Is it too late for this?

With April showers come the NBA playoffs.

After an 82-game season filled with drama and excitement, the top eight teams from each conference will now compete for the beloved Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy in the 2015 NBA playoffs.

Many of the NBA’s best teams reside in the Western Conference. Seven of the eight playoff teams in the West hold a .600 or higher winning percentage compared to only three teams in the Eastern Conference, and with teams and the excitement becoming better and better each round, it becomes must-see television.

But living in the Eastern Time zone, we are forced to stay up late and many miss the chance to watch the best teams in basketball during the most important part of their season.

As a fan, my normal routine when watching the game is to prop my legs up on my couch and grab a snack from the kitchen. I turn up the volume of my TV to make it feel like I’m sitting courtside and to block out the outside world while I zone in on the action.

But when coverage begins at 10:30 p.m., I find myself, like many Americans on the east coast, fighting to stay awake to see halftime and passing out before the second half starts, no matter how good the game is.

Doing so, I also miss the post-commentary review on the game which sometimes can be more entertaining than the game itself. You never know what you might get out of Shaq and Charles.

When I do manage to stay up and watch an entire game I find myself tired and groggy much of the next day. If I can’t make it for the entire game, then I’m forced to watch highlights and read the recaps on ESPN the next day.

The late-night starts affect the playoff experience in many ways.

You miss out on fourth-quarter comebacks or remarkable performances by certain players.

It’s also difficult to form your own opinion on who you think played well or how a series is going when you are unable to view the entire game.

In game one of the San Antonio and Los Angeles series, Chris Paul and Blake Griffin combined for 58 points in a game that the Clippers controlled against the defending NBA champions. Unless you stayed awake until after 1 a.m., many sport fans missed the ending to one of the most intrigued matchups in the first round of the playoffs.

What the NBA should do is set a final start time cap of 9:30 p.m. Eastern Time, allowing home games by Portland, Golden State and Los Angeles to start 6:30 p.m. local time.

This hour-earlier start would allow for more viewers to still be awake at the start of the second half. Then it would be up to a star performance or the excitement of a close game to keep the common fan awake when the late hours of the night start creeping in.

After six months of the regular season, the final two months that matter the most should be shown at a time convenient for all basketball fans.

When the games begin to have more meaning further along in the playoffs, and the matchups become more competitive, I know that I don’t want to spend more time trying to stay up for the game than actually being able to watch it.