More NBA Seeding Nonsense

[kidcolin]

I can get behind removing divisions. Currently a team plays all its division teams 4 times, all conference teams at least 3 times (I think a few they face 4 times), and all out of conference teams twice, right? Correct me if I'm wrong. So I think you can reschedule it without major impacts to the amount of games played if you just ditch the divisions. Ditching the conferences makes it way harder, makes the playoffs either retarded or way shorter (which the league doesn't want, nor its fans), because there'd be no arbitrary division of the teams. If you kept it to 16 teams, it'd be 1 vs 16, 2 vs 15, etc. That'd blow.

If you just limit to 8 teams, that might be cool, but obviously would be a huge, HUGE money loss for the league.

[onlinebeginner]

"If you kept it to 16 teams, it'd be 1 vs 16, 2 vs 15, etc. That'd blow. "

once again way to back up your claim

[kidcolin]

you need further explanation as to why that would suck?

[onlinebeginner]

you could make the first roundtwo out of three or back to best of 5... BARELY losing any playoff games

this seems like a great idea to me... the regular season would be better... and the playoffs would be better because san antonio dallas nba finals would be a possiblility

[mark_foley]

Not releated but the NBA would be so much better if they relegated the bottom teams like in Euro soccer.

[Triumph36]

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Not releated but the NBA would be so much better if they relegated the bottom teams like in Euro soccer.

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uhhh to what league, exactly

c'mon, this is impossible

the nba could definitely get rid of divisions without a problem - conferences no, that much travel is bad cost-wise and game quality wise.

[kidcolin]

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Not releated but the NBA would be so much better if they relegated the bottom teams like in Euro soccer.

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no.. just if they contracted the league by a couple teams, I think. The talent pool isn't big enough to support relegation. Memphis would mop the floor with and D-League team.

[Ungoliant]

The root of the problem IMO is that the NBA simply lets too many teams into the playoffs. It's absurd that more teams make the playoffs than don't and that (this year) roughly 1/4 playoff teams will have sub-.500 records.

Look at how the system compares with other major sports. MLB has 4 playoff teams in each league, 3 division winners and 1 wild card. Only about 27% of teams make the playoffs, 3/4 of whom are division winners. The NFL has 6 playoff teams per conference, 4 division winners and 2 wild cards. Only 38% of teams make the playoffs, 2/3 of whom are division winners. The NBA has 3 division winners and 5 "wild cards" per conference. The majority of teams make the playoffs and a majority of those are not even division winners.

Now think about the effect this has on the value of a team winning its division. Where in other leagues winning the division is the primary way into the playoffs, in the NBA it's completely unnecessary. Simple mediocrity is all that a team needs to secure one of the many "wild card" spots, making winning the division almost completely meaningless.

What follows is the ridiculous playoff seeding that they use, which attempts to give some value to winning a division by assuring division winners a top-4 seed regardless of record. Because they've diluted the playoff pool with so many mediocre teams, they've destroyed the significance of being a division winner, which they've tried to correct by awarding them higher seeds, which leads to the absurdity of 5 seeds with better records than 3 seeds.

The simple solution is to cut the number of playoff teams in half, basically matching what MLB does with 3 division winners and 1 wild card per conference. That increases the value of winning the division and seeding could simply be done according to record. Although I guess there are good financial reasons for it, from a competitive perspective there's simply no reason to have 16 teams in the playoffs. Since they've gone to that format, only 1 team lower that a 3 seed has ever won the championship. The fact is, the bottom half of the bracket is full of awful teams that have no chance of winning anything. They might get past the first round on a fluke (although that's far less likely since they changed to a best-of-seven a few years ago), but they have almost zero chance of winning it all.

You could solve this by eliminating divisions and conferences, but I don't think that's he best idea. Divisions exist to promote regional rivalries. I think it's a good thing to have groups of 4 or 5 teams who play each other more frequently and are in direct competition for a single playoff spot. In addition to creating great rivalries between nearby cities, it makes the regular season more significant than just a 6-month battle for playoff seeding. (i.e. in the final weeks of the season, teams are fighting their closest rivals over who makes the playoffs and who goes home, not playing some random team 2000 miles away to try and move from a 6 seed to a 5.)

[MicroBob]

Hard to disagree with your last point.

The excitement factor of trying to get from the 6 seed to the 5 seed is practically non-existent and would possibly be even moreso if you had no conferences and just seeded from 1 through 16.

The 'no conference' scheme would work better if you gave better incentives than home-court for finishing higher.

This would include receiving byes in the first round or an even stronger home-court advantage such as getting first round best of 3 entirely at home or something.
Then you could have teams really scratching and clawing to move up to the next level.

[FlyWf]

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Not releated but the NBA would be so much better if they relegated the bottom teams like in Euro soccer.

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no.. just if they contracted the league by a couple teams, I think. The talent pool isn't big enough to support relegation. Memphis would mop the floor with and D-League team.

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The talent pool is big enough(by definition, your comment doesn't make any sense if you think about it), it's just that the D-League isn't the second best league.

Relegation only works with tiered systems and more team oriented sports, though. Bssketball is neither, so relegation would be a disaster.