According to The Athletic’s Shams Charania, 83% of the league’s general managers voted in support of a 20-team, expanded playoff-plus format. Meanwhile, 53% of the teams (also read: the 16 playoff teams), were in favor of going straight to a traditional postseason with eight seven-game series in the first round. But judging by other reports about the survey, it doesn’t appear that the World Cup-style group stage format has much support. The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor reports 75% of the general managers to support a play-in format for the final playoff seeds.
So, if we are to take these two reports together, here is where we are: a vast majority knows that a traditional playoff format won’t be suitable for the situation. The NHL made this decision earlier in the week, having an expanded 24-team playoff format. It’s still unclear what a play-in format would look like.
As it stands now, here are the seven teams within four games of each other from 14-20: Memphis, Orlando, Brooklyn, Portland, New Orleans, Sacramento, and San Antonio. Then we have the Mavericks, who are seven games ahead of everyone else. This probably wouldn’t sit well with Brooklyn or Orlando, but there were always going to be winners and losers with any of the choices that the NBA makes. There are a couple of ways to do this, but one of them could be a 7-team tournament for the final three playoff spots. ESPN’s Zach Lowe laid out how that could be an option earlier this week, even given the odd numbers.
As it stands right now, the Lowe proposal of having some kind of round-robin among the final seven teams in the top-20 of the league for the final three spots seems like it is the most likely format. But just because the general managers are voting one way doesn’t change that the final decision sits squarely with Silver.
