It’s obviously not a secret that the Western Conference has been superior to the East for the last two decades as far as league depth goes. It’s also not a secret that there are teams in the Western Conference that aren’t in the playoffs who are better than some Eastern Conference teams who are still playing. You can understand why the voices calling for change in the current playoff structure are louder than they’ve ever been, especially after this season, seeing that only the Celtics, Pistons and the Magic are the only teams in the East with better records than the Warriors, who happen to be the ninth seed in the West. Because of this, pundits are calling for a new playoff system. Should they? Maybe the question is: is this good for the league? The short answer, no. The long answer? Keep reading.
On the surface, finding new ways to structure the NBA’s postseason seems to make sense. Teams (like Golden State and Portland) with better records are left out of the playoffs while other teams (like Philadelphia and Atlanta) are continuing their seasons. The 76ers and the Hawks are also reaping the benefits of being a playoff team in the NBA. More tickets are sold, which leads to more merchandise being sold, which ultimately leads to more revenue for the franchise while teams who played much better throughout the rigors of an 82 game season ultimately miss out on the extra cash, but more importantly, a shot at the championship.
Is it fair? No. Is there a better solution? I doubt it.
It has been reported that the league’s competition committee will explore the option of changing the current playoff format during its next meeting, on May 27th, during their annual pre-draft camp in Orlando. The league will compile a list of alternative formats and decide, after evaluating each option if a change is needed to be made.
The league’s commissioner, David Stern, spoke to reporters in Philadelphia before a playoff game last Friday and said “If there is something to vote on, we’d be prepared to make changes to take effect next season.” So, if changes are to be made, what exactly does the league intend to do. According to what Marc Stein reported in his article on ESPN and what I’ve heard from a few other sources, the league, if it were to make any changes, is most likely to do one of two things: reseed the teams after each round of the playoffs (what the television networks definitely don’t want) or just have the top 16 teams, no matter the conference, make the playoffs and seed the teams accordingly (something the fans definitely shouldn’t want).
With that being said, let’s explore each of the three options and examine why they don’t make sense as far as the NBA is concerned.
The first option is reseeding teams after each round of the playoffs. The idea of re-seeding is, after each round of the playoffs, the remaining teams would be seeded according to the record of the remaining playoff teams. If teams are upset in any given series, the teams are reseeded to help preserve the best possible conference final match up. If this were the case last season, after the Mavericks were upset, San Antonio would have been the 1-seed and Phoenix would have been the 2-seed, eliminating the possibility of them playing before the Western Conference Finals. San Antonio, instead of playing Phoenix in the second round, would have played Golden State and Phoenix would have played Utah in second round match-ups.
This idea is good on its face value, but this doesn’t make sense in a league’s coverage is split between two television networks. There is a lot of work put into the playoff scheduling with the games being split between four different networks (ESPN, TNT, ABC and NBA) with most of the games being dominated by ESPN and TNT. The networks would ultimately have to wait until every first round series was over then scramble to figure out who is playing who and scramble to figure out when, and on what network the teams were going to be playing. Also, teams who finish their series early would have to wait for the rest of their conference to finish their respective series’ forcing teams who finish in four games out of rhythm.
Another thing is teams can lose home-court advantage because of re-seeding. Just like in the afore mentioned situation, the Utah Jazz had home-court advantage over the Golden State Warriors in the second round. If the playoffs were reseeded, the Jazz would have lost their home-court to the Suns because the Mavericks lost. Thus, the Suns would have benefited from the Mavericks being eliminated without even playing them. The exact opposite happened to the Jazz. A team should not have to lose their home-court advantage because the league wants to preserve the best possible conference finals match up.
The second option would just take away the conference ideology that has served the NBA as well as any system could ever have for decades by taking the 16 teams with the best records regardless of what conference they represent. It’s hard for me to find anything remotely positive about this idea, but you will have the 16 teams with the best records in the playoffs, and that could create some very intriguing match ups every round. However, I feel like the there is no mistake the competition committee could make that could be worse than what this could potentially be for the NBA.
