Proposed NBA Playoff Format Change Could Be First Step to Fixing Major Issues
The NBA is taking a small—but important—step toward creating a better playoff product.
It's a stopgap fix on something that will eventually require a more permanent solution, but at least it's a start.
Division titles, which previously guaranteed a top-four seed, will no longer carry the same power. The top-eight teams in each conference will now be seeded based solely on their on-court performance, a league executive told USA Today's Jeff Zillgitt:
Like many major changes, the move was likely necessitated by a glaring flaw in the system.
This past season, the Portland Trail Blazers grabbed the Western Conference's No. 4 seed by virtue of winning the Northwest Division. But Portland's 51 wins were only the sixth-highest total in the West. The San Antonio Spurs, who won 55 games, were bumped down to the No. 6 seed. That meant they had to play the 56-win Los Angeles Clippers in the opening round.
Digging deeper into the numbers only made the matchup look more grossly premature. The Clippers and Spurs ranked second and third, respectively, in both point differential and net efficiency rating—metrics many see as better indicators of team success than wins and losses.
Both clubs had elite credentials, yet they squared off in the same round where the 60-win Atlanta Hawks met the 38-win Brooklyn Nets.
"That's a flaw," Clippers coach Doc Rivers said, via ESPN.com's Arash Markazi. "I think the divisions are important. They're nice to have. They're nice to be celebrated, for some and some not, but I don't know if they should be celebrated as far as in the standings."
They shouldn't. NBA commissioner Adam Silver had been singing that tune for a while, and he reiterated his stance in early June.
"I think we are going to take a very close at whether we should seed at least Nos. 1-8 by conference as opposed to giving the division winner that higher seed," Silver said prior to Game 1 of the NBA Finals, via NBC Sports' Kurt Helin. "... As I've said earlier, that is a vestige of a division system that may not make sense anymore."
It doesn't make sense, and therefore this should not have been a difficult call to make.
"There's no reason not to do this—the only purpose divisions really serve at this point is to make scheduling easier," wrote Sean Highkin of NBC Sports. "The teams with the eight best records should have the top eight seeds, in order."
That's where the NBA is headed now, and it probably deserves some kudos for addressing an obvious issue. Compared to some other professional sports leagues, this is a fairly progressive measure.
The MLB punches first-round postseason tickets for all six of its division winners. The two best teams that didn't win their division in each league then face each other in a win-or-go-home wild-card game before advancing to play one of those division champs.
The NFL takes things a step further. It not only reserves eight of its 12 playoff spots for division champions, it also gives those clubs a top-four seed and home-field advantage for at least one game. This past season, that meant the seven-win Carolina Panthers hosted the 11-win Arizona Cardinals, while the 10-win Philadelphia Eagles were left out of the festivities.
The NHL's new playoff format is more convoluted. The top-three teams from each of its four divisions qualify for postseason play, while the final four spots go to the two next highest-placed in each conference.
Division crowns shouldn't carry that much weight in determining the second season's field. It can punish clubs for playing in a loaded division or reward those coming out of a weak one. Credit the NBA for acknowledging that a team's playoff fate should not be impacted by something so far out of its control.
But most hoop heads crave further change. With the balance of power shifted heavily toward the West, there is a considerable desire to see conference affiliations removed from the postseason discussion.
"The NBA playoffs should be a thorough, ruthless process of separating the contenders from the pretenders," wrote Ben Golliver of Sports Illustrated. "... Taking the top eight teams from each conference, rather than the top 16 teams overall, costs basketball fans the best their game has to offer at every stage of the postseason."
Again, the problem is prevalent enough that we needn't look beyond this past season to see evidence of its existence.
It took 45 wins for a Western Conference club to crack the 2015 playoff field. Even that total wasn't enough for the injury-riddled Oklahoma City Thunder, who lost a tiebreaker by virtue of dropping their season series 3-1 with the eighth-seeded New Orleans Pelicans.
