NBA to Discuss the Playoff Format this Offseason

League set to discuss playoff format
Commissioner Stern doesn't foresee a change, but all proposals will be presented to committee.
Chris McCosky / The Detroit News

PHILADELPHIA -- If coaches and team officials truly want to change the current NBA playoff format, they are going to get their opportunity this summer.

"Though I think it is unlikely anything will happen, we will explore it fully," commissioner David Stern said in an informal press briefing before the game Friday.

Several different proposals have been discussed the last couple of years. One is to re-seed teams in each conference after each round. Another is for the playoffs to include the 16 top teams in the league, regardless of conference affiliation and simply seed them one through 16.

Stern also said that, barring any unforeseen block from the court system, the Seattle Sonics franchise was definitely moving to Oklahoma City. He said the move could take place next season, or in the next two or three.

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll...102/804260350/

Am I the only one who doesn't want it to change?

I think they should follow a format where there are two brackets. Top 16 teams in the top bracket go to the playoffs. The worst team in the top bracket moves to the bottom bracket next season. Best team of the bottom bracket moves up to the top bracket in the next season.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by phyzik

I think they should follow a format where there are two brackets. Top 16 teams in the top bracket go to the playoffs. The worst team in the top bracket moves to the bottom bracket next season. Best team of the bottom bracket moves up to the top bracket in the next season.

---

Club football style? The owners would never go for it.

They need to change the 1st rd seies the best of 5 instead of 7
Its gonna take almost 2 weeks for the 1st rd of the P/Os to come and go
Thats waaaaaaaaaaaay too long
Unfortunately my opinion doesnt stand a chance against the ESPN, ABC, TNT cash flow

I like how the format is now. The teams want to get into the playoffs need to play better. Why should the League change the format? If the West was not so competitive this year this would not be an issue.

2 brackets... one for contenders one for pretenders
or

one for entertainment purposes only
one for NBA ball ?

just a suggestion...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Amare_32

I like how the format is now. The teams want to get into the playoffs need to play better. Why should the League change the format? If the West was not so competitive this year this would not be an issue.

---

It's just not fair that 37-45 Atlanta gets a playoff berth when 48-34 Golden State doesn't. I don't think anybody would disagree.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by thiste

It's just not fair that 37-45 Atlanta gets a playoff berth when 48-34 Golden State doesn't. I don't think anybody would disagree.

---

Is not like Atlanta will be in the postseason past Monday.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Amare_32

Is not like Atlanta will be in the postseason past Monday.

---

That's precisely my point. Golden State on the other hand could have passed the first round. See last year.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by thiste

That's precisely my point. Golden State on the other hand could have passed the first round. See last year.

---

IDK I am always alarmed when Stern starts talking about changes. :lol

Yeah well they probably won't change anything anyways.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by makedamnsure

Am I the only one who doesn't want it to change?

---

+1

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jmard5

+1

---

+2

Reseeding would be dumb.

I'd have no problems with the top 16 teams getting in.

I think they need to change the top four rule for division champs to a guaranteed berth period, placement dependent on record. It's stupid to have a 4 seed without homecourt.

Other than that, I don't know what they should do. But it is pretty sucky that teams with better records don't make the playoffs. Maybe guarantee division winners a playoff seeding, and then otherwise eliminate conferences. But then it would require a 2-3-2 format because of potential cross country first round matchups, and then there are no conference finals, per se. Yeah, I don't know. But the seeding thing above should change.

Giving extra playoff positions to western conference teams means those rotten eastern conference teams get extra lottery picks that they don't fucking deserve.

They should just do it College BCS Style, and the writers and coaches select the top 20.

:lol

I'm in favor of reseeding. I can take or leave the top 16 idea... if you do that, you should just eliminate conferences and make all schedules as equal as possible. But I don't see any dire need to do that... who really cares if the ninth best team in the West is better than some of the Eastern Playoff teams? It's not like any of those teams are Championship contenders, and if I had my way none of them would get in.

reseed by record after the first round is fine with me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Obstructed_View

Giving extra playoff positions to western conference teams means those rotten eastern conference teams get extra lottery picks that they don't fucking deserve.

