The Milwaukee Bucks, the current leaders in NBA regular season record, will get their chance to play for an NBA title through an altered tournament, according to a report.
The NBA will vote Thursday on a 22-team format with eight regular season games, leading to a 16-team NBA playoffs, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
The league schedule would run between July 31 and October 12, with all games played in Orlando.
Each team would play an eight-game schedule to help seed the teams for the playoffs.
New Orleans, Portland, Phoenix, Sacramento and San Antonio (all Western Conference teams within realistic shot of the 8th seed) and Washington (the Eastern Conference team within range of the 8th seed) would participate with the current top eight seeds in each conference, per Wojnarowski.
Additionally, if a team is within four games of the eight seed after the eight-game stretch, a sequence of play-in games would happen to decide the 8th seed, according to Wojnarowski.
The Bucks had the NBA’s best record and the Eastern Conference No. 1 seed at the point that the league cut off play due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Bucks organization did not comment about the report.