David Stern and the 30 NBA owners met for the Board of Governors (BOG) meetings in New York today (we weren’t invited). The owners voted on whether they would change the NBA Finals format from a 2-3-2 home/away to the previously used 2-2-1-1-1. The change has happened with the board voting unanimously to make the change.
Up until 1985, coincidentally a year after Stern became the NBA’s commissioner, the Finals had aligned with the rest of the playoffs. The home team hosted the first two games of the Finals, followed by two games at the lower-seeded team’s arena before finally alternating home and away for the last 3 games in the series with the higher-seeded team hosting as a bookend to those games.
But the constrictions of commercial air travel in the 1980s, which we’ve outlined previously, necessitated a change, and the Finals moved into the 2-3-2 era, where the away team would host the middle three games before going back to the home team’s arena for the last two games.
Yahoo’s Marc J. Spears reported the news out of New York with a tweet today that the change was official, and the vote had been unanimous:
David Stern says NBA Board of Governors unanimously approve a 2-2-1-1-1 Finals with extra day off between Game 6 & 7. 2-3-2 previously.
— Marc J. Spears (@SpearsNBAYahoo) October 23, 2013
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Deputy Commissioner, and the next in line to inherit Stern’s place at the head of the NBA executive pyramid, Adam Silver, spoke about the change after the BOG meetings:
“There certainly was a perception … it was unfair to the team that had the better record, that it was then playing the pivotal Game 5 on the road. So this obviously moves that game back to giving home-court advantage to the team with the better record if it’s a 2-2 series.
[…]
“It reached a crescendo where basketball people thought it was important and the business people stood down and said it was no longer necessary for the convenience of transportation or the media.”
With the advent of more widespread chartered air travel, it makes sense to switch back to the old format, and in every other playoff series the 2-2-1-1-1 format is already used. Every team charters private planes now when they go on the road — though we’re not putting it past Suns owner Robert Sarver yanking that luxury in his continued efforts to turn the Suns into the cheapest team in the league — so it’s not necessary to align the schedule in order to appease travel-weary coaches and players.
That being said, the owners also voted to provide an extra day between games 6 and 7 in the Finals.
[NBA.com]
What do you think of the Finals format change?
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