---

Not necessarily

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by makedamnsure

Am I the only one who doesn't want it to change?

---

I'm pretty indifferent on it. GSW definitely had a better year than Atlanta, but I have a tough time feeling sorry for them when they finished 9th in their own conference. Hard to finish that low and complain about not getting a chance to compete for a championship.

Here's one issue. Seeding 1-16 regardless of conference would be a huge advantage to the teams that play in the weaker conference.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dingle Barry

Not necessarily

---

Putting the sixteen best teams in the playoffs but awarding seven lottery spots to each conference regardless? Might work.

You can not re-seedwith all 16 teams together. They do not play the same schedules. You can change the seeding in each conference where the division winner does not seeded higher than a team with better record(Houston and Utah), but that isall. If they want to make it fair, then rearrange the conferences, and balance them by moving 2 Western teams to the East and vice versa......but I think the system is just fine now that they changed the 1-2 seed problem like what happened 2 years ago with Dallas and SA MEETING IN SEMIS,instead on Conf Finals as the 2 best teams

Leave it the same. Chance, bad matchups, good matchups, unfair matchups, etc. have been part of the playoffs forever. It's part of the fun.

Unless you're going to change to a round-robin format like the College World Series.

if you can't make the top 8 in your own conference, then you don't deserve to be in the playoffs..also, it's not like the 8th seed in the East is going to advance anyways..be happy with the lottery pick..

Ian Thomsen has a good column on it:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200...ml?eref=sircrc

5 Reasons to stick with the playoff format

5. The NBA can't seed a single bracket. Based on the superior number of winning teams in the West, there has been a lot of complaining that the NBA needs to consider reseeding the playoffs without regard to conference. Invite to the postseason tournament the 16 winningest teams across the board and seed them in a single bracket from No. 1 Boston to No. 16 Toronto.

The argument is worthy in the sense that Golden State (48 wins) and Portland (41) from the West would qualify for the playoffs at the expense of losing teams Philadelphia (40) and Atlanta (37), the current Nos. 7 and 8 seeds in the East, respectively.

The main problem has to do with regular-season scheduling. Each team currently plays 52 games within its conference and 30 interconference games. If the argument is to make the postseason more fair, then it would be unfair to group all of the entrants into one pot based on different schedules.

If this is about being fair, then the regular-season schedule would need to be weighted evenly so that every team would play an equal number of games against opponents from both conferences. This would ruin any hope of creating divisional or regional rivalries while making the travel more onerous.

If anything needs to be fixed, it isn't the playoffs. The NBA's weakness is the five-and-a-half-month regular season. It's hard enough for fans and players to pay full attention to all 82 games, and anything that decreases interest in the regular season -- such as overhauling the schedule without regard to conference affiliation -- would be an act of self-immolation.

4. The tournament wouldn't necessarily improve. Here are the first-round matchups as it is now:

Eastern Conference

No. 1 Boston vs. No. 8 Atlanta
No. 2 Detroit vs. No. 7 Philadelphia
No. 3 Orlando vs. No. 6 Toronto
No. 4 Cleveland vs. No. 5 Washington

Western Conference

No. 1 L.A. Lakers vs. No. 8 Denver
No. 2 New Orleans vs. No. 7 Dallas
No. 3 San Antonio vs. No. 6 Phoenix
No. 4 Utah vs. No. 5 Houston

If the 16 winningest teams were included (despite the wide disparity in their schedules), below is how the first round would line up. (I've arbitrarily granted Portland the tiebreaker over Toronto, two 41-41 teams, based on the Blazers' residence in the superior West.) I've noted whether each series in this format is a better or worse matchup involving the higher-seeded team.