Out East, 45 wins would have netted the sixth overall seed. The Milwaukee Bucks snagged that spot with a 41-41 mark. Both the Boston Celtics (40-42) and Brooklyn Nets (38-44) carried losing records into the postseason.
And this was far from being an anomaly. In recent seasons, the biggest surprises come from the East's eighth seed outperforming the West's No. 9.
| 2014-15 | OKC Thunder | 45 | Brooklyn Nets | 38 |
| 2013-14 | Phoenix Suns | 48 | Atlanta Hawks | 38 |
| 2012-13 | Utah Jazz | 43 | Milwaukee Bucks | 38 |
| 2011-12 | Houston Rockets | 34 | Philadelphia 76ers | 35 |
| 2010-11 | Houston Rockets | 43 | Indiana Pacers | 37 |
| 2009-10 | Houston Rockets | 42 | Chicago Bulls | 41 |
| 2008-09 | Phoenix Suns | 46 | Detroit Pistons | 39 |
| 2007-08 | GS Warriors | 48 | Atlanta Hawks | 37 |
| 2006-07 | LA Clippers | 40 | Orlando Magic | 40 |
| 2005-06 | Utah Jazz | 41 | Milwaukee Bucks | 40 |
What does that 10-year sample tell us? That it only takes 39.1 wins on average to grab a seat at the Eastern Conference playoff table, while 43.8 victories in the West isn't enough (records from the 66-game 2011-12 campaign were extrapolated to the normal 82-game size to calculate those figures).
Dropping the significance of a division title won't help with this larger issue. But abolishing the league's conference system would present its own set of challenges.
As Silver explained, a conference-free playoff field could create some logistical nightmares with regard to travel, via Dan McCarney of the San Antonio Express-News:
"While (the 1-through-16 proposal) seems attractive in many ways, because of the additional travel that will result, it just doesn’t seem like a good idea at the moment. For example, this (Golden State) team would have played Boston in the first round under a 1 through 16 seeding and would have had to crisscross back and forth across the country, which does not seem like a good idea, especially based on the earlier question based on the health of our players, and focusing on actually reducing the amount of travel and back-to-back (games).
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But charter flights and a spread-out playoff schedule might make those travel issues less daunting than they seem. Plus, teams are racking up a lot of frequent flier miles as it is.
The hypothetical Golden State Warriors-Boston Celtics matchup that Silver referenced would have featured teams separated by roughly 2,700 miles. When the Dubs faced the Pelicans in the opening round, the two clubs still had more than 1,900 miles to cover. The Warriors logged nearly another 1,800 miles when they met the Memphis Grizzlies in the conference semis.
The extra mileage is still a concern, but not one great enough to scrap this idea.
However, that's not the only factor the league needs to consider.
This is a business. And as ESPN.com's Ethan Sherwood Strauss pointed out, the NBA could have some economic incentives for keeping the Eastern Conference prominently featured in the playoff picture:
"All Northeast teams are in the East, and a lot of people live in the Northeast.
A tournament comprised of the best 16 NBA teams could lack any squads from the Boston-to-Washington megalopolis. ...
Not only is your average East market bigger than your average West market, but a West-heavy bracket could complicate TV scheduling. It's difficult to stagger playoff games on the same day if everyone is playing in the same time zone.
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Eastern Conference clubs also can't be thrilled about the idea of more playoff revenue heading out West, though the current setup has kept some really good Western Conference teams from reaching into the postseason pot.
If the NBA only took the 16 best teams to the postseason, it might also have to revamp its regular-season scheduling format, too. If records become the only thing that matters, an unbalanced schedule could put Western Conference teams at a disadvantage given the level of competition they would face.
It's a tricky situation, and one that will require a complicated solution. There's a major difference between identifying a quandary and actually figuring out how to fix it.
But something needs to be done. If the postseason picture includes anything other than the league's best teams, then the current setup is failing.
Any progress on improving the playoff field helps, and ditching the importance of a division crown clearly qualifies as such. But bigger flaws in the format remain which won't be nearly as simple to solve.
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