Sorry for my ingorance but I don't understand why Portland is sitting in 4th even though their W/L/Pct is lower than 5th and 6th teams. Can anyone explain this?
Fwiw this may get addressed in the off-season. I'd like to see division winner get a guaranteed playoff spot but nothing more
I don't think the divisions are the issue. Seeding means nothing in terms of homecourt, so it's ok. The problem is the conferences. We need wildcard spots, I hate seeing eastern conference teams with sub 500 records making it in.
Sure seeding makes a difference. The West is won, and there are 4 teams vying for 2nd position. The other 3 West teams are irrelevant. However, for the team who fails to come 2nd, and instead finishes 3rd in the West, they will gain the privilege of playing not the 6th best team (and one of the irrelevant 3), but rather, play one of the 4 teams who were trying to finish 2nd. A team is better off finishing with the 4th best record rather than 3rd or 5th - those two teams will play each other, the 4th best record will play the 6th best Trailblazers due to the vagaries of the division title. No doubt the conferences thing is also stupid, but step one is properly doing away with the division winner thing. Make the playoff seedings based solely on record.
OKC averaged over 59 wins a season for three seasons before this one. Portland best year was 54 last year, and they regressed. And OKC is younger than POR...more playoff experience and have the reigning MVP and Westbrook. You call that close?
what is the purpose of a division title in a system like the NBA I mean in Baseball it kind of makes sense the way their playoffs are structured imo if you are going to have top 8 make playoffs, make top 8 make playoffs, don't make a random rule to make it seem like "divisions" actually matter in anyway in this league if you want to emphasize the purpose of divisions, reform the system like the NHL
The better question is how good do you think will the Blazers perform in the first round of the playoffs?
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">NBA moving forward w/plan to seed conference playoff teams 1-8 regardless of division winner starting in 15-16, per high-ranking NBA exec.</p>— Jeff Zillgitt (@JeffZillgitt) <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffZillgitt/status/614200200933048320">June 25, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
