They stopped meaning anything when the Oklahoma City Thunder remained in the Northwest Division after leaving Seattle.
We'd still have home court if it finished the same as last year, they haven't eliminated the division winner, they've made h2h tiebreaker 1 and division winner 2.
I stand corrected, the original post made it seem like they would do away with division winner in tie-breaking scenarios
The NBA is making this harder than it should be. The division should guarantee you a playoff berth but that's it. I don't think there has every been a scenario where no division has had a team not a top 8 team so just stick with that formula.
What do you mean? Under the new system, West would seeded: (1) GSW vs (8) NO (3-1) (4) MEM vs (5) SAS (2-2) (2) HOU vs (7) DAL (3-1) (3) LAC vs (6) POR (3-1) The Rockets would still be the second and the Clippers third. The Clippers would have a much easier first round. But nothing is guaranteed. They won only by 4/6/4pts in the 3 regular season wins vs POR. They still would play the Rockets in second round if they won the first. The Spurs would still got a very tough first round. The West got 5 of the top 6 teams last year and 2 of them must meet in the first round no matter how the system works. And it would hurt the MEM most.
Get rid of conferences, and have everyone play everyone as much as possible. If the travel is a big deal, shorten the season to 64 games or so. (I know this isn't feasible due to revenue loss, don't rain on my parade). Top 8 teams make the playoffs! Fantasy complete.
if a team like say, memphis, had been adversely affected this past postseason by the longstanding division winner rule, instead of one of the LA teams, does the league office make any changes to the rule in the offseason?
Next we need just top 16 instead of conferences How would lebrons career be if he had to fight through the west every year?
The Rockets would have still been second. Division winner is still the 2nd tiebreaker after head to head record (2-2 vs. LAC last year).
This so much. The Leastern conference still gets to send a team to the finals Cavs would be 1 and done in the West (without homecourt)
i mean LAC having to face SAS. under the new rules they would have faced a lesser opponent in POR, right?
Pretty much, they also have made the Division winner tiebreaker 2nd instead of 1st. With the old rules, last year we still would have been 2nd even if we were 1-3 vs. LAC. Oh alright, thought you mean LAC not having HCA despite having a better conference record than us.
Travel doesn't matter at all anymore and that is what is stupid about divisions or conferences. Every team takes a private charter to and from games. They don't wait on commercial flights, connect, or take buses.
Traveling does matter... Eliminating conferences and having teams play everyone more often will result in some teams getting horrible schedules. Back-to-back games where the Rockets play in Orlando then have to go play Sacramento the next night then 2 days later go play in New York. (extreme example I know)
Ditch the East/West and make an NBA/ABA conference with no geographical boundaries. (NFL, MLB) Also, set up strength of schedule scheduling like the NFL does in order to increase parity.
I hate this. This change is only because the Eastern Conference sucks. Neither the NFL nor MLB has dismantled the relevance of Divisions like this. correct me if I'm wrong. NFL and MLB have wild cards, which by definition mean division winners get better path to finals. Why should NBA dismantle everything just because the EC sucks? We deserved #2 seed over LAC last year, because we won the toughest division in pretty much ALL of sports.
If they want to make the divisions relevant, they should change the schedule format. Division teams should play each other much more than other teams. As is now, you "win" the division just because you have a better record than the other teams in your division. You didn't really "beat" them by beating them.
