NBA Could Borrow a Page From the World Cup as Part of Season Restart Plan

Over the last week, NBA commissioner Adam Silver has looked into unconventional ways in order to restart the season. The discussion between going straight into the playoffs or having a certain amount of regular season games is one that affects teams that are on the bubble in the race for the eighth seed. Now, there is a new idea that could be brought to the forefront.

The league’s movement of trying to create parity between the 30 teams is a difficult task to undertake, but now is the perfect time to do so. One of the ways that Silver could look into giving more teams an opportunity to win is by looking towards the biggest international soccer tournament every four years, the FIFA World Cup.

Before the initial knockout stage where the tournament takes on a one-and-done system, each team in the field is placed into groups where the top two teams advance to the knockout rounds. The association could be looking into a similar concept with teams 1-10 in the East and West being split into groups and then the top two moving on for the conventional playoff series. Nothing about this year has been normal, and fans realize this is the time to give it a try.

How exactly the league will proceed going into the summer is still a question. If the NBA’s World Cup experiment does or does not work, at the very least we can take solace in the fact that Silver and Co. are trying to make this work.