The possibility of a revamped NBA regular season is no longer faint.
The NBA is in “serious discussions” with the NBA Players Association and its broadcast partners about an overhaul of its regular season schedule, ESPN reported Saturday. The primary change would be a reduction of the regular season to a minimum of 78 games per team, with the addition of an in-season tournament to make up the revenue shortfall.
The in-season tournament would begin after Thanksgiving and run through mid-December, with a group stage consisting of regularly scheduled games and then a single-elimination knockout round involving eight teams.
The league is also considering playoff play-in games involving the teams seeded seventh through tenth in each conference, and reseeding the final four playoff teams regardless of conference, ideas that have been floated for some time.
The changes likely would not take place until the 2021-22 season.
ESPN first reported the NBA’s proposals in June, but the big change since then is that the talks have gone from “very exploratory” (ESPN 6/26) to having “legitimate and serious traction” (ESPN 11/23). According to Saturday’s report, there has been no pushback from the NBPA as of yet.
The NBA’s potential overhaul comes as the NFL is pushing for a seventeenth regular season game for each of its teams and an expanded postseason field of 14 teams.
None of the “Big Four” leagues has fundamentally altered its regular season schedule — not counting lockout-shortened seasons — since the NHL briefly expanded to an 84-game schedule in the 1990s.
