It's simple... it eliminates most of the dead time.

Of course the down side is that by adding 8 weeks to the season you might actually have a trading period that is too short.

Its nice to have at least 3 weeks to trade before the rookie draft and another couple after the free agent draft is nice. By my calculation the playoffs are really 5 weeks.

so 40 weeks of games + 5 weeks of playoffs + 2 weeks of drafts + the standard 2 weeks of delays due for stupid reasons doesn't leave quite enough time.

If they would announce the LOTTERY ORDER the day after the Champions are crowned then we would have enough time.