FYI: NBA Finals Changed To 2-2-1-1-1

The 2-3-2 NBA Finals format is following David Stern out of the league. NBA owners unanimously voted Wednesday to return to the 2-2-1-1-1 format, believing the travel inconveniences that teams faced when Stern became commissioner nearly 30 years ago no longer exist.

 

 

Reports AP:

 

Beginning with the 2014 finals, the higher-seeded team will host Games 1, 2, 5 and 7. The lower seed gets Games 3, 4 and 6, following the same format the NBA uses in all other rounds.

The current format was instituted in 1985, Stern’s first full year in charge, in part to ease the amount of cross-country travel with the Celtics and Lakers frequently meeting for the championship. But critics felt it gave an edge to the lower-seeded team.

”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,” Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver said.

The vote came during Stern’s final preseason meeting with his board of governors. Owners also voted to add an extra day between Games 6 and 7.

The league’s competition committee had recommended the change last month back to 2-2-1-1-1, which was used in all but one finals from 1957 to 1984.

The change to the 2-3-2 format was one of the earliest made by Stern, who has often said he was acting on advice – or complaints – about the travel from former Celtics boss Red Auerbach. But with commercial flights long since replaced by charters, teams didn’t have the same difficulties now with the number of trips.

Instead, the ones who had the higher seed found it more inconvenient, Stern said, to be on the road for as many as eight days in a row when the opponent hosted the middle three games.

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Silver, who will become commissioner after Stern retires Feb. 1, is a proponent of the 2-2-1-1-1 format, though he said Stern and other league executives all thought it was time for the change.

”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,” Silver said.