No. 1 Boston vs. No. 16 Toronto ... better
No. 2 Detroit vs. No. 15 Portland ... better
No. 3 L.A. Lakers vs. No. 14 Washington ... worse
No. 4 New Orleans vs. No. 13 Cleveland ... worse
No. 5 San Antonio vs. No. 12 Golden State ... worse
No. 6 Houston vs. No. 11 Denver ... better
No. 7 Phoenix vs. No. 10 Dallas ... worse
No. 8 Utah vs. No. 9 Orlando ... worse

Toronto would be a better opponent for the Celtics than Atlanta, Portland would provide a better test for the Pistons than Philadelphia (though the 76ers have created interest in that series), and I would rather see Denver instead of Utah against the Rockets.

But I say the new opponents for the Lakers, Hornets, Spurs, Suns and Jazz would provide worse matchups than those teams are facing today. I would rather see San Antonio vs. Phoenix than either Spurs-Warriors or Suns-Mavericks; likewise, is Orlando-Toronto more competitive than Celtics-Raptors or Jazz-Magic?

3. The NBA playoffs need to be quirky. It is a fact that the NBA puts on the purest postseason tournament of the four major leagues (if the NHL can still claim to be a major league). By that I mean the NBA playoffs run truest to form: The most successful regular-season teams tend to win the title. The last 12 NBA champions have been the Nos. 1 or 2 seed within their conference. An NBA championship must be earned during the regular season, whereas lesser wild-card teams win the championships in baseball and football, and postseason upsets in those leagues as well as the NHL happen far more often than in the NBA.

The issue for the NBA is not to make its playoffs more fair, because by current standards it is already the truest test in American team sports. But audiences are not impressed by predictability. They prefer upsets, underdogs and March Madness.

If it were up to me, every NBA series would be best-of-five -- maybe even best-of-three -- which would increase the importance of each game and the unpredictability of each series. But the NBA has gone the other way by increasing the opening round from best-of-five to best-of-seven because teams need the extra cash.

In which case the current format is probably as good as we can hope for. I like the idea of two championship contenders -- the Spurs and Suns -- meeting in the first round, and I like the young Hornets testing themselves against a recent NBA finalist from Dallas that won 67 games last season. The most qualified teams usually advance through the playoffs because that's how the best-of-seven format works in the NBA; in the meantime, the opening round needs to be made as compelling as possible, and at least the system has provided a few good series this year.

2. The lottery is a consolation prize. Of course the Warriors and Blazers would prefer to be in the playoffs, but at least they have a small chance of winning the draft lottery next month and with it a chance to add Michael Beasley or Derrick Rose.

(P.S. Let's hear no talk of how the lottery needs to be changed to prevent bad teams from tanking. No matter how it is adjusted, there will always be bubble teams willing to lose games this year in hopes of improving their roster for the future.)

1. The complaining isn't so bad. It's better to hear from passionate and occasionally enraged fans about the current system than to imagine the "improved'' system that would take its place: a nondescript regular-season schedule, followed by potentially less compelling first-round matchups.

While we're at it, I'm also against reseeding after each round. If a bottom-dweller happens to win by upset, then it shouldn't be penalized by being matched against the next-highest seed. People like underdogs, and the surprise winners should be given a fighting chance to keep playing in a postseason format that is heavily weighted against them already.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by thiste

It's just not fair that 37-45 Atlanta gets a playoff berth when 48-34 Golden State doesn't. I don't think anybody would disagree.

---

Life isn't and will never be fair. The system is best the way it is constructed. Moving teams around and such would completely alter the rivalry matchups that have taken 40 years to create.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by thiste

It's just not fair that 37-45 Atlanta gets a playoff berth when 48-34 Golden State doesn't. I don't think anybody would disagree.

---

Thank you. Atlanta gets the benefit of geography. They are rewarded for playing in a conference full of functionally retarded teams. They have no fucking business being in the playoffs.

