The Whiteboard: Thank goodness divisions don’t impact NBA Playoff seeding anymore
By Ti Windisch
NBA divisions don’t matter when it comes to playoff seeding, which is obviously good. The same lesson might apply to conferences, too.
The NBA league office announced a big change to the way playoff seeding works in 2015, when the league decided division leaders didn’t get any bonus for being better than four other teams in their conference who happen to be geographically near them. This was a good decision.
The change was made after the Portland Trail Blazers got homecourt in the first round and the fourth seed in the 2015 NBA Playoffs, despite having the sixth-best record in the West. The NBA acted pretty quickly to prevent this odd scenario from happening again.
Looking at the current standings in each conference right now reinforces why that change was a good one. In the West the Trail Blazers would lose out this time around, dropping from fourth to fifth so the Southwestern Division champion (as of right now) Houston Rockets could get that fourth seed. That’s annoying for Portland, but not that dramatic.
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The Eastern Conference is a different story. As predicted before the season right here in The Whiteboard, the Southeastern Division absolutely stinks. The Miami Heat and Charlotte Hornets are battling for the top spot in that division, and both teams currently have 24 wins.
If the seeding rule in 2015 never happened, that would mean Miami, currently ahead of the Hornets by half of a game, would leapfrog from seventh in the East to fourth, bumping the 33-18 Philadelphia 76ers down to fifth. Yikes.
That playoff format just doesn’t make sense, and it’s basically impossible to argue that there was any reason to do things that way aside from the logical fallacy that traditional ways of doing things are always the best option. There’s no reason to punish good teams based on geography.
Take that last paragraph and read it back, but this time pretend the playoff format in question is giving eight teams in each conference a playoff spot even though one conference is clearly better than the other.
There are logistical and travel concerns to overcome, and as long as two-thirds of the East sucks that conference will oppose any changes that eliminate conferences from seeding consideration. These are facts. Here’s another one: eventually the NBA will find a way to overcome the hurdles, and we’ll all look back wondering why it was a good idea to reward crappy teams because of their zip code.
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