from Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet,

- The 84-game schedule proposal is expected to be on the agenda for the March GM meetings. Not having each team play each other home-and-home was a traveshamockery the first time they tried it, let’s not speak of it again. So we’re talking 28 against the other seven teams from your division, 24 against the eight from the other division in your conference and 32 versus the other conference. That would decrease the number of exhibition games, which wouldn’t upset your ticket-buying public. Remember that players have to agree.

- One exec came up with a great schedule idea. He suggested that, in the last week of the season, each team has a home date booked and an away date booked. Games 81 and 82 are a divisional home-and-home with one-versus-two, three-versus-four, five-against-six and seven-against-eight. If you want, you could even expand it beyond the last two games — I’d personally consider the last four — and if you move a spot in your division (say down from two to three), your opponent changes with a re-seed after the first two games. What you could get are playoff implications and lottery implications. A team, say, four-to-six points out of the playoffs gets an opportunity for a late run. Someone’s going to come up with a reason why it wouldn’t work, but as a concept, I absolutely love it.

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