Maybe it's just my imagination, but wasn't the Finals game format a 2-2-1-1-1 before this 2-3-2 business? I don't know if it's been discussed before, but it seems the 2-2-1-1-1 series would be a little more "fair" in the sense that no team really gets to build momentum at home. Maybe it's just me...
Yes it was until the Lakers / Celtics matchups in the 1980's. They changed it to minimize the travel burden on the teams and the media. I believe the media started complaining about the amount of travel or something like that.
It was to ease the travel burden and as I recall the 2-2-1-1-1 format was much better, the home court advantage did mean something in every single game you play. In the 2-3-2 format, after Dallas won the 1st 2 games, everyone thought Dallas would win the series easily because it should have been very hard for Miami to win all 3 middle games. Now that Miami leads 3-2, you feel like Dallas is at the disadvantage even though it has 2 games on its home court. It just does not seem right.
