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Silver: Playoff format's gotten 'serious attention' in league office

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LOS ANGELES - The NBA did away with the East vs. West Conference format for the first time in the All-Star Game's 67-year history this season. Commissioner Adam Silver said Saturday the league isn't any closer to moving away from the conference-based All-Star selection process, but altering the playoff format is being considered more seriously.

"It would require a lot of changes," Silver said when asked whether the league office has considered going with the best 24 players regardless of conference.

"It really is related to how we schedule the games, because we don't play a balanced schedule. There's always been the notion that because it's unbalanced, when the coaches vote (for All-Star reserves), coaches in that conference, because they're seeing those players more often, should have more say in who becomes an All-Star. It could follow that we should be taking a look at the top 24 players as opposed to doing East and West, but then that gets me to when we get to the playoffs. Should we be taking either the best 16 teams, or even if we go eight from the west and eight from the East, seeding one through 16 going into the playoffs?"

Silver indeed seemed much more open to the idea of adjusting the league's playoff format.

"That is something that has gotten serious attention over the last few years in the league office," Silver said of seeding teams 1-16 rather than by conference.

"As I've said in the past, the obstacle is travel. It's not tradition, in my mind at least. We've added an extra week to the regular season to try to reduce the number of back-to-backs. We are concerned about teams crisscrossing the country in the first round, for example. We're just considered about the overall travel that we would have with the top 16 teams. Having said that, you also would like to have a format where your two best teams are ultimately going to meet in the Finals. You could have a situation (in the current format) where the top two teams are meeting in the conference finals."

This is the third year in a row where the top two teams in the overall standings reside in the West.

"We're going to continue to look at that, and it's still my hope that we're going to figure out ways," Silver said Saturday. "Maybe ultimately we have to add even more days to the season to spread it out a little bit more to deal with the travel. Maybe air travel will get better. All things we'll keep looking at."

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