Come N Get it-- All Remaining Games for Western Playoff teams, seeding, tiebreakers !

[ElNono]

No, if the Spurs were to be the 3rd seed, then in the 2nd round they would play the winner of the NO/Nuggets.

The winner of the Portland/Houston series would play the winner of the Lakers/Utah.

Ok then... I would prefer Dallas->Nuggets... I would just rather avoid teams that play too physical or involve lots of traveling early on. Just to have Tim recover those knees a little better in between games.

[DPG21920]

I will officially not be sleeping for the next two nights.

[benefactor]

I will officially not be sleeping for the next two nights.

It started last night for me.....

[sribb43]

I would love a Mavs/Spurs playoff series...even though Spurs will probably come out on top it would still be a closely contested series and this would just add to the history between the teams....Mavs/Nuggs or Mavs/Lakers does nothing for me

GO MAVS and GO SPURS so we can meet in the 1st round

[Josepatches_]

But this is incorrect.

We have agreed that the rules posted are current and accurate.

According to those rules, if Portland and San Antonio win and Houston loses, then Portland is the number three seed because of the head to head 3 to 1 regular season series that they won against us.

San Antonio would have a better record than Houston. Thus, San Antonio would be the fourth seed.

This would leave Houston as the fifth seed.

This is simply an application of those rules in order.

And the fourth seed plays the fifth seed. So, that means that San Antonio would play Houston and San Antonio would have hca.

Fail.
McDonald was wrong.
But that situation can't happen because Portland won so Denver lost

[Mavs<Spurs]

Fail.
McDonald was wrong.
But that situation can't happen because Portland won so Denver lost

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Here is my post:

Originally Posted by Mavs<Spurs View Post

But this is incorrect.

We have agreed that the rules posted are current and accurate.

According to those rules, if Portland and San Antonio win and Houston loses, then Portland is the number three seed because of the head to head 3 to 1 regular season series that they won against us.

San Antonio would have a better record than Houston. Thus, San Antonio would be the fourth seed.

This would leave Houston as the fifth seed.

This is simply an application of those rules in order.

And the fourth seed plays the fifth seed. So, that means that San Antonio would play Houston and San Antonio would have hca.

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So, the question is what is that referring to ? What is the antecedent of that situation ? Is it what I wrote (ie those events) ? Is it the events McDonald wrote ?

What you quoted from me clearly could and did happen. So, that is obviously not an impossible situation. So, hopefully you are not referring to that.


I never read the article by McDonald and have not been an apologist for him. Now, my main contention regarding McDonald is that if McDonald said being the division champ is a way to break a 2 way tie, then he is incorrect.

What others have asserted that McDonald wrote is that if the Spurs won and Houston lost, then San Antonio is guaranteed the number three seed regardless of whether or not Portland wins.

And this actually appears to be a true statement. We begin with our assumption that San Antonio wins and Houston loses. Now, either Portland beats Denver or Denver beats Portland.

Now, remember we are discussing the second, third and fourth playoff seeds.

1. If Portland beats Denver, then there is a 3 way tie between Denver, Portland and San Antonio since all 3 would have a 54 win 28 loss record. Because it is a 3 way tie, then division champ is a way to decide the tiebreak.

Denver holds the tiebreak against Portland even if Portland beat Denver. So, Denver gets the number 2 seed since they are a division champ. The first thing we do is decide the division champs. They are Denver and San Antonio respectively.

Now, Denver also holds the 2 way tiebreaker against San Antonio.

This can only mean that Denver must hold the number 2 seed. And since San Antonio is a division champ and Portland is not, San Antonio must get the very next seed. So, San Antonio gets the third seed.

And since Portland won their game against Denver, their record again is 54 wins 28 losses. However, Houston's record is 53 wins 29 losses. Therefore, Portland is a higher seed than Houston. Thus, Portland is the fourth seed and Houston is the fifth seed.

So in case I, where Portland wins, San Antonio does end up with the third seed. Just like McDonald apparently wrote.

Let us consider case II. We start with our same supposition: San Antonio won and Houston lost. Supposed that Portland lost to Denver. Denver has a 55 win 27 loss record, better than every team's record other than LA in the West. Notice that San Antonio has a record of 54 wins 28 losses. However, since Portland and Houston both lost, they have both have records of 53 wins and 29 losses. Since Denver's record is worse than LA but better than all the other teams in the Western Conference, Denver must hold the number two seed. And since San Antonio's record is not as good as Denver's but is better than Houston and Portland as well as the rest of the West, then San Antonio must hold the number three seed. Next, we are considering who wins the fourth seed. We are only settling a 2 way tiebreak here. In this series of outcomes, there is only a 2 way tiebreak (there is not three way tiebreak).
To break the 2 way tiebreak, next we look at head to head records between Portland and Houston. Houston has the better head to head record. Thus, Houston gets the fourth seed. This means that Portland has the fifth seed since it has a better record than all the remaining teams in the Western Conference.

Now, our objective in considering this case is to see if San Antonio would emerge from that scenario (Portland losing to Denver, San Antonio winning and Houston losing) with the third seed. We just saw that San Antonio would emerge from this scenario with the third seed.

So, in case I and in case II, San Antonio emerges with the third seed. Now, if San Antonio wins and Houston loses, there are only two possibilities: either Portland beats Denver or Portland loses to Denver. Thus, cases I and II comprise all of the possibilities if San Antonio wins and Denver loses.
Yet, in both cases, San Antonio grabs hold of the third seed. Hence, if San Antonio wins and Houston loses, San Antonio is the third seed and note that this is the outcome whether Portland beats Denver or not.

Therefore, if McDonald simply wrote that if San Antonio wins and Houston loses, then San Antonio becomes the third seed irregardless of whether or not Portland beats Denver, then McDonald is correct. For, as we saw in our analysis of the cases, San Antonio does emerge with the third seed no matter what happens with Portland and Dener


Now, I have not read much if any writing by McDonald on this topic. However, again, if McDonald wrote the following syllogism (San Antonio win, Houston loss implies San Antonio wins the third seed, then McDonald is correct as we have seen.

If one wants to disprove what McDonald wrote, then one must quote the mistakes by McDonald and prove that they are errors.You not only failed to do this, it looks as if McDonald is correct.


Therefore, McDonald appears to be correct if his only assertion was that if San Antonio wins, Houston loses means that San Antonio obtains the third seed

Therefore, your assertion that McDonald was wrong appears to be incorrect.