Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — No more division winners? It could likely happen.
National Basketball Association (NBA) Commissioner Adam Silver on Tuesday (Wednesday PHT) announced that the league’s Competition Committee has recommended a new playoff sedding format where teams in each conference will be seeded from one to eight based solely on their win-loss record.
“The recommendation from the Competition Committee is that we should seed one through eight based on conference standings for the playoffs [and] eliminate the preference for a division,” said Silver. “That recommendation was discussed at the Board today.”
In the current system, division winners are given an automatic top-four seed. With the new playoff seeding format, however, teams of each conference will be ranked one to eight based on their win-loss records, regardless if they win their division.
The recommendation, which is a response to the criticism of the current playoff seeding system, hasn’t been put to a vote yet. But Silver is optimistic it will be approved before the start of the upcoming season.
“It wasn’t voted on yet because we wanted all the owners to have an opportunity to go back and discuss that recommendation with their general managers and their coaches, and we’ll vote on it before the beginning of the season,” said Silver.
