Nice article Steve, sorry I missed it yesterday.
I think the whole top 16 team idea will just never work because of the need to basically get rid of the conferences and divisions so that there can be balanced scheduling. The history of the league has been that there has been two conferences with a representative of each in the Finals to name a champion. The top 16 format basically makes the conferences useless and sets up an NCAA type tournament. I don't like it.
There will always be a conference that has the strongest teams. Recently, okay more than recently, it has been the Western Conference because of the large number of desireable FA locals out West and because of a few Western Conference teams holding onto top 50 players all-time for their entire career(see SA with Robinson and Duncan, Utah with Malone and Stockton, LA with Magic and Kobe). The cycle will turn eventually and the East will be dominant.
I remember in baseball in the 70's and 80's the NL was the dominant league and had been for quite some time having the best teams and talent and winning a ridiculous amount of All-Star games for like 3 decades. By the 90's that all turned and now the AL is the dominant league. It happens.
I like the current format with the small exceptions I detailed in my OP. I think it is dumb to reward a bad division winner with a guaranteed 4 seed if they aren't the fourth best team in the conference. I find it dumb that if the two best teams are in the same division that the runner up, who could possibly have won 60 games, should be seeded lower than any division winner.
Reseeding would be a nice thing to try for a few years but I like the fact that if an 8 seed beats a 1 seed that they are rewarded with an easier trip forward. They earned it in my eyes. For the 8 seed to beat the 1 seed and then have to play the 2 seed in the semis and then maybe the 3 seed in the conference final is just not fair.
But if the league wants to keep rewarding the division champions then make it harder to win a division and contract the divisions to 4 overall divisions with each division winner getting either a 1 or 2 seed. It makes winning a division mean something and pretty much will put the better teams in the good seeding spots.
Just a couple of ideas.
Regarding the issue of division winners, as much as I sympathize with your sentiments about not looking to overly reward teams that win terrible divisions, I think if you're going to have a divisional set-up, there needs to be some payoff. What I've spent the last two years wondering is why the league only went halfway when they changed the rules about the seeding of division winners two summers ago -- granting division winners three of the top four seeds rather than each of the top three in each conference. If the league was willing to do that, why not at least go the distance and say that the only reward guaranteed by a division title is a playoff spot?
If we're going to have divisions, then following my theory that there should be some payoff (I'm open to disputes on this matter as well -- I don't purport to suggest that this postulation of mine is irrefutable fact), it's always seemed to me that the most logical solution would be to take the three division winners and the top five records after that in each conference at the end of the season, eliminate everybody else and seed the eight teams in each conference in order by record. If we're taking for granted that division winners are in, that seems like the way to do it. Any thoughts on this approach?
Regarding the issue of re-seeding between rounds, I lean the opposite direction from Nick: It
should be difficult for the eight seed to get the championship. Yes, the playoffs are the most important time of year, and yes, it's extremely impressive to have an eight seed beat a one seed, but it would seem to me that five and a half months worth of regular season basketball should be worth more than a simple first round seeding -- especially in a league in which more than half of the teams go to the playoffs every year. The regular season is devalued enough already (especially as compared to baseball) because of how many teams are even given a shot to make a run at the title come mid-April. I have no problem looking to give the highest remaining seeds the benefits of the doubt wherever I can in the organization of the latter rounds. I'm interested to see how others feel about this issue -- and more on it from Nick -- since my past discussions with others on the matter (off site) seem to indicate that I'm often in the minority on this one, which I hadn't expected.
I'm right with ya about the 2-3-2, Who...I could do without it. That said, I suggested in a previous thread that it would be cool to give the team with homecourt for the Finals a choice each year about which format they would prefer to use. A nice perk for having the better record of the league's last two teams standing, and a fun way for us to see what the players and coaches themselves really think on this issue.
-sw
Topic: NBA looking into playoff format changes (Read 5235 times)