Didn't see another thread...anyways it seems like things are going to change maybe as soon as next season to where the 16 best teams get playoff bids. My favorite idea is to retain the 6 divisions, but essentially have no conferences. The 6 division winners are guaranteed a playoff spot. Schedule: 16 division games (4 games against each opponent) 16 teams you play thrice 9 teams you play twice Total 82 games Now my favorite idea: a draft lottery tournament The leagues 14 non-playoff teams are placed into a single-elimination tournament where the further you go, the better your pick. The two worst teams are given first round byes. This would hurt teams who construct especially terrible rosters and basically eliminate tanking altogether. This draft lottery tournament would result in as many as 4 additional games for the two teams in the Draft Lottery Final. The teams losing in each round, other than the championship round, would be tiebroken with best point differential in tournament games getting the higher pick.
The Pelicans or the Jazz would be heavy favorites at landing the #1 pick instead of having basically no chance.
a lottery tournament would be crazy. i would love it. never will happen though. the owners are too uptight for something like that in this country.
Unfortunately, teams would still tank in that system. They would just tank when they were on the bubble (likely seeded in the 7th or 8th playoff position) with no chance of getting out of the first round. After all, those teams would be the worst team in the playoffs, but would be the best in a lottery tournament. Still, such a tournament could be entertaining. Maybe a hybrid of the current system and that one would work? Traditional lottery based on records before the tournament to allocate the top 3 picks (which keeps the bottom dwellers from remaining bottom dwellers). Then, the tournament would decide picks 4 - 14 (for entertainment value).
There are strong rumors and quotes by Adam Silver himself that the NBA will at least realign the playoff system if not the conferences as soon as this offseason. I think my plan on realignment is the simplest. There is really no reason why we have to have conferences. The NBA playoffs this year would be so much better if we didn't have to watch Cleveland steamroll a bunch of patsies on their way to the Finals. Look at what the bracket would be in a best 16 teams make it world. (1) Golden State vs. (16) Milwaukee (8) Cleveland vs. (9) Dallas (4) Houston vs. (13) Washington (5) LA Clippers vs. (12) OKC (2) Atlanta vs. (15) Phoenix (7) Portland vs. (10) Toronto (3) Memphis vs. (14) New Orleans (6) San Antonio vs. (11) Chicago It would be awesome to watch Phoenix take out the 2 seed in the first round or watch Dallas push Lebron to 7 games only to get Golden State in the 2nd round. And instead of watching Brooklyn, Boston or whatever other crappy East team is fighting it out for the 8 seed in the East we would see a resurgent Jazz team possibly take the 16 seed down the stretch. I guarantee you no one would want to play Utah in the first round the way they're playing defense. And as far as the draft lottery goes that's just a pipe dream I came up with. I would let the 2 worst teams have a bye, and then the next worst gets to choose their first round opponent, so on and so forth. That way you would almost assuredly see Utah and New Orleans matching up in the first round of the Draft Lottery Tournament. It would be super cool and draw a lot of interest IMO. It would be yet another revenue generator for the league. You could play the 1st round on the Friday after the regular season before the playoffs start.
And as far as I know no one else has even mentioned the idea of holding a draft lottery tournament. So I'll take the credit when Adam Silver implements it.
Well, the problem with the draft lottery is, it might be more attractive to barely miss the playoffs (and get a Durant/Lebron/etc) rather than be a 16th seed and face a juggernaut. You might see some "tanking" in the last few games of the season. Basically, there's always going to be people trying to game the system, brehs.
Oh gotcha, I was confused because it sounded like it was legit but then you ended off with your own idea so I thought it was just speculation. Thank you for clearing it up
Excellent point. But I do think in general it will eradicate most tanking. As the 14 seed you would still have to win a few games to improve your draft position so maybe the allure of the playoffs would win out. You'd need to work out the details to encourage as little tanking as possible with any system devised.
There is also a question of motivation. If you're a fringe player who's getting minutes because you're on a bad team, why would you play hard in a tournament designed to get a player that has a better shot at replacing you?
heres the thing players would not be motivated to play for a lottery championship. Your playing for your replacement.
portland toronto series and phoenix atlanta series would have horrible traveling disadvantages maybe if nba were to apply if 2 teams are a certain distance the format is 2-3-2 with an extra traveling day
Tanking isn't even a real problem. Being constantly bad is a very real problem. This idea would not help. (Though it would be more fun)
I like the idea of a single elimination lottery tournament. The Pelicans and Jazz could easily lose to any other team if it's one and done. But at least this would encourage bottom rung teams to try and win. What's the point of paying 25% of NBA players when they're sleepwalking through the last 10 games of a season?
That really is a damn good looking bracket. I could see plenty of upset potential in it. Would make for an exciting playoffs. The way things are now, what's the point of even watching the East unless someone's embarrassing the Cavaliers?
The other idea I've seen thrown out there is that the top 14 teams make the playoffs. The remaining 16 teams have a single elimination March Madness style tourney to get the final two spots. Not sure how the lottery would be, but how damn exciting would that tourney be for the last two playoff spots?
An idea i recently thought of would be top 6 teams from each conference are in. Leaving 4 wildcards available for teams. The best 4 records leftover from either conference gets in. if all 4 teams are from one conference, the top 2 wildcard go to the opposite conference to make that conference more competitive. With the lower two staying in there conference. If 3 from one and 1 from the other the highest seeded wildcard goes to the other conference and if it has a better record than the team from the conference it gets the better seed. If 2 and 2 they stay in there conference. Thoughts?
You know why that bracket wouldn't work? At the end of the first round, the entire eastern conference would be represented by the team with one of the worst fan bases in the NBA. You basically knock out the interest of half the country. It's a viewership issue and until non-nba/casual fans start tuning in to non-local games at a higher rate, I don't see it happening.
I'd like the NBA to expand 2 more teams. Seattle is eventually getting both NBA & NHL the minute they get started on new arena. The state of Missouri should have a team, STL or KC, since KC has a moderately new but empty arena they would probably get the nod. As much as I would like to get NOP out of our conference it makes more sense to send the Twolves to east being in the Mil/Chi/Det/Ind/Cle clutter. Getting Wiggins out of west is a nice consolation though. That way 2 expansion teams are in west while Minnesota & their young phenom go east. Now that there are 32 teams the NBA can do some fun things with the 16 that don't make playoffs. The easiest solution to this tanking problem is to split the last 16 teams into 2 groups of 8, worst 8 (1-8) and better 8 (9-16), then have separate tournaments. So the better 8 will not tank to miss playoffs with only the possibility to get 9th pick. There could be tanking by the 9th team to get to the bottom 8 bracket but it's still not a guarantee to get 1st. If the worst case scenario to this is 9th & 10th place teams tank to get in bottom tourney, I think we're good. I'd like to see them do this before trying to change the playoff format. I know the west has been the "A" league for 15 years now but one day the east and west could be switched or even better, have a balance. I also think the traveling could be a factor, first round of Suns/Hawks? Giving west 2 expansions while moving Wiggins (I mean Twolves) to east, might start the transition to a more balanced east/west NBA. The 2 separate non playoff tournaments takes out tanking(except maybe 9th place) & their fans get to see some kind of playoff basketball plus more money. I'm sure bartenders, parking attendants, etc wouldn't mind the extra income from more games. Let's get this done NBA