There are myriad reasons this doesn’t make sense for the NBA, most having to do with the logistics of NBA scheduling and the historical traditions of the league. Instead of making reactionary changes to what has been the most lopsided season in terms of conference depth, the Competition Committee needs to take a look at what has worked for the league for so many years.
When looking at the idea of theoretically eliminating the conferences, the first thing the league would have to address what would be a very tough problem to solve in regular season scheduling. With an 82 game season, it would be extremely tough to make a fair schedule for all teams. If the current regular season scheduling format is left unchanged, with teams playing 52 of their games against other teams in their respective conference and 30 against the other conference, teams in the deeper conference would be at a disadvantage when being seeded for the playoffs because they would have spent the season playing against tougher competition, which would be unfair to those teams in the deeper conference.
If we took this year’s season and just took the top 16 teams and seeded them from there, the top Western Conference teams would have a fair complaint with being seeded third and fourth behind the Celtics and the Pistons. Yes, the Celtics and Pistons have the two best schedules in the league, but the Lakers and Hornets, the West’s top two teams, have played 22 more games against much tougher competition. The Hornets would even be at a greater disadvantage because there were three other 50-win teams in their division. How would the league solve this problem?
There have also been ideas being thrown around about also eliminating divisions and having all thirty teams play schedules during the regular season against teams regardless of conference. This, in essence, would be more fair than any type scheduling possible. However, this just would just create a heap of problems much worse than the fairness of regular season schedules.
One of the things that makes sports unique is the concept of rivalries, and to take away divisions and make every team play each other an equal amount of times during the season would eliminate all rivalries and ultimately take away everything great about the NBA. With no divisions we would have never had those great games between teams like the Lakers, Suns, Blazers, Sonics, Warriors and Rockets in the Western Conference because they wouldn’t have been on the floor battling for conference supremacy over the years. The same goes for the Eastern Conference teams like the Celtics, 76ers, Knicks and Bulls. There is a certain kind of pride these teams play with for the top spot in their respective conferences that has made those rivalries so intriguing over the years. It would be tough to sustain these rivalries on a year-to-year basis when little is at stake between the teams. Instead of essentially competing against five teams for one or two playoff spots, individual teams would be competing against 29 other teams for 16 playoff spots making those rivalries much less intense and almost meaningless.
Eliminating divisions, even conferences would be eliminating several decades of history and tradition, which would, in turn, get rid much of the league’s fan base. Rivalries create fan interest, and nothing could be better for the sport. Rivalries are usually the first thing fans of sports talk about. Changing the current playoff format would be taking everything fans love about the professional game away from them. It would be like taking the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry away from baseball fans, the Cowboys-Redskins rivalry away from football fans, the Bruins-Canadians rivalry away from Hockey fans, the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry away from college football fans and college basketball has North Carolina-Duke. It takes away from the purity of the sport, and it takes a lot of the competitiveness away from players and teams.
With that being said, there is one more thing the Competition Committee should consider. This is the first year a 48-win team has missed the playoffs. This year is an anomaly, and probably isn’t a trend that isn’t going to continue. There has always been differences in the depth of the two conferences, in changes in cycles and right now the West is reigning supreme, and has been for a while. Looking at the trends between conferences and championships, there really is no correlation between the two. In fact, it has been players who dominate different eras, not conferences. In the 80s, the Eastern Conference was stacked, but it was Magic Johnson’s Lakers who won five titles. On top of that, either Johnson or Larry Bird appeared in every Finals Game during the 80s with one of them wining the title eight times during the decade. In the 90s, the Western Conference was much deeper than the East, but the decade is known as the “Jordan Era” because the Bulls took six titles over an eight-year span. Since Jordan’s real retirement (after his sixth title, not counting his years in Washington after 1998), either Shaquille O’Neal or Tim Duncan has appeared in every NBA Finals game.
The NBA shouldn’t punish fans because there were actually meaningful games at the end of this season in the Western Conference. This has been an amazing basketball season and, if you haven’t been watching, the playoffs have been great too. There is no need for change and I don’t understand why this is even an issue.
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