David Stern: New Playoff Seeding Next Season

[Minge]

Source: Orange County Register

[size=100]The most newsworthy item for the East all season didn't even come out of the East. When NBA commissioner David Stern was at Staples Center last month, he opened the door to changing the league's postseason format by taking down the geographic boundaries that dictate the NBA Finals being East vs. West. This is an issue that Stern has previously swatted away with a waggling finger a la Dikembe Mutombo, who plays in the West for Houston.

Now, though, Stern is backing down. He still said the league doesn't want to change its regular-season format because of the current unbalanced schedule and the regular-season rivalries. But he brought up the notion of seeding the teams 1-16

[Minge]

Just another little tidbit from the article:

[size=100]If you used the larger 1-16 umbrella entering Monday's games, the Lakers would be the No. 5 seed

[Kobay]

Slowly, stern is saving the NBA. We got TNT as main broadcast next season right? Now all he needs to do is replace abc and espn with NBC.

[HarlemHeat37]

I don't like this idea..

too many complainers..deal with it..if you aren't good enough to make the top 8 in your conference, don't complain..work harder in the off-season..

isn't this going to cause travel issues? the travel times and game times are going to surely cause some problems for an entire playoffs..

[sarah42]

is there an actual quote?

[mhd]

The one thing that should remain is 8 east teams and 8 west teams. I also feel that the division winners should get the top 8 seeds (with the best record getting the 1st and the best record of the other conference getting the 2nd).

[miller31time]

Slowly, stern is saving the NBA. We got TNT as main broadcast next season right? Now all he needs to do is replace abc and espn with NBC.

Can you elaborate on that? I really like the idea of more TNT broadcasted games, but your post is the first I've heard of it.

[Elway=GOAT]

Good, its going to make the playoffs more intresting if he goes through with it. I really like this idea, it also fixes the draft and is going to make the league balance out. Because at the rate it is going, the West is going to be a superior confrence for the forseable future. Fixing this, evens it out because good teams in the west who miss out of the playoffs now get better picks than the bad east teams who make it. It is just broken currently, too many flaws, and I think this fixes a huge part of it.

[carrottop12]

I am not sure I like this, even though my favorite team is in the West and looks to have a strong future making it every season.

It's going to make the tanking problem even more ridiculous and teams seasons may be over before January knowing that their are a full 16 teams ahead of them vs. however many are in their conference.

Like it has been said, maybe the best thing to do is keep the best 8 in the West, and the Best 8 in the east, then have the best team play the worst team reguardless.

So even though Boston would be playing the Hawks, and the Pistons would be playing the Raptors or whoever, the Spurs or Hornets would be playing the Wizards.

Then I might buy into the idea a little more.

[triplet1984]

I understand why people want it changed but imo it makes the already-too-long regular season even more yawn-inducing, if the reg season has no bearing on the strategic aspect of seperate East/West bracketing.

In my perfect league, the NBA season would be like 52 games or some such number, with best of 5 playoff series.

[Texas Longhorns]

What if the east becomes good and matchups up good