Commissioner Adam Silver envisions that happening in the near future.
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An National Basteball Association team could win their division but miss out on the playoffs under a proposed rule change.
Silver had already said he expected a change from the current format that guarantees division winners no worse than the No. 4 seed.
“So while we’re going to continue to discuss it a little bit more – we need to make a decision before the preseason begins – I think the greater likelihood is we will not be guaranteeing a spot to a division victor”, he said Wednesday.
If you win your division and don’t have a top-eight record in your respective conference, your playoff hopes wouldn’t have an National Basteball Association Championship at the end of it. Silver mentioned how slim it is for this to actually happen.
“Number one, we’ve looked at it a fair amount and discussed it both at the competition committee and at the Board [of Governors]”, he said before appearing on a panel with Teresa Edwards and Dikembe Mutombo at the Prudential Center for Beyond Sport Unlimited, a conference on social engagement in sports.
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Controversy about the league’s seeding system, which now guarantees a top-four seed to each of the six division winners, came to the forefront last season when the Portland Trail Blazers earned the No. 4 seed despite finishing with the West’s sixth-best record. That led to the 56-win Clippers and 55-win Spurs facing off in the first round. It means that big changes could be coming for the 2016 National Basteball Association Playoffs, and that the possibility now exists that a division victor (in either conference) could potentially miss the postseason.
