Adam Silver: NBA will 'continue to look at' 1-16 playoff seeding, schedule changes

To put the 16 best teams in the playoffs regardless, the regular season would need to be altered

The current NBA playoff format has been under scrutiny in recent years thanks to the discrepancy in wins between Western Conference and Eastern Conference teams.

The top eight teams from each conference make the playoffs, sometimes leading to teams with sub-.500 records being included, and teams with 45-plus wins being excluded. A simple format where the teams with the 16 best records make the playoffs, regardless of conference affiliation, seems to make more sense. Logistically, however, commissioner Adam Silver says the change would be a lot more complicated. Via ESPN:

"Reformatting the playoffs is something we'll continue to look at," Silver said. "I think though it would require revisiting the regular-season schedule as well. As I've said before, we don't play a balanced schedule now, as I'm sure you know. And for those that don't, that means that teams in the East play each other more than they play teams in the West. And our feeling is, if we were going to seed 1-16, we would need to play a balanced schedule to make it fair for everyone if we were going to seed 1-16 in the playoffs. It may be that as we continue to experiment with the number of days over which we can schedule 82 games that it will create more of an opportunity for a balanced schedule."

Silver reiterated that the 82-game schedule is not set in stone, and that the league might be willing to alter the length of the season to accommodate a new 1-16 playoff format.

"Let me add to that I said the other day [to USA Today] that there's no magic in an 82-game season," Silver said. "It's not a change you're going to see in the short term, but I think when we step back and look holistically at our schedule and how playoffs are seeded we should look at the entire format. Counter-balancing seeding playoff teams 1-16 is also the desire to create more rest for our players and when possible reduce the amount of travel.

"In adding the extra week to the regular season this year, we will be able to eliminate completely four games in five nights. I think it's the first time in the history of the league we were able to do that. Plus we have back to backs at an all-time low. If we took the existing format, the existing schedule and then we seeded playoffs 1-16, we'd be adding additional travel. You would have teams criss-crossing the country in the first round."

In the 2014-15 season, the Oklahoma City Thunder missed the Western Conference playoffs with a record of 45-37, while the Brooklyn Nets secured the eighth and final seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs with a record of 38-44. The new seeding system would prevent imbalances like this from happening.

While no changes are on the horizon as of yet, it's clear that Silver isn't afraid to look at alterations that would deviate from traditional NBA norms.