So yeah, this is direct kneejerk reaction to the fact that the Rockets got bumped early... but this idea was picking up steam before the playoffs began due to how absolutely horrible the East is. An example of this year's playoffs with "true seeding": Spoiler Simple question, do you support this?
Definitely. Even though you have the Hawks giving the Pacers fits, the East lower seeds are generally fodder for the top heavy Eastern conference. They should get rid of all conferences and maybe just stick to the divisions for playing more games.
No true seeding. But I like Battiers idea: 1. First round is best of five. 2. 7 and 8 seeds determined by single elimination tourney. 3. Shorten regular season by 10 games. ALSO: - A Commissioners Cup during the All Star break, which would basically be March Madness style tournament with only the best teams invited. Imagine the gambling!
The idea of changing up everything after we lose a series to an opponent comes off as whiny. To win it all you have to beat whoever is in front of you. We didnt.
The crazier thing is that out of the 7 East Conference teams, I would only expect one (Miami) to come out of the 1st round: San Antonio vs Charlotte Oklahoma City vs Brooklyn LA Clippers vs Washington Indiana vs Phoenix Miami vs Chicago Houston vs Toronto
Nothing wrong with changing up the playoff format, but arguing to do so after the NBA got the most interesting and exciting 1st round in its history seems a little misguided.
What are the chances it happens again? Make the first round best of five and I guarantee we have this more often
Absolutely - shorter series always create more upsets. It just seems to weird timing - there's nothing that's happened in the last 2 weeks to make now the time to change the playoff format. If it wasn't time to change the playoff format last year or the year before, it's certainly not this year (from the NBA's entertainment value perspective).
Not a fan of true seeding as depicted, but rather semi-true seeding with two brackets. Bracket A: Odd-seeded teams. Bracket B: Even-seeded teams. Bracket A: 1 vs 15 7 vs 9 5 vs 11 3 vs 13 Bracket B: 2 vs 16 8 vs 10 6 vs 12 4 vs 14 In this scenario the Rockets would be matched against the Bulls. The hypothetical Finals where seed 1 faces seed 2 would be Thunder vs. Spurs.
I would back this. A 72 game regular season would still be long enough to determine playoff teams and the first round should have always been best of 5. The first round of the playoffs should just be kind of a wild card playoff in the first place. This 7 game crap makes it go on forever
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>So who wants to change the playoff format? <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23game7madness&src=hash">#game7madness</a></p>— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) <a href="https://twitter.com/mcuban/statuses/462653788960980992">May 3, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Because we are seeing how exciting it can be when games that actually matter are played. Usually this doesn't happen until later rounds.
Says the guy who gets more money from a crappier system for the fans. I cannot stand Cuban and his transparent self interest in everything he says. Throw the idiot in the shark tank. I mean a real one like on Team America.
While I agree that this first round has been exciting (Rockets' loss included), I think if anything, it actually proves that the playoff format is broken! The first round, in theory, should NOT be exciting--it should be the top teams chewing up the bottom teams and spitting them out while the middle teams have close and contentious series. This year, the amount of Game 7s is a testament to just how evenly matched many of these teams are, and that really shouldn't be the case until later rounds. Granted, parity and upsets are a good thing, but with the current conference seeding, it's more like good teams are playing similarly good teams in the West and bad teams are playing similary bad teams in the East.
Here's what a two-bracket true-seeding looks like: Spoiler This way the 8th-seeded team gets some breathing room too as opposed to facing the 9th-seed.
