I assuming the seeding is by division winners. The division winners get the top 3 seeds, and next team in the conference with the best record gets the #4 seed. I also assume the teams with the best record get homecourt regardless of the seeds. If these are true this presents blatantly unfair situations. As a #5 seed, by default you are going to have to play the 4 seed starting on their home court. But as a #6 seed, you could get homecourt on the #3 seed. Think about it, right now Boston is a #3 seed, but they have the 8th best record in the east. They will have to play at Chicago as of today to open the playoffs. But Washinton (#5), with a better record than Chicago, would have to play at the #4 seed (Cleveland). Also, say Seattle starts sucking, particularly on the road and Dallas, Sac and Houston catch them on record. Then again, the #6 seed starts at home, and the #5 on the road. Did the NBA not plan for this? It seems too out of whack.
It does seem to be an unnecessary quirk that really doesn't make any sense. I'm a Bulls fan, very excited at the prospect of home court advantage (though I still think its 60/40 that they even make the playoffs), but it hardly makes sense to punish the 5th seed like that. Allowing the 3rd seed to play the next best record, the 4th, is even dumber. Just go with the top three-records getting home court advantage, this whole season is an embarrassment on that level. Every crappy national sportswriter, when they need a bad joke, pulls out the "so bad ... but they could win the Atlantic" punchline.
The NFL has the same problem... only they automatically give the division winner home-court advantage, even though they sometimes have a worse record than the wild-card team. Normally, though, this works itself out... as the better team almost always wins. I agree that its really not fair to the #5 seed... but in the history of the NBA, the 4-5 matchup has normally been a "toss-up" anyways (the #5 seed wins quite often). The only reason they preserve this system is in order to "reward" a team for winning its division, and thus give them a high seed. As long as they have "divisions", then they'll keep doing this... and if they ever go to another system (just awarding the top 3 records), they might as well abolish the division as well.
Well why not?? What is the point in them?? And why not abolish the conferences too???? Wouldn't it make more sense for the best basketball teams in the country to be competing in the playoffs? Why should teams like Minny/ LAL/ Denver/ LAX be forced to slog away, playing twice as many games against Western Conference foes when they could quite easily compete in the Eastern Conference playoffs?? Arrange the draw so that everyone plays everyone roughly three times (so you'd miss out and only play 5 teams twice) - and then allow the top 16 teams to qualify, in order of record, for the playoffs. It would make the whole system more fair, and we'd see the best teams in the hunt for the playoffs and homecourt advantage! Plus, we'd get a "real" finals series, between the two top teams in the entire NBA!! Playoff race would look like: Phoenix San Antonio Miami Seattle Dallas Detroit Sacramento Cleveland Houston Washington Memphis Chicago LA Lakers Orlando Indiana Boston (of course it'd probably be somewhat different if all teams played against each other equally...) Think about how good a Phoenix/ San Antonio finals would be! The two best teams in the league fighting it out for the NBA title!
It's just implausible for Boston to play the Trail Blazers as many times in a season as they play the 76ers, and that's the only way you can get rid of conferences. And you can't turn off entire pockets of the country to NBA basketball, which would be the case with a Spurs/Suns series (as beautiful a series as that would be).
I wanted, but knew there was no chance they'd do it, the schedule changed w/the 6 divisions to really fire up divisional rivalries. That's one thing we're really missing these days. I would have liked to have seen: 5 games against intra-divisional opponents (20) 3 games against rest of conference (30) 2 games against other conference (30) But I knew there was no chance they'd give up 2 games of revenue. -Sigh- People would also be sick of playing the same teams over and over, but it really would stoke rivalries up. Where's the hate today? Evan
They should just give the home court to the division winners. It sucks for the team that has a better record but didn't win their division -- but that's their punishment for not winning their division. And, they'll probably win anyway since they didn't get the better record by mistake.
I just don't understand this thinking. How does giving the Boston Celtics a better matchup because they lucked out by getting in the worst division in the league a good thing? And lets just say that the Rockets had the second best record in the league with 59 wins and lose the division to the Spurs who have 60 wins. Shouldn't the Rockets get the 7th best team instead of the the 5th best team in the first round? But damn, they didn't "win their division" LOL
It'd carry more weight if teams played within their division more. But if each team plays virtually the same amount of games against all the teams in the conference as they do within the division, it does make it silly. Evan
