Each morning, when NBA commissioner Adam Silver flips open his laptop and clicks on SI.com—for the purpose of this space we’ll assume the NBA commissioner’s go-to site for standings is, in fact, Sports Illustrated’s—what he sees makes him smile: a cluster of squads competing for playoff spots with no one separated from the rest. “It’s the most compact our standings have been literally in the history of the league,” says Silver. “And that’s something that we see from the league-office standpoint as very positive.”
Welcome to the new NBA, where a No. 8 seed can—and might—topple a No. 1 seed, and a half dozen teams (or more) will enter the playoffs with more than a puncher’s chance at a championship. Looking for superteams? Gone. Superstars? Evenly distributed. “This is the most competitive the league has ever been,” says Cavaliers president Koby Altman. Somewhere, David Stern is smiling.
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