NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is not against potentially changing the format of the season

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is open to change when changing the regular season’s format.

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In his annual NBA Finals address, Commissioner Adam Silver said that he’s open to changing the format of the NBA Regular Season if it has a direct impact on injuries. Over the years, the 82-game regular season has become an increasing talking point due to the injuries and prevalence of “Load-Management”. This season, Ja Morant, Khris Middleton, Devin Booker, Marcus Smart, and Robert Williams all missed time in the Playoffs. While the likes of Jimmy Butler, Tyler Herro, Kyle Lowry, and Chris Paul all played games while being far from 100%. Therefore, this has been a significant talking point in the player-empowerment era. Due to the COVID pandemic, the NBA did play a shortened regular season in 2020-21, although there was less time to complete the same.

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The NBA 2020-21 regular season had 72 games per team. However, it started in December and ended in early May instead of the usual end of October start and early April finish. Silver said they are “not there yet” for a potential midseason tournament”. After it had a roaring success in the 2020 Bubble post-season, the NBA added the Play-In competition and may look to add a midseason tournament next.

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Regarding the season’s structure, Commissioner Silver said, “We want to make sure we have a system where our best players are incentivized to be on the floor. At the same time, we don’t want to see them injured. And so, what we’re hoping is we can all work collectively, the 30 teams together in a non-competitive way, together with our Players Association and figure out what is optimal on these players’ bodies so that they’re incentivized to play but aren’t overdoing it to the extent where they end up playing too much and pushing through injuries.”