Retaining divisional scheduling will help the Thunder - NewsOK.com
NBA commissioner Adam Silver says the league likely will do away with any automatic playoff qualification or seeding for division winners. As I’ve written, that’s fine, so long as you get rid of divisions. But it’s goofy to have divisions and no reward for division winners. Reminds me of a great scene from “The Wonder Years. ” Kevin Arnold is paired in science class with some dorky girl, who sort of takes a shine to him and Kevin actually realizes she’s not so bad. So he tells Margaret Fahrquar sure, they can be friends. But sure, they can be great friends. Same with division winners. If the NBA doesn’t want to reward division winners, it should get rid of divisions and just have 15-team conferences. Play two games a year against each team from the other conference, which leaves 52 intra-conference games. That’s 14 opponents, so you’d rotate year to year who would play four times a season and who would play three times a season. That’s similar to what we have now, except teams within your division you play four times a year automatically, ostensibly for geographic purposes, even though Oklahoma City, Minneapolis and Portland share the Northwest Division. Keeping divisions helps the Thunder in the near future. A guaranteed four games a year against the Timberwolves, the Nuggets, the TrailBlazers and the Jazz. Source: newsok.com
