ESPN's Chad Ford is reporting that The NBA players' association and the league have agreed to expand the first round of the playoffs to a best-of-7 format starting this season.

The players' association officially approved the change in format early Saturday, with the league making it official during a news conference in Atlanta.

The NBA also announced that with a longer playoff series in the opening round training camp will be shorter, so the time that players have off during seasons should go unaffected.

"The players have approved that change, effective this season," said commissioner David Stern, who noted there will be talks after the season to try to extend the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (the owners must decide after this season whether to extend it through 2004-05).

The changes are of benefit mainly to the veteran players according to Fred Kerber of the New York Times.  A player with four years of service can miss the first three days of training camp. For the following two years, those vets can miss the first five days.

After the first ten days two-a-day practices have also been eliminated.

"Our players were concerned about wear and tear on their bodies," said Players Association executive director Billy Hunter.

Until this season, the first round of the NBA playoffs had been a best-of-5 format.  With more games comes more money, and the league has also raised playoff shares to increase this.