NBA commissioner Adam Silver said on Friday the league will not make any changes to its play-off format.

There had been some talk about ensuring the 16 teams with the best records make the play-offs, regardless of conference.

Two teams in the Western Conference, the Oklahoma City Thunder and Phoenix Suns, finished with better records than the Brooklyn Nets, the Eastern Conference's eighth seed. The Thunder's 45 wins would have been good for sixth in the Eastern Conference.

"It's early days in these discussions," Silver said. "This was the first serious meeting among all our board members on this subject, and the result was I would say inconclusive as to where we should ultimately go.

"It's not to say we don't think there should be a change. This is one of these issues that's going to require a fair amount of discussion and study, not just directly among the owners in the big room but with committees as well."

Silver added: "You often have anomalies where there are inequities, this notion that you have a team or two under .500 also.

"Our analytics folks showed us with the 16 teams out of 30 making the play-offs, statistically you are likely to have a team or two potentially that are under .500 who do make the play-offs.

"There are also owners who like the notion of tradition, and Silver pointed out, this year's play-off seeds and qualification wasn't determined until the final day of the season."

Owners also want to wait until they know how the new television contract impacts the increase in the salary cap before they approve any changes to the draft lottery.

"There's still a sense we need to make a change but until we know what the team behaviour is going to be with all this new cap room, we hold it and wait and look holistically at the whole system," Silver told reporters.

The NBA could also reduce the number of pre-season games and begin the 2016-17 season earlier, as long as teams have sufficient practice time. 

The league will reduce the number of games played on consecutive nights during the regular season from an average of 19 times to 16 back-to-backs.

Teams also played four games in five days an average of three times and that will be reduced by one starting next season. 

"Those are changes we can make immediately for next year," Silver said. "That's real progress for next season."