NBA owners and commissioner Adam Silver spoke at the Board of Governors meeting on Tuesday night about potential rule changes heading into the 2015-16 NBA season. While nothing has been voted on yet, it appears there are likely to be a few minor changes. Among the things that were discussed at the meeting were playoff seedings, the week-long moratorium before free agency officially starts and the "Hack-A-Shaq" rule, according to Yahoo! Sports.
The one major thing that Silver believes will change is the way playoff seeding is done. A division winner was previously automatically given a top four seed regardless of their record, but now the divisions serve virtually no purpose other than rivalries. Each conference will be seeded based on record from one through eight, and division winners are not given an advantage anymore. Many people have been clamoring for the NBA to move to conference-less playoffs, meaning that the top 16 teams in the whole league make the playoffs regardless of conference, because of how weak the Eastern Conference has been lately. Teams with losing records have made it into the Eastern Conference playoffs for the past few years, but that isn't likely to change anytime soon, unless the East gets better.
The reason there hasn't been a vote yet is because Silver said he would like the owners to be able to discuss these changes with their general managers and coaching staffs before anything can become official.
A couple of the other big topics discussed at the meetings will likely result in no change, such as the league moratorium before free agency begins, which is a hot topic due to recent events. After the whole DeAndre Jordan saga, many in the basketball community felt that the moratorium period needed change because Jordan gave a verbal commitment to the Dallas Mavericks and then decided later that he was going to go back to the Los Angeles Clippers. He was able to do this because about a week before free agency starts, players can discuss contract details with teams and give verbal commitments, but they can't sign on the dotted line, so before that moratorium ends the contract is unofficial and can technically be taken back like Jordan did.
While Silver did admit the system is not perfect and that the Jordan situation is not what is supposed to happen during the moratorium, he also noted that changes were discussed but likely not forthcoming.
"I think there was some discussion on whether the moratorium should be a bit shorter, it's an imperfect system and we think we are finding the right balance between teams having the opportunity to talk to players when they become free agents and creating certainty at some point when contracts are entered into," said Silver.
As far as the "Hack-A-Shaq" rule goes, Silver also said that there are likely no changes coming there either for a few different reasons. One of them is that he doesn't want to send the wrong message to kids playing basketball that free throws are unimportant. The other, and likely more important reason, is that Silver doesn't believe this strategy has affected the ratings.
"We recognize we are an entertainment product and we're competing for eyeballs, No. 1, it's almost counter intuitive, but the ratings don't show people are tuning it off. Maybe if it became even more prevalent fans truly would flip the channel. But at least so far that hasn't been the case," said Silver.
One other thing that is expected to change when it comes to a vote is the baseline being widened by a foot so that players don't run into cameramen like LeBron James did during the NBA Finals, and so players don't run into the stanchion like Paul George did in a USA Basketball exhibition game.
