5 Suggestions for New Commissioner Adam Silver

1. Speed up instant replay with a fourth referee at every game.  Crews would need to be expanded from 3 to 4 adding one alternate ref whose sole job is to sit courtside and look at replays quickly and accurately and relay the right call to the crew chief.  This should take about 30 seconds or less and never more than a minute.  Normally on a TV replay during a game I only need one or two viewings to know the right call so the fourth ref should easily be able to do that at least as well as I do.  

I’m not in favor of a central replay office in New York because I think the communication between NYC and all the arenas would be so cumbersome that it wouldn’t really speed up the current process much if at all. 

2. Get rid of divisions all together and go with Eastern and Western Conferences only and seed teams 1 to 8 in each conference by best record.  As part of this change the season could be shortened from 82 to 72 games.  The breakdown would be 30 games against the other conference (15x2) and 42 games within the same conference (14x3).  That way there is a natural tiebreaker within the conference when it comes to playoff seeding.  

I’m not for eliminating conferences all together and going to a 58-game season where each team plays each other twice with no back-to-backs at all and the best 16 teams in the league making the playoffs.  That would be far too much lost revenue for the owners (720 games worth [24x30]) and just too radical for the public to get behind.  We may end up there eventually but we need baby steps first. 

3. Widen the court to make the 3-point line universally 23’9.  You currently need 3 feet between the sideline and the 3-point line making the distance 22 feet in corners.  To make the distance 23’9 in the corners the court would need to be widened by 3’6.  So the court dimensions would go from 94x50 to 94x54.  Now there would be 3’3 in each corner and hopefully that extra 3 inches would be enough to avoid guys stepping out of bounds so much when they set their feet.  

I think this would have the dual bonus of creating more spacing both on the perimeter and in the paint.  I know it would take away the “corner 3” as the best shot in basketball but the numbers guys will adjust and find new efficiencies to exploit.  

A common misnomer is that widening the court would somehow lose revenue for teams by taking seats away.  The reality of the situation is that when you make the perimeter of a rectangle bigger you actually need more seats to surround it, not less.  So this whole argument about lost revenue due to a bigger court is nonsense when you have to add a bunch of new prime courtside seats. 

4. Up the age limit to 2 years out of high school.  In theory this hopefully would give teams more time to scout players thus reducing costly draft mistakes.  I know the Player’s Association would need some kind of concession to make this happen even though this technically would give older players in the league a longer shelf life. 

Besides “If you can serve your country at 18 you should also be able to play in the NBA” the most popular counter-argument these days has become that players actually develop faster in the NBA than they do in the NCAA.  The rationale being that the NBA has better coaches, trainers, facilities and everything that goes with that including being able to focus on getting better 100% of the time.  While I can kind of see that point I don’t see any chance of the league going backwards on the 1-year rule when they fought so hard to get it in the first place. 

5. Go back to not testing for marijuana.  It’s going to be legal soon enough and all the players already smoke it anyway.