Should the NBA go one step further and remove conferences?
By Tom West
Now that division winners are no longer guaranteed a spot in the playoffs, should the NBA go one step further and end the disparity between the East and West by removing the conferences?
The NBA made a big step forward on Tuesday by announcing that division winners will no longer have a fast-track route up their respective conference playoff picture. Teams will now be ranked based on wins alone. If in place last year, the overloaded Western Conference would have looked rather different by the time the postseason began. The Portland Trail Blazers would have fallen two places, whilst the San Antonio Spurs and Memphis Grizzlies would have each climbed up a spot.
So, now that divisions are essentially irrelevant, as the winner gets no perks come playoff time, an interesting question arises: Should the NBA go one step further and remove the Eastern and Western Conferences all together?
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It seems like something forward-thinking commissioner Adam Silver may consider in the future. With the elimination of division winners receiving a top four seed regardless of win record, the only way to evolve the NBA even further would be to remove the immense disparity between the two conferences once and for all.
Firstly, because the West is just way too strong.
Last season, the worst team in the Western Conference playoffs was the New Orleans Pelicans, led by one of the top three players in the game, Anthony Davis. Yet the Pelicans still had to fight to the death against the Oklahoma City Thunder as the regular season wound down just to steal the No. 8 seed with a 45-37 record.
When you compare the Pelicans (or the Thunder) to the Eastern Conference’s No. 8 seed, you get the 38-win Brooklyn Nets. Regardless of how they challenged the Atlanta Hawks in the first round, the Nets were not a team that worthy of a playoff slot over the likes of Russell Westbrook’s Thunder or even the 39-win Phoenix Suns.
As for a long-lasting dynasty such as the San Antonio Spurs, it’s really just lucky for the rest of the NBA that they aren’t in the Eastern Conference. Due to a rare combination of Tim Duncan’s longevity, the talent of Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, a constantly supportive bench and the wise leadership of Gregg Popovich, the Spurs have been able to win at least 50 games every season since 1999. If you place that recipe for success into the East, the conference would have been even more unbalanced and this issue would have been far more obvious over recent years.
The Spurs plan to continue their historic presence near the top of the West with the acquisition of All-Star power forward LaMarcus Aldridge. Although, when you think about it, why would Aldridge sign anywhere other than a top team in the West? Apparently no one wants to go to the East unless it’s to play with LeBron James.
It’s hardly surprising, though. Just look at the difference between both conferences this season: the top seven teams in the Western conference had enough wins (50) to be at least a three seed in the East.
If there wasn’t such a vast difference in talent between the two conferences, and free agents weren’t so inclined to want to play for top contenders in the West, then there wouldn’t be simply two or three teams in the East who actually have a shot at competing in the Finals.
Furthermore, if we get to a situation where the clear-cut top two teams in the NBA are both from the same conference, removing the structure all together would make it possible for the league’s best squads to play on the biggest stage.
There’s also the glaring issue of the easy road Eastern Conference teams have in the postseason right now.
Top teams like the Atlanta Hawks, Cleveland Cavaliers and Chicago Bulls are almost guaranteed to earn a top three seed in the East thanks to limited competition. However, if conferences are removed and teams are instead ranked based on wins alone, there’s no longer a set of Eastern conference first round match-ups that are barely worth anyone’s time.
If Adam Silver took his commissioning even further and decided to remove conferences, we could put the kibosh LeBron’s easy walks to the Finals while also ending early elimination of contenders from the West.
So, how would the NBA be able to put together the playoff picture if conferences are thrown out of the window? Very simply by lining up the top 16 teams, based on wins alone, and matching the 1st team against the 16th team and so on and so forth.
This would give the top seeded teams a clear advantage, yet after becoming the best teams of the regular season, they’ve earned that reward come playoff time. Plus, with the top 16 teams from around the league being in play, nearly every team should pose some sort of threat.
Restructuring the playoffs will take some thought and this is just one possibility, but there’s no reason why something new can’t work and continue the growth of the NBA even further.
There’s hardly a chance we’ll see this take place for the upcoming NBA season, but why not a little further down the line? Maybe even in 2016-17 or the year after?
Now that divisions are essentially worthless, the next step to making the championship race even better would be to make a more balanced playing field and let the best of the NBA go at it without conferences to form any boundaries.
Change isn’t always necessary, but this could bring an end to the dispute over unfair postseasons once and for all.
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