Philly is on the verge of knocking off the Pistons. I don't think the Pistons want a tougher matchup.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mr. Happy

Philly is on the verge of knocking off the Pistons. I don't think the Pistons want a tougher matchup.

---

Ouch.

Taking the 16 teams with the best records is quite unfair.
A team plays more game against teams of his own conference. Having the same record is easier in a weaker conference.
The only way to make it fair is that teams don't play more against teams of the same conference, that is to say fully removing the conference/Division system.

I doubt reseeding between rounds will happens. If you reseed teams, you had basically to wait that all teams have finished a round before starting the next one. In the case of most teams finishing quickly their first round and one series in each conference going the seven games, the result will be that during one week you will have almost no games. I doubt TV networks will agree on that and I don't think it's good to have one week off in the middle of the playoffs.

The league is seriously stupid if they change the format because of one strong season in the Western conference. Yeah Stern, the Eastern conference will never be that strong ever :rolleyes Seriously, the format they have now is a good one. The West will not always be stronger than the East.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by thiste

It's just not fair that 37-45 Atlanta gets a playoff berth when 48-34 Golden State doesn't. I don't think anybody would disagree.

---

Then Golden State should've beaten Denver the two times they meet in the last 2-3 weeks of the season. Those bitches deserve to miss the POs for losing those must-win games

16 best teams of the NBA should be in the playoffs

in other news ...Suns demanded to play playoffs in the East.

My own personal suggestion goes like this
1) Keep the conferences (east and west), they encourage development of rivalries, as well as keeping travel costs/time (and player fatigue) down.
2) Keep the seeding system the same as it is now. ie Seeded by record, with division winners automatically top 4.
3) Playoffs match ups are picked by the higher seed, kind of like a mini draft. The 1st seeded team could then play whatever team they choose from the rest of the conference (ie. they could pick #2, or #7 or whichever). Then the remaining highest seeded team picks a match-up, an so forth. This would a) inject some strategy into the match-ups, strongly rewarding higher seeds, eg. Dallas would have obviously not picked GS last year. b) encourage development of rivalries - for example consider the west playoffs in 06. Can you see us not picking the Lakers for a match-up in round 1, just to rub Kobe's face in the dirt while he was down... This is the kind of thing that would start incredible rivalries.
4) After each round, the surviving seeds would again pick match-ups in the conference. (This would actually only happen in the 2nd round, and even there, only the highest seed would get to pick; after that you only have one option for a match up).

I'd go for geographical/conference blindness.

Top16 teams, seeded in 2 brackets:

odd bracket:

1 16

3 14

5 11

7 10

============

even bracket

2 15

4 13

6 10

8 9

Quote:

---

The last 12 NBA champions have been the Nos. 1 or 2 seed within their conference.

---

I know it's hard to remember all the way back to last year, but the Spurs won the 'ship from the 3-seed.

Good article otherwise, though.

top 16 in entire league get in.


Scrub teams getting in is bullshit. You have to figure out some way to even out the reg season though since weaker conference will have bloated records.

Bah, don't change anything. Besides, what Western Conference team besides the Spurs and the Lakers have done shit in the past decade anyways? :lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by thiste

It's just not fair that 37-45 Atlanta gets a playoff berth when 48-34 Golden State doesn't. I don't think anybody would disagree.

---

On the other hand, it is not fair to Atlanta either. GSW, almost 60% team can (theoreticaly) get 1st pick, Atlanta can't.

I don't think they'll go to straight top 16. A compromise might be take top 6 in each conference then next best 4.

Or allow a team from other conference to bump one of the bottom 2 of other conference if their record is say 4 games better. This year Golden State would have bumped Atlanta under such a rule and that's it. Not a lot of disruption but a way to even out big disparities.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LilMissSPURfect

2 brackets... one for contenders one for pretenders
or

one for entertainment purposes only
one for NBA ball ?

just a suggestion...

---

if there's a way to make money off of that, they'd do it in a heartbeat