Good call. Doesn't make sense for a weak division winner to get home court over a better team with a better record that's stuck in a brutal division.
About time we stop rewarding mediocrity in professional sports.
They need to get rid of divisions then because you still play against the teams in your divisions the most times. This was good enough for the Jordan era and now it needs to change? It's working just fine in the most popular sport in the world...Football. Just sayin!
Divisions are good because more teams can finish in First place and feel all warm and fuzzy about it.
Lets be real, teams and fans of the OTHER 29 TEAMS have to walk away with something. Its all nice to say "if you ain't winning a chip, your all losers" but that's not real.
The pursuit of a chip and the excitement of the journey is very important.
personally, I had a blast during Linsanity (lousy season) and while we fell in the second round, I enjoyed the 54 game season while it was happening. I thought the team was playing over its head, or to its potential and I had no illusions of we'd go far. We finished in first. No reason for a banner, but it was fun.
makes eminent sense and should have been done years ago. next step is to allow only the top 16 teams in league-wide... this will end the amount of mediocrity into the first round of the playoffs. the last several seasons western conference 9 and 10 teams have had better records than eastern conference 7 and 8 teams. one can dream.
so does winning the division literally mean nothing now?
dk7th wrote:makes eminent sense and should have been done years ago. next step is to allow only the top 16 teams in league-wide... this will end the amount of mediocrity into the first round of the playoffs. the last several seasons western conference 9 and 10 teams have had better records than eastern conference 7 and 8 teams. one can dream.
The thought for not doing it is at some point parity SHOULD come back and eastern teams rise up.
To eliminate the conferences would eliminate regional matchups and rivalries.
A Boston-Knick series won't have time problems like a first round Knick-Blazer series. Away games on the coast would start at 10;30-11pm and viewership would suffer.
The other thing is an epic series creates rivalries that last and that helps attendance and ratings. Hated the Heat for years after the battles with knicks and Riles in charge!
Reggie Miller became a villain because his antics in the garden, but the rivalry of the teams is what made that moment!! Reggie had history with Spike!
Keeping conferences builds rivalries!!!
i think they should make it even fairer... top 16 teams make the playoffs.
if western conference has more winning teams their 9th and 10th seeded teams with more Ws should make the playoffs in the East.
eventually what will happen is that more eastern teams will get better drafts and it will even out.
Logic succeeds!
Now if they could apply it to the draft...
Divisons and conferences are a product of travel issues that no longer exist and are only there these days to push geographic rivalries. This doesn't work as well in the NBA since they don't really exist, and you could fix every problem with the NBA if you got rid of conferences, implemented a balanced schedule and then let the top 16 into the playoffs in a best of 7...
Basically, every team plays every other team once at home and once on the road, giving you a 58 game regular season that could start on Christmas Day and have no back-to-backs and do the best-of-7 playoff as usual.
y2zipper wrote:
Basically, every team plays every other team once at home and once on the road, giving you a 58 game regular season that could start on Christmas Day and have no back-to-backs and do the best-of-7 playoff as usual.
And who is going to make up for the lost revenue from the 375 games that are going to be cut as a result?
Nalod wrote:dk7th wrote:makes eminent sense and should have been done years ago. next step is to allow only the top 16 teams in league-wide... this will end the amount of mediocrity into the first round of the playoffs. the last several seasons western conference 9 and 10 teams have had better records than eastern conference 7 and 8 teams. one can dream.
The thought for not doing it is at some point parity SHOULD come back and eastern teams rise up.
To eliminate the conferences would eliminate regional matchups and rivalries.
A Boston-Knick series won't have time problems like a first round Knick-Blazer series. Away games on the coast would start at 10;30-11pm and viewership would suffer.
The other thing is an epic series creates rivalries that last and that helps attendance and ratings. Hated the Heat for years after the battles with knicks and Riles in charge!
Reggie Miller became a villain because his antics in the garden, but the rivalry of the teams is what made that moment!! Reggie had history with Spike!
Keeping conferences builds rivalries!!!
the best-16 team playoff format would create the parity you think "should" happen... wouldn't it?
i'm all for rivalries so long as it's based on competence and not sentimentality.
10:30 pm starts during the regular season is not worth it, but come playoff time... totally different level of interest and frankly worth losing some sleep over. that said, i am certain there would have to be some level of compromise depending on time zone. obviously a 9:30pm start eastern time would be ideal if the knicks had to play playoff games on the west coast. for home playoff games against west coast teams it isn't out of the question to have an 8:30pm start.
rivalries would still prevail regardless of the best-16 team playoff format.
