Not likely.

Silver, mind you, hasn’t signaled that he’s seriously in favor of changing the format anyway. Not without a much more balanced regular-season schedule.

My long-held dream of a completely balanced schedule, using the Premier League soccer model in which every N.B.A. team would play the other 29 teams twice each — home and home — is a complete no-hoper. That would take the regular-season schedule down to 58 games from 82. Zero owners out of 30 would forfeit 12 home dates per season and their corresponding revenue. It will never, ever happen.

Nor will a switch to playing three games every season against every other team. That would stretch the 82-game season to 87 — after the N.B.A. just moved up the start of the regular season by a week, shortened its preseason schedule considerably and extended the All-Star break to reduce schedule congestion.

If a smoother formula emerges for a more balanced schedule that positions each team to play the same number of regular-season games against East and West teams, expect Silver to consider it. He has made it clear in recent news conferences that he is not wedded to the 82-game schedule, in place since the 1967-68 season. He hasn’t been a “that’s the way we’ve always done it” kind of commissioner.

“The obstacle is travel — and it’s not tradition in my mind at least,” Silver said in February.

Player health and wellness, remember, have been top priorities during Silver’s four years in charge. Any change to the playoff system would have to work in concert with the various initiatives he has already enacted in hopes of giving players more windows for sleep, more protections against fatigue and more insulation from the time-zone switches that wreak havoc on body clocks.

Something else to consider: The East, at least in the regular season, has been far more competitive against the West lately than anyone seems willing to acknowledge. Over the past three seasons, Eastern Conference teams were 24, 42 and 14 games under .500 in head-to-head games against the West.

The discrepancy was 118 games under .500 for the East as recently as the 2013-14 season. Going back further, that same gap was 98 (2000-1), 80 (2002-3) and 112 (2003-4) in three of the first four seasons in the 2000s.