I have been advocating this for many years now but this year really shows why we need to change the format of the playoffs. 1) The Western Conference had 6 teams with 50 or more wins, the East only 3. 2) Chicago and Philadelphia were .500 teams. 3) Detroit had a losing record 39-43 yet still got 8th seed. The case is simple the East is just too weak outside of the top 3 teams. Reason why league should do this: 1) You have a better chance at more competative series instead the routine sweeps in the first round by the Cavs and Lakers. 2) Rockets are clearly the 2nd best team this season and the only one to challenge Lakers to game 7. This matchup should be reserved to semi-final or later round. Look at this way the Magic get to hang a banner in their arena for going to the Finals when even the Lakers will admit the Rockets were the only legit threat they faced all post-season. 3) This is good for marketing marquee matchups and increasing the probability of Kobe vs LeBron etc...more often in the playoffs than just hoping for both to meet in the Finals. East-West Rivalries would be created and more exposure would be given to the strong teams and the possibility of huge upsets like bottoms seeds in the West taking out a top ranked team from the East early.
That would just open up a whole new can of worms. There would be travel issues and all sorts of strength of schedule whining. IMHO, the only real shortcoming of the current system is that it allows a team with a winning record to miss the playoffs while a team in the opposite conference with a losing record can make it in. I would rather them just fix that by giving the winning team an opportunity to take the losing team's playoff spot by having an elimination game. To make it fair, the losing team would have the homecourt advantage. Ex: this year, the Suns would have had to beat the Pistons in Detroit for the eighth seed in the East
So, wouldn't Phoenix sliding over to the Eastern playoff bracket create some of the problems you mention at the top of your post, i.e., travel issues, SOS whining, etc...?
Not nearly as many. Detroit still has an opportunity to keep their spot. The only drawback so far as I can see is how silly an Eastern Conference Championship banner would look in Phoenix. The top East team may b****, but the top West team had to take out better teams in each round to get to the finals.
I hear you but instead of that, I think the best solution is to just eliminate conferences all together. This would eliminate SOS issues and the teams would just have to live with the travel issues. They could possibly even tweak schedules to at least lighten the travel. At the end of the season, seed the teams 1 through 16 like a quarter of the Final Four bracket. It gives more reward to top teams while eliminating all the current strength of conference issues of the present format.
I like that idea. How would you eliminate SOS? Just have everyone play each other twice? That would probably also extend a lot of careers if the powers that be were willing to abandon the 82 game season.
Have each team play every other team 2 to 3 times. It won't be perfect but right now not every WC team plays every other WC team 4 times. For example: The Rockets play 24 of the other teams 3 times each for a total of 72 games. They play the remaining 5 teams 2 times each to get to 82 games. Each season, they try to switch up the 5 teams they play only 2 times. So... 1. eliminate conferences 2. each team plays every other team 2 to 3 times 3. playoff bracket is like a quarter of the Final Four, with series instead of single game elimination (they could also make ever round 2-3-2 format to cut back on postseason travel)
I'd like to see a system that leaned heavier on divisions and thus promoted actual rivalries. If you have to keep the regular season at 82, then I'd like to see each team play its division opponents eight times, and then all other teams twice. For the playoffs, you would put the top two teams in each division against each other in the first round. And also have two wild card series. (One for each conference if you want to keep conferences). After the first round, you reseed for each round. Keep the conferences or chuck them, I wouldn't really care. With this system, if you wanted, you could do the seeding on non-division records. Thus, for example, if the Lakers and the Rockets were meeting in a playoff series, you would decide home court on who had the best record outside the Pacific and Southwest.
One of the reasons in favor for a tournament as I mentioned in my orirignal post is that teams in the West with 50 wins or more have to play on the road against tough teams like LA, Denver, San Antonio and Portland while .500 teams and those with losing records make the playoffs. The tournament would give a better seeding so that the Rockets, Mavericks, Hornets and Jazz shoudn't have to play the Blazers, Spurs, Nuggets, and Lakers. Instead strong teams get more favorable matchups which pays off in later rounds where only strongest survive to play each other. Looking at it from the current champions' perspective, the Lakers should not be playing a 48-34 Jazz team in the first round when Caveliers gets to sweep a 39-43 Pistons team. Sure the Lakers wrapped up the series pretty quickly but that is a testament to the Lakers strength. Put the Jazz against anyone outside the top 3 in the East and they would be favored to win. We need to reward teams for winning a lot games and not just keep sending them to the gallows like it is happening right now in West.
ghettocheeze, The problem with comparing records between conferences is that the teams play intra-conference roughly twice as much as inter-conference so it's hard to pass judgment on the strength of each conference based on overall records. You could use inter-conference records to evaluate the relative strength of the conferences but you can't use inter-conference records alone to seed in the playoffs and you can't use overall records combined with inter-conference records because things just get too complicated. Instead of comparing red apples (WC records) to yellow apples (EC records) -- instead of apples to oranges since there are some inter-conference games -- why not just eliminate conferences altogether and have every team play every other team 2 to 3 times (mostly 3 times similarly to how teams in the present format play most, but not all, other conference teams 4 times). That way, there is no issue about which conference is stronger. Then, seed the 16 playoff teams 1 through 16 like a quarter of the Final Four brackets. The only possible issues I see with this idea is there would be more traveling over the course of the season and you would be eliminating the mystique of having two conferences. I could care less about the latter while the travel could be reduced to some extent by careful scheduling and by using the 2-3-2 format in all rounds of the playoffs.
I am in support for everything you just said in your post, however the owners will never give up conference affiliation and divisional grouping because it allows them to market useless achievements as divisional and conference champions. As for comparing records heck its a no brainer the Jazz team is better than Pistons, 76ers or Hawks. Your record as a team always reflects your strength. A 50 win team will always be better than a .500 or one with a losing record. If the record is the same then use head to head tiebreaker. Given that the NBA and Stern are always reluctant to change, the best case solution is to keep the current divisional/conference format and just make the it a tournament seeding with overall standings as the seed ranking criteria. It isn't perfect but atleast plausible with the way league works these days.
