Here's what the NBA should have done this season:
1. 60-game schedule - 72 is too much if you want to get players in the Olympics
2. Temporary realignment:
Atlantic: Boston, Brooklyn, New York, Philadelphia, Toronto (playing in Buffalo), Washington
Central: Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Indiana, Milwaukee, Minnesota
Pacific: Golden State, LA Clippers, LA Lakers, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento
Southeast: Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis, Miami, New Orleans, Orlando
Southwest: Dallas, Denver, Houston, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Utah
Abolition of Eastern and Western Conferences for this year only. No cross-division play this year, 12 games against each team in your division to reduce the amount of unnecessary travel.
3: Playoffs
Top 4 teams in each division play a best-of-three first round (first game at lower seed, remaining games at higher seed) and best-of-five second round (2-3 home court format, first two games at lower seed). No dumb play-in games, if you have one of the four best records in your division, you should be in the playoffs without any question.
The five divisional playoff winners would gather at the home court of the team with the best record still in the playoffs. The two with the worst regular season records would play a two-game points aggregate series, while the top three play a round-robin to determine their final seedings for the NBA semifinals (ala NHL last season). If the round robin finishes at 1-1 apiece, the tie-breaker would be aggregated points. All five of these games would take place at the same venue to reduce unnecessary travel.
The NBA Semifinals and NBA Finals would be 2-3-2 best-of-seven.
The addition of Minnesota to the Central Division and Oklahoma City to the Southwest (albeit with the latter's current line-up restored once COVID is over) would become permanent in the future under my proposal to add teams in Seattle and Vancouver, which would both be in the Northwest Division (the division Minnesota and OKC are in now).
I feel this is a much better set-up than what the NBA agreed to do. And I'm always saying teams should play more division games, that they currently don't play enough compared to the other major sports leagues (something that would be fixed upon expansion to 32, with every non-division matchup occurring twice a year, and division matchups 6 or 7 times depending on the size of the division).