God willing, we’ll have official confirmation of the NBA’s return to play when the Board of Governors holds a conference call this afternoon.

The BOG is expected to approve a 22-team format that will begin next month in Orlando, with squads playing eight regular season games to finish the year before advancing to the playoffs.

This gives your team, your town, your 76ers an opportunity to move up to the 4th or 5th seed, which would determine whether they play the Celtics or Heat in the first round (or somebody else if there’s a big shakeup). There is no home court advantage with 22 teams moving to a neutral location, but the league, according to ESPN, is discussing the following ideas in order to create some sort of alternative benefit for the higher seeds:

There’s some wonky stuff in there, but the first bullet is interesting, the one regarding possessions to start the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quarter.

One of the things the Sixers are very good at is “out-voluming” teams via total field goal attempts because they simply collect more rebounds and have better +/- turnover margins than most other NBA squads. That number might skew a bit if they’re the #5 seed playing the #4 Heat, who get the ball to start these quarters.

When we left the season, the Sixers, according to NBA stats:

  • attempted 87.7 field goals per game (25th worst in the league)
  • allowed 85.7 field goals per game (3rd best in league)

They were +2 in FGA per game, and would often make up for their average shooting by simply just putting up more shots via a combo of defense, steals, rebounding, etc. Under this discussed idea, the opponent would be getting a slight head start with the extra possession.

The seven fouls thing is also interesting. The most practical application here is that you wouldn’t necessarily have to pull a superstar from the game if they pick up a couple of cheap early fouls, since you have an extra to work with on the back end. Joel Embiid could theoretically stay in the game instead of coming out in the 2nd or 3rd quarter.

The coach’s challenge is also interesting in the fact that most seem hesitant to burn a timeout to use it in the first place, so I can’t imagine this rule would change much of anything.

And as far as the hotel and actual hardwood court thing, it’s hard to qualify, but feeling more comfortable certainly helps. Certainly you’d rather stay at a Hilton rather than one of the roach motels on the White Horse Pike, but I can’t imagine Disney hotels would have that much of a disparity, to the point where one team is significantly disadvantaged by staying there.

Vote is today at 12:30 p.m., so we’ll see if these bullet points become official.