According to Mingji Stan, several teams jointly petitioned the NBA to consider changing the relevant qualifications of the No. 9 and No. 10 seeds to participate in the playoffs. Because the 8th place record is better than the 9th and 10th seeds, it is a bit unfair to have to pass a game to win or lose.
They want to see the 9th and 10th seeds in the regular season stay within a certain gap with the 8th place record before they can play in the playoffs. But for now, the final record of the two lower seeds (ninth and tenth) in the regular season is not important, and the 7-10th place can participate in the playoffs regardless of the difference.
This record gap is particularly pronounced in the West, where both the Cavaliers and Clippers lost their two playoff games this season, leaving neither the East nor west of the 8th seed out of the playoffs. The ninth-place Pelicans in the West are eight-placed Clippers with six wins, and the Tenth-place Spurs in the West are eight wins behind eighth-place Clippers.
For two consecutive years, the No. 8 seed missed the playoffs, and the serious psychological gap led more and more teams to question the play-off rules, after all, a season of hard work, the result of a game is in vain, and anyone's heart is unbalanced.
While Xiao Hua is generally open to such topics, it's unclear whether the league intends to make changes to the play-off format for next season.