Fixing the Playoff Seeds

Posted by Keith Haney on March 30, 2008

Lately it seems that everybody is complaining about how the NBA Playoff system works. Allow me to add my 2 cents to the debate by offering up how I would fix them.

With the Western conference dominating the league with nine teams that should end up winning 50 games, it’s easy to see why people are upset that teams like Golden State or Denver stands to miss the post season while a team like Atlanta will get in for the East with a sub .500 record. Sure they’ll be quickly dispatched in four games by the Celtics, but it doesn’t seem right that they should be in at all. Unfortunately, I don’t see any way to avoid this scenario without significantly altering the entire league to a detrimental effect.

A common argument to fix the “Atlanta” problem is to simply take the top 16 teams in the league and rank them accordingly. Guess what though, doing that would only guarantee a change of 1 team in the playoffs. The Warriors or Nuggets would knock Atlanta out of the picture. Then you would have Portland, Toronto, and Philadelphia fighting for 2 spots. My problem with this is type of seeding is that teams don’t play each other as much across the East vs the West. In the “Top 16″ scenario, Cleveland gets screwed out of any home court advantage as the #14 seed in the first round. That doesn’t seem very fair since they haven’t had the chance to play the would be #4 seed Spurs only twice. It would be unfair to seed Boston #1 overall when they’ve played teams in the West only twice. Where would Boston be ranked if they played in the West? Nobody knows for sure, but I’d be willing to be they would have more than 15 losses.

To change the league to fairly support a “Top 16″ scenario you would have to have everyone play each other an equal amount of times in a season. This would be a logistical nightmare for the league. Travel schedules would be out of control. You’d also have to add 5 games to the season (as if we need to make the season even longer!!) just to have teams play each other 3 times a piece. That would add another problem - if you played opponents 3 times each year, you would be giving one team an unfair advantage of playing 2 of 3 at home every season. It’s just not feasible.

Here’s what I would propose. Eliminate all of the Divisions. Have just an Eastern and a Western Conference. Each team plays it’s own Conference 4 times and the other Conference twice. Then rank teams 1-8 accordingly. This system would hurt the Jazz this season and place them 6th right now, but would eliminate the meaningless Division system that is suppose to inspire rivalries. The current system fails to create any real incentives for a rivalry to occur other than the arbitrary Division title.

In any given year, there is going to be a bettter way to balance out the Playoff seedings in the NBA based on how the season shakes out. The best way to make it fair is to make it simple and equitable for all teams. By this, I mean no unfair advantages created by arbitrary Division lines or unequal amount of playing matches. I hope the NBA fixes this system sooner rather than later. Then they can move onto other Playoff problems like series that are too long and too spread apart.

3 Comments

Pudge on March 30, 2008 said:

I don’t think we should change the system at all. Yeah, the number 8 seed in the East probably doesn’t deserve to be in, but the flip side is that there has been some great basketball played since the All-Star break because the West is so tight. Personally, I’d rather have higher caliber basketball than a perfectly just system.

justalars on March 30, 2008 said:

If they do chaqnge the playoff seeding then there is no reason to have an Eastern and a Western Conference, therefore how will they split up the All-star game. Its been discussed it would be the US players vs Foreign Players. I’m intersted to see how it works out.

kevin sloan on March 30, 2008 said:

When was the last time an 8 seed won an NBA title (the Knicks went in ‘99 as the 8th seed in the East, but lost to the Spurs). The lowest seeded team to win it in recent history was the Rockets in the mid-90’s, however, their situation was a little different when the made the deal to bring in Clyde Drexler near the trade deadline, who happens to be one of the greatest players in the history of the NBA.

Like it matters this year for the Jazz…they have ZERO chance of winning an NBA title of even sniffing the Western Conference Finals. With the schedule they have down the stretch, they will be lucky to even make the playoffs. I hate to say it, but last year was the pinnacle in terms of what this team will do. Okur is on the downside of his brief success, D-Will will skip town to a bigger market when his contract is up, AK-47 is broken offensively and the bench isn’t that great. They absolutely cannot win on the road and will never have home court advantage throughout the playoffs. Plus, once Oden & rudy fernandez put on Blazers uniforms next year, the Jazz short stint atop the division will be over. I know…it’s sad…but true.