Ever since March 11th, we have been without NBA basketball. Of course, the league infamously shut down due to Rudy Gobert getting infected with the Coronavirus. Since then, over a million people in the United States have been infected with the virus and the NBA is still looking at ways that it can safely return to action. While it may not be coming back right away, there have been reports suggesting that we could see the return of basketball as soon as July 15th.
As far as the playoffs are concerned, there doesn't seem to be a concrete plan in place. Stephen A. Smith took to First Take this morning with an interesting idea in which he suggested the NBA go for the NCAA route. Essentially, since the league will only be playing in one or two cities, they should eliminate conferences and instead have the first seed play the 16th seed.
Smith makes the argument that the NBA has wanted to do this for a while but never followed through because of travel concerns. However, if the league were to play in a bubble city, they wouldn't be able to use such an excuse.
While this is a great idea, it might be hard for some teams to buy into it right away. At the end of the day, the rules upon return are up to the teams and if they don't sign off on it, we won't have any basketball.
Let us know in the comments below what you think about this potential plan.