So this keeps on coming up in the NBA news and it has been expanding on as far as the plans go.
This is about a in-season tourney for the 7th and 8 seeds in the conferences. Here is how it would work.
The NBA season would be reduced to 78 games. This would in theory start in the 2021-2022 season on a trial basis and would have an option to continue the following season.
There would be an in season tourney and a play in tourney.
The in season tourney would start play around Nov 24th 2021 and goes till Dec 11th 2021. (Dates are tenitive)
In that tourney there would be 8 divisional games played. 4 home and 4 away games. The 6 division winners and 2 wild card teams would qualify for the quarter finals. Semi finals would be played as a double header and the finals would take place 2 days after the semi finals. Semis and Finals will be played at a neutral site like Vegas. Basically where there is no home court advantage. Players on the winning team would split 15 million amongst each other and the couching staff would split 1.5 million. There could be different prizing for the teams that made the final 4.
This is how the play in tourney would work.
The regular season would end on a Saturday as opposed to Wednesday, giving teams a whole week before the playoffs start.
Top 6 teams in each conference is in the playoffs. The 7 through 10 seeds will have a chance to get in the playoffs by playing each other. The 7th and 8th seed would play each other with the winner clinching the 7th seed. The 9th and 10th seed would play each other with the winner of that/those game(s)? would play the loser of the 7/8 seed matchup to determine the 8th seed. The first 2 rounds would be played as usual and when it gets down to the final 4 teams they will be reseeded based on regular season record.
https://www.nba.com/article/2019/12/20/nba-proposes-78-game-season-among-changes