Division Leader being a top 4 seed...

[Dex]

A few years ago, they changed the seeding rules so that if you are a division leader, you are guaranteed a spot in the Top 4. However, if your opponent has a better record than you, they still get home court advantage, even if you are the higher seed.

Look at the current situation with the Clippers and Memphis.



Seed
Team
Wins
Losses


4th
Clippers
52
26


5th
Grizzlies
53
25



Memphis has the better record, but since the Clippers have clinched the Pacific division, they are the higher seed. However, if the playoffs were to start today, Memphis would have HCA and the 4th seed would be going on the road against the higher 5th seed.

Am I crazy, or does this rule not make any sense? It seems completely pointless to me. I guess it could affect what bracket you go into, but it's hard to call that an advantage for the division leader considering brackets aren't even determined until the final days of the season. Otherwise, all it really does is give you a prettier seed which really does you no good (since you won't get HCA from it anyways), and moves you lower in the draft.

Do you think you should be guaranteed HCA if you are the higher seed?

[Seventyniner]

The rule is irrelevant this year because even if the Clippers were not guaranteed a top 4 seed, they would be 5th and play Memphis in the first round without HCA. The only time this rule would matter is if the division winner would have otherwise been 6th or lower.

I agree that the top 4 rule is silly. It still is far less damaging than when division winners were guaranteed a top 3 seed, pushing the 2006 Mavs to 4th even though they had the second-best record.

Edit: to answer the questions, draft order is based on record and not seeding, so the Clippers will get a better pick than the Grizzlies if the Clippers have a worse record. Also, I agree with the league that HCA should be determined by record and not seeding.

I still think it would be awesome if the top 3 seeds got to pick their first-round opponents.

[Aztecfan03]

The only way it helps is if the division leader has the 6th-8th best record. Which is probably not usually likely.

[racm]

They changed it because of what happened in 2006:

The Nuggets won the Northwest despite winning a total of 44 games, so they were the 3rd seed. The Mavs finished with 60 wins, but because they didn't win the division (thanks to the Spurs), they were seeded 4th. So the Grizzlies and Clippers (talk about history repeating itself!) decided to outtank each other for the 6th spot, as it was either "play the Nuggets with HCA" or "get destroyed by Dallas in round 1". The Clippers lost the final game of the season to Memphis, and so they beat the Nuggets in round 1 while the Mavs swept the Grizz.

This rule was also why the Spurs and Mavs faced off one round earlier despite being two 60 win teams.

[will_spurs]

racm has it right, and the OP is kinda "misreading" the rule. Guaranteeing a top 4 spot is actually not the point, it was turning a "top 3 guarantee" into a "top 4 guarantee", and this changed a lot of things.

Under the old rules right now the Clippers would be locked into the 3 spot, and Denver would be 4th and their only way out of that spot would be to aim directly for the 1st seed (by winning their division).