NBA Board of Governors approve rule changes

If posted before please lock and I apologize.

NEW YORK, August 2, 2006 – The National Basketball Association has enacted several significant rules changes that will go into effect for the upcoming 2006-07 season:


Playoff Seeding:
The first four seeds in each conference will continue to be given to the three division winners and the team with the next best regular season record, but these four teams will now be seeded in order of their regular season records. Among other things, this change will ensure that the two teams with the best records in the conference will not meet earlier than the Conference Finals.


Shortening Timeouts:
If a team has two 60 second timeouts left in the last two minutes of regulation or in overtime, one of the two timeouts will be shortened to a 20 second timeout.

Instead of having three 60 second timeouts in overtime, teams will have two 60's and one 20 second timeout. Teams will no longer be permitted to carry over a 20 second timeout from regulation into overtime.


Increase in Playoff Roster Size:
Playoff roster size will be expanded from 13 to 15 players, with each team designating 12 active players and up to three inactive players prior to each game.
“Our owners are intent on making the playoff seeding more fair for all teams going forward and in quickening the pace of the end of games,” said Stu Jackson, NBA Executive Vice President, Basketball Operations. “The Board also thought it made sense to allow teams to utilize the same 15-man roster in the playoffs that they use during the regular season.”

The rules changes were recommended by the Rules and Competition Committee at its annual meeting in June, and approved this week by a vote of the Board of Governors.

the playoff seeding is the big one of those 3, since dallas-san antonio in round 2 didnt make sense. the other rules arent much of anything,

Yea as cwebb said, Playoffs one is big, because Denver didnt really deserve to be 3rd(the way they played in the season) but because of that sucky division they got it.

Good changes, the increase of the playoff roster will allow rookies to play more during playoff

I wouldnt necessarily say that since, for one, in most instances coaches try to shorten their bench come playoff time (to the more trusted players).

I guees they are good changes .But I only like the playoff seeding changes,I don't think the other two mater that much.

I know I wasn't in favour of it originally but the change in seeding does sound like a good idea. Previously I was under the impression they would be making more dramatic, unnecessary changes. I believe there needs to be some reward for winning the Division aside from simply automatically qualifying for the Playoffs so keeping the Division winners as top four seeds with the Division runner up with the best record in there and all four seeded by regular season record sounds fair enough to me.

The other two changes sound alright as well.

Great changes for once...the nba is making progress. I was afraid it was something drastic like removing hand checking and further pussfying the sport.

The playoff Rosters thing should have been in a long ass time ago. . .why only have 13 players when you can have all your players playing!!

im not sure about the shortened time out change.. other 2 i dont care, just that.. shorter time outs oh my!

im not sure about the shortened time out change.. other 2 i dont care, just that.. shorter time outs oh my!

I guess it helps in those instances where it take 10-15 minutes just to finish the last 60 seconds of the game.

^^
also, it means less commercials in the final minute of the game.

the playoff seeding new rules are great i think. id rather seen that dallas vs san antonio in the conference finals

They need to bring back the handchecking and make the scoring harder. They need to implement death penality for every ref who makes mistakes in critical moments of the game. They need to allow all sorts of zone defense. I could go on and on, but to no avail.

I like these changes. They actually make sense.

Handchecking, handchecking, handchecking, handcheck...