OK, if you didn't like the 1-16 seeding idea, how about play-in games for the last two playoff spots in each conference?

Yup, they're talking about that, too.

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/22542...tournament

Quote:The play-in proposal that has generated the most discussion, according to several sources: two four-team tournaments featuring the seventh, eighth, ninth, and 10th seeds in each conference. The seventh seed would host the eighth seed, with the winner of that single game nabbing the seventh spot, sources say. Meanwhile, the ninth seed would host the 10th seed, with the winner of that game facing the loser of the 7-versus-8 matchup for the final playoff spot.

The implementation of a play-in tournament is not imminent. It falls behind the one-and-done rule and perhaps reseeding the playoffs 1-16 regardless of conference in the current reform pecking order. (It could go hand-in-hand with that change, only with one play-in tournament instead of separate brackets for each conference.)

Here's how that would look if implemented this season and if the regular season was over:

Western Conference
(8) New Orleans at (7) Portland -- winner gets Western #7 seed
(10) Utah at (9) Clippers -- winner plays loser of 8/7 game, and winner of that game gets Western #8 seed

Eastern Conference
(8) Miami at (7) Philadelphia -- winner gets Eastern #7 seed
(10) Charlotte at (9) Detroit -- winner plays loser of 8/7 game, and winner of that game gets Eastern #8 seed

This probably has slightly more chance of happening than the 1-16 proposal, both because it gives the east as many playoff spots as the west, and because it can be sold as an anti-tanking format, on the theory that any team in contention for their conference's top 10 would not tank for a lottery pick.

But, it's still a long shot to ever be implemented.

What is this, kindergarten? Everyone gets a trophy? The NBA playoffs should be smaller if anything. Teams seeded 7 or worse have won, what, 5-10 playoff series all-time? And I think many of them came in seasons shortened by a lockout.

If this is the way they want to implement this idea, it's not about making more money for the league, because it would add only a total of 6 playoff games, all of them between the 7th and 10th best teams in an conference. ESPN and Turner aren't going to throw much money at that.

This would be an anti-tanking measure, similar to the added wild cards in MLB that keep more than half the league thinking they still have a chance at the playoffs with a few weeks left in the season.

Though, the lesson from MLB is that it's only somewhat effective as an anti-tanking measure -- MLB still has more tanking than any other sport, and will continue to have many tanking teams now that the Astros have shown that five years of tanking can eventually lead to a franchise's first World Series title.

Want to cut out tanking? Have a 14-team tournament for the #1 pick in the draft. The tournament runner up gets the #2 pick, the semi-finalists get the third and fourth picks, and so on. The top non-playoff teams should improve significantly the following year. As expansion occurs, this tournament should reach 16 teams with no byes.

Teams that finish near the bottom in the regular season have to win 4 straight games, or make waves between free agency and coaching changes to break the cycle of losing.

(02-23-2018 12:19 PM)Wedge Wrote:  If this is the way they want to implement this idea, it's not about making more money for the league, because it would add only a total of 6 playoff games, all of them between the 7th and 10th best teams in an conference. ESPN and Turner aren't going to throw much money at that.

This would be an anti-tanking measure, similar to the added wild cards in MLB that keep more than half the league thinking they still have a chance at the playoffs with a few weeks left in the season.

Though, the lesson from MLB is that it's only somewhat effective as an anti-tanking measure -- MLB still has more tanking than any other sport, and will continue to have many tanking teams now that the Astros have shown that five years of tanking can eventually lead to a franchise's first World Series title.

You don't dilute your product by adding more inventory. It's not like fanbases of team number 10 are gonna think they have any shot at an NBA title given that seeds 6 and below almost never win playoff series. It'd be more logical just to let every team in the playoffs, so that from Day 1 every city knows they can keep interest as the season goes on. Oh and it's also a measure of anti-tanking, meaning each team has something to play for into April. Just have a preliminary round, conference tournament style for seeds 7-15 and the winners advance to play in the big tournament.

Way more logical, financially ideal and preventative for tanking than what's being proposed.

The league will do something as an anti-tanking measure even if they don't do this.

I doubt they'd ever go so far as to abolish the draft, but they have kicked around the idea of expanding the number of teams in the draft lottery to further decrease the worst teams' chances of landing a top pick, and/or drawing more teams in the lottery itself so that the team with the worst record is only guaranteed the 6th or 7th choice rather than the 4th.

And even if you abolish the draft, teams will still trade away useful players and sacrifice the rest of the current season just to clear out salary obligations to make cap room for a run at future free agents.

This is what the seedings and matchups would look like…

(1) Houston Rockets versus (16) Miami Heat

(2) Golden State Warriors versus (15) New Orleans Pelicans

(3) Toronto Raptors versus (14) Philadelphia 76ers

(4) Boston Celtics versus (13) Portland Trail Blazers

(5) Cleveland Cavaliers versus (12) Denver Nuggets

(6) San Antonio Spurs versus (11) Oklahoma City Thunder

(7) Minnesota Timberwolves versus (10) Milwaukee Bucks

(8) Washington Wizards versus (9) Indiana Pacers


http://www.basketballinsiders.com/rest-a...is-coming/
https://www.poundingtherock.com/2017/8/8...eeded-1-16
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2018/02/22/c...-schedule/

Ironically Washington vs. Indiana would be the 4 vs. 5 matchup in the East.

It just doesn't work because teams don't play the same schedule, though technically, no one plays the same exact schedule. If you do a 1-16 seeding, then just combine the league altogether so that there's a more common schedule, fairer seeding and most importantly, so that you get the best 16 teams.

(02-25-2018 09:11 AM)_C2_ Wrote:  It just doesn't work because teams don't play the same schedule, though technically, no one plays the same exact schedule. If you do a 1-16 seeding, then just combine the league altogether so that there's a more common schedule, fairer seeding and most importantly, so that you get the best 16 teams.

It could work, though it's not 100% fair. Nothing is.

As I said above, in a perfect world the NBA could play a 58-game schedule in which each team plays each other team twice. Balanced schedule, each regular season game would have more at stake, it would be great to watch. Even if every playoff series is best-of-7, there is still a lot less wear and tear on the players.

But that is too big of a bite out of the money they make now. It would be a 29% reduction in regular season ticket revenue and in local TV revenue. Ticket revenue varies from team to team but ranges from $1-2 million per game. If we take away 12 home games from each team, we're taking roughly $540 million out of the league every season in ticket revenue alone. The reduction in national TV value would be less because the playoffs are probably almost half of the TV value to ESPN and Turner, but even a 10% reduction in TV revenue would cost the league $267 million each year. Add in the loss of game-day revenue like parking and concessions, and the reduction in each team's local TV money, and the league as a whole would easily lose $1 billion each year by reducing regular-season games to 58.

Which is why when the league occasionally floats the idea of reducing the number of regular season games as a compromise for something else, they talk about eliminating only about 4 games a season.

Just raise TV and ticket prices. Or lower player salaries (ha, I made myself laugh. Yeah, right. Good luck with that one). Problem solved and sometimes less is more. You'd get more engaged fans. Every game is not a sellout and if it was, then you'd be losing some serious revenue.

Let's reorganize the NBA to mirror the NHL:

West: Portland,GS, Sac, LAC, LAL, Phx, Denver
South: OKC, Dallas, Houston, SA, Memphis, NO, Orl, Miami
North: Minn, Milwaukee, Chi, Ind, Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto
East: Boston, NY, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, DC, Charlotte, Atlanta

(02-26-2018 10:20 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Let's reorganize the NBA to mirror the NHL:

West: Portland,GS, Sac, LAC, LAL, Phx, Denver
South: OKC, Dallas, Houston, SA, Memphis, NO, Orl, Miami
North: Minn, Milwaukee, Chi, Ind, Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto
East: Boston, NY, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, DC, Charlotte, Atlanta

Looks like you forgot Utah, which I assume would be the 8th team in the West under your setup.

(02-28-2018 03:44 PM)goofus Wrote:  

(02-26-2018 10:20 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Let's reorganize the NBA to mirror the NHL:

West: Portland,GS, Sac, LAC, LAL, Phx, Denver
South: OKC, Dallas, Houston, SA, Memphis, NO, Orl, Miami
North: Minn, Milwaukee, Chi, Ind, Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto
East: Boston, NY, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, DC, Charlotte, Atlanta

Looks like you forgot Utah, which I assume would be the 8th team in the West under your setup.

In some ways having four confernces may make more sense, because the western teams aren’t having to head to the Central Time Zone for for a playoff series until the next-to-last round. A 10:30 Eastern start isn’t so bad when it’s Golden State-Seattle instead of Golden state-Houston.

With the 30 teams plus the 2 likely expansion teams, I would go with this:

Pacific: LAL, LAC, GSW, SAC, POR, UTJ, PHX, (SEA)
West: DEN, SAS, HOU, DAL, OKC, NOP, MEM
East: ATL, CLT, MIA, ORL, WAS, BOS, NYK, BKN
Central: PHI, TOR, CLE, IND, CHI, DET, MIL, (LOU)

(02-28-2018 08:30 PM)chargeradio Wrote:  

(02-28-2018 03:44 PM)goofus Wrote:  

(02-26-2018 10:20 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Let's reorganize the NBA to mirror the NHL:

West: Portland,GS, Sac, LAC, LAL, Phx, Denver
South: OKC, Dallas, Houston, SA, Memphis, NO, Orl, Miami
North: Minn, Milwaukee, Chi, Ind, Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto
East: Boston, NY, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, DC, Charlotte, Atlanta

Looks like you forgot Utah, which I assume would be the 8th team in the West under your setup.

In some ways having four confernces may make more sense, because the western teams aren’t having to head to the Central Time Zone for for a playoff series until the next-to-last round. A 10:30 Eastern start isn’t so bad when it’s Golden State-Seattle instead of Golden state-Houston.

With the 30 teams plus the 2 likely expansion teams, I would go with this:

Pacific: LAL, LAC, GSW, SAC, POR, UTJ, PHX, (SEA)
West: DEN, SAS, HOU, DAL, OKC, NOP, MEM
East: ATL, CLT, MIA, ORL, WAS, BOS, NYK, BKN
Central: PHI, TOR, CLE, IND, CHI, DET, MIL, (LOU)

This time, you forgot Minn, lol

(02-28-2018 08:30 PM)chargeradio Wrote:  In some ways having four confernces may make more sense, because the western teams aren’t having to head to the Central Time Zone for for a playoff series until the next-to-last round. A 10:30 Eastern start isn’t so bad when it’s Golden State-Seattle instead of Golden state-Houston.

That would make the imbalance between conferences even worse than it is with the two conferences today. Suppose one of your four conferences has none of the 8 best teams in the league. Then it would be guaranteed that one team that isn't even one of the best 8 out of 16 playoff teams is one of the final four teams, while much better teams knock each other off in earlier rounds.