Messed up playoff seedings this year nothing new
April 20th, 2006by John
Everyone is talking about the screwy NBA playoff situation where it was in the LA Clippers’ best interests to lose Memphis this week so they could have a better matchup in the playoffs: playing a much weaker Denver team and have the home court advantage, rather than much stronger Dallas without the home court. And how Dallas finished with the second best record in the West, but they are most likely going to face San Antonio in the second round — not a good reward for playing so well this season
Well, I was talking about how it was a problem last year when the playoff seeding situation screwed up the Rockets, but no one from the NBA was listening (click here for the blog entry from May 9th, 2005). It’s ironic that Dallas is messed around this year when they easily could have been last year. Here’s what I wrote:
You know there’s a problem when it was in the Rockets’ best interest at the end of the season to lose some games so they could have played Seattle in the opening series rather than Dallas. But of course, that’s something no team should ever do. But the way the NBA is now aligned and how they award playoff seeds, it definitely creates more of an incentive to tank some games.
As you may already know, the NBA realigned itself to have three divisions in each Conference after the league awarded Charlotte a franchise, rounding out the number of teams in the NBA to 30. The realignment created 15 teams in each conference, thus allowing them to create 3 divisions in each conference, with each division having 5 teams each.
The problem was that that the rules suddenly changed so that the winner of each division was awarded one of the top three seeds in the playoff rankings. Therefore, a weak team that ended up winning their division got a higher seed compared to stronger teams in other divisions who finished with better won-loss records. That seems to happen in the NFL and Major League Baseball all the time, and I don’t think that’s right.
So if you look at the records this past season of all the teams in the Western Conference, ranked them by record, and awarded the two top seeds to the old Midwest and Pacific division winners, the first round playoff pairings would have been much different. Here’s how the Western Conference playoff seedings would have ended up:
1) Phoenix (62-20, winner of Pacific)
2) San Antonio (59-23, winner of Midwest)
3) Dallas (58-24)
4) Seattle (52-30) (they would not be seeded third as awarded, but fourth)
5) Houston (51-31)
6) Sacramento (50-32)
7) Denver (49-33)
8) Memphis (45-37)
With these seeds, here’s how the first round match-ups would have shaken out:
Phoenix – Memphis (same as what occurred this year)
San Antonio – Denver (same)
Dallas – Sacramento (different)
Seattle – Houston (different)
So as you can see, Dallas would have faced Sacramento, and if Dallas had lost their first round series against Houston, you can sure bet Mark Cuban and Maverick fans would be saying the way playoff seeds are awarded these days is screwy. I’m sure they would have wanted to face Sacramento instead of Houston.
And of course, Houston would have faced Seattle instead of Dallas. Seattle is good, but they aren’t that good, and the Rockets would probably be playing Phoenix in the second round right now (another team they could have beaten).
I know some people will argue that a winner of a division should be awarded one of the top three seeds in the playoffs, but if you ask most basketball fans what teams are in each division, they probably couldn’t tell you. Rewarding division champions with higher seeds is not fair to other teams in more competitive divisions that deserve to be placed higher in the playoff rankings. I like the idea of putting all of the teams in each conference in a big bucket like in previous years, and awarding the top seeds to two division champions, not three.