NBA commissioner Adam Silver has picked a good season to go on record about restructuring the NBA’s playoff bracket.

In his first full year running the show, Silver is addressing what is now turning into a Conference imbalance that has droned on for over a decade and a half. The Western Conference is clearly better than the Eastern version. It hardly matters if an eventual NBA Finals between representatives from each conference turns out to be a competitive one, because deserving playoff squads are being cut from the postseason rotation out West while mediocre or worse Eastern squads are being handed playoff dates.

In years past, opponents of such restructuring (such as your humble, misguided author) could point to the cyclical nature of conference inbalances dating back through the NBA’s long history, or the tough travel that would result with either the abolishment of conferences or the allowance of letting the 16 best teams into the playoffs regardless of conference affiliation.

Those arguments aren’t working in 2014-15, and while nothing will be changed this spring, Silver is at least considering his options. Via Pro Basketball Talk, here’s what Silver said to the Comcast Sportsnet Bay Area Golden State broadcasting team while being interviewed during last night’s thrilling Warriors win over Dallas:

“Ultimately we want to see your best teams in the playoffs. And there is an unbalance and a certain unfairness. There is a proposal (from one of the broadcasters)… where the division winners would all automatically go into the playoffs and then you’d seed the next 10 best teams. I think that’s the kind of proposal we need to look at. There are travel issues of course, but in this day in age every team of course has their own plane, travels charter. I don’t think the discussion should end there. And as I’ve said, my first year I was studying a lot of these issues and year two is time to take action. It’s something I’m going to look at closely with the competition committee. I do think it’s an area where we need to make a change.”

That last statement leaves no room for ambiguity, and that’s refreshing. That’s not surprising from Silver, who has made quite an impact in just 12 months on the job, but it’s also not something that can be easily processed.

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A massive chunk of NBA ownership would have to approve this, and it wouldn’t just be outfits from Detroit, Charlotte or Brooklyn that would oppose such a change. We don’t want to name names so as to spare certain fan bases the horrifying image of their favorite player being knocked out for the season, but every top notch and championship-contending team in the East is just an injury or two away from fighting to eke into the eighth seed in the bracket. It won’t be just the 38-win teams that would vote to do away with the current system.

It has to be done away with, though. Leaving conferences intact would still leave some imbalance (New Orleans still has to play Golden State four times, whereas a lower-rung Eastern hopeful can build up their resume with four easy wins over Philadelphia), but eliminating the current format to include the top 16 teams regardless of conference is the needed start. The league can take its time to figure out how much it values conferences and divisions later, while making sure the playoff bracket is as good as it has ever been.

In years past, hypothetical top-16 brackets posed far too many travel concerns to be taken seriously. First-round matchups featuring teams playing in East Rutherford and Phoenix or Orlando and Los Angeles seemed to be the tipping point, but this time around the travel doesn’t look all that terrifying.

Charlotte and Miami would be stricken from the current lineup in favor of New Orleans and Oklahoma City, with the Thunder and Warriors playing a rather mileage-heavy first round matchup that you’d already probably see in any Western postseason. Cross-conference matchups would include New Orleans taking on Atlanta (they should probably be in the same division anyway), Milwaukee taking on Memphis (they share a time zone), and two dicier ones in the Portland/Chicago and Los Angeles Clippers/Washington Wizards matchups.

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