Why? How about b2b wins, how about point differentials v opponent strength, how about dunks per possession. See?
College football uses a voting system to determine which teams are "the best." Everybody knows that it is the lamest way to determine a "national champion." Now they use a 2-team tournament, which is still extremely lame.
there're 30 teams in the league. so if every team plays with all other teams 3 times in the regular season, that's 87 games - about the same # of games they have to play as of now. and if you get rid of the meaningless preseason games, the workload for each team will remain the same. so, forget about divisions. lets get rid of the conference thing, too. just let them play against each other 3 times a year. and the seeding in the post-season gets really easy. all problem solved.
I actually think point differentials would be a good one, better than division title anyway. (I know you are joking with dunks per possession.)
As others have pointed out, the Rockets played 4 games against the best division in the game. Clippers have the Lakers and the Kings in their divison. What is to say the Rockets simply don't win more games if they switched divisons? That's what happens when you get into hypotheticals.
The only NBA writer worth reading on ESPN/Grantland Kirk Goldsberry. Everyone else, including Lowe, is trash.
It would ... but the tie breaks are set in stone before the season starts, it's not something arbitrarily set in the mid-season. Everyone knows that, everyone plays extremely hard to win the tie breakers and may have stepped off the gas pedal a little in other games. I think that's fair. Not? Now, you may say the Clippers are in a bad division with a much better team ahead of them and ahead of everybody. Well too bad, so sad. Hey, how about we are missing DMO and Bev and the Clippers have Spence Hawes on their bench that they are not sure if they want to use him. Please ... don't feel bad for the Clippers.
I am not sure if you get my point. NBA divisions are arbitrary because it has extremely little to do with scheduling. Teams in the same conference of different divisions play almost the same opponents. NFL and MLB divisions have meaning because they play division teams more (much more in NFL). So to win a division, you actually have to be able beat the teams in your division. In the NBA, it is one big conference arbitrarily divided into divisions. You could have a losing division record and still "win" the division.
The "better" team can be viewed as the team which would mostly likely win a best out of N game series, where N is arbitrarily large. When Zach Lowe says he thinks the Clippers are a better team, I think this is what he means. Does that contradict the fact that they just lost a 7-game series? No. The Clippers won their 3 games soundly. The Rockets mounted big comebacks in 2 of their first 3 wins in the series, the second one being as close to "miraculous" as it gets in sports (at one point late in the 3rd quarter, the Clippers statistically had a 99% chance of winning the game). So if people aren't convinced that the Rockets would win a majority of a larger sample of games, I can't blame them.
The Rockets play 18 games against the Pacific division and 16 games against the Southwest. The Clippers play 18 games against the Southwest and 16 games against the Pacific. Every team in the same conference has virtually the same SoS.
No I am not getting it. The southwest division champ is not better than a better conference record with arbitrary grouping of teams by geography? What's Clipper's record against the Pels, Spurs, Griz in the RS?
Again, why stop there, if you are such a purist, you shouldn't stop at conference record, let's go b2b wins, wins w/ your superstar (Huh), injuries suffered. Sorry Easy, I don't get it. Maybe I am slow ...
Zach Lowe is not the Media. I don't know why some of you here are so offended. It's just one's man opinion.
Well, but the FACT is we beat them in 7, so we are ... BETTER as we know, no? Do we know for sure who is going to win a 8,9, 10, 11, 12 ... game series had this been on-going. NO! And that's not how NBA plays. Then, why reach the conclusion that the Clippers are the better team. The first round used to be 5 games, so we would have been defeated had this been a first round series 10 years ago, which is just an absurd premise. I am sorry, man. I should probably stop.
They're not better as much as you and the media love them. The Rockets are the 2 seed and the Rockets beat them. The Rockets are clearly the better team.
Exactly and if they were the better team the Rockets depth wouldn't have worn them down. How can anyone claim the Clippers are better while admitting they lost because the Rockets had to much talent which is what quality depth is?
This is the truth. In the NBA, the test of a team is winning a seven game series, barring some injury to a major player, but even then a playoff series is a test of the whole roster, not just the starters or even just the star players. The Blazers were better than the Rockets last year. The Rockets won a seven game series against the Clippers, while having two starters out due to injury. This season, the Rockets are the better team, no asterisk, no excuse. The Rockets are just plain better. Deal with it.
