NBA Playoff Seedings: Why the System's Broken

So, the NBA regular season is almost over.

And under the league's new playoff seeding system—

as so eloquently articulated by Steve Kerr in a recent Yahoo! article—many of the matchups are f&!ked up!

In the ultra-physical Eastern Conference, for example, Cleveland and Miami are poised to meet in what promises to be a vicious first-round confrontation.

Sure, the matchup is going to be great to watch—but that's not the point.

Before the season, the NBA Rules Committee revised the league's playoff format so that each division champion would be guaranteed only a top-four seed, instead of a top-three seed.

Unfortunately, the Committee underestimated how tight the final standings would be in each respective division.

The problem: Division champions Toronto and Miami ended up as third and fourth seeds, while the supremely talented Cavs—who finished only three games back of top-seeded Detroit—are stuck with a fifth seed.

Of course, it's not the Committee's fault they didn't revert to the playoff system that existed before the league switched to six divisions three years ago...or is it?
Shouldn't someone in charge have had the foresight to know that elite teams like Cleveland and Chicago—who have the bad luck of sharing a division with Detroit—would undermine the "top-four" system?

As it stands, the Cavs are slated to face Miami in the first round. In prior years, the pairing might have made for a compelling "proving ground" matchup—but now it seems more like a premature meeting of two teams who are both capable of hoisting the O'Brien Trophy.

And the winners? They get to face...the Pistons.

Which begs the question: Isn't it great to have the Conference Finals in the first two rounds of the playoffs?

The answer: Hell no!

The NBA would do well to take Kerr's advice and revert back to a record-based seeding system, in which postseason rank is determined by wins and losses instead of division standing.

In Kerr's words, "(w)inning a division should guarantee a playoff spot, but nothing else."

With all the parity in the NBA, the record-based system may be the only way to ensure that the playoff seedings shake out as they should.

It's just too bad Steve Kerr seems to be the only one who knows it.