The arrival of LeBron James to Los Angeles Lakers generated a large number of requests to the NBA to change the conference format of the Playoffs. This is considering a possible dream final against the Warriors, who also play in the West.
However, the NBA calculates an increase of 64,370.8 kilometers (40,000 miles) of travel for the next postseason if it eliminates its current conference format and opts for the classification of the league's top 16 teams.
In this way, this option of making the NBA more competitive would be discarded: in the last season, both the Warriors and the Houston Rockets finished the Western Conference with outstanding averages.
Commissioner Adam Silver has said that ideally it would be a format that allows the two best teams in the NBA to face each other in the series for the title, but he has expressed concern about the additional travel hours that would arise.
Warriors and Cavaliers faced each other in the last three NBA Finals. (Getty Images)
"The obstacle is the travel and I don't think so much about tradition. It's because we've added an additional week to the regular season, because we've tried to reduce the number of games on consecutive days. We're concerned that teams have to cross the country from side to side in the first round, for example. We're only concerned about the overall amount of travel we would have between the top 16 teams," he explained.
The league explained that it averages approximately 144,834.3 kilometers (90,000 miles) of travel in the postseason and estimates that this figure would increase to 209,205 kilometers (130,000 miles). It calculates, based on historical figures, an average of two and a half series per year between teams separated by three time zones before the NBA Finals, with a probability close to 90% that at least one of those series will occur each season.
Source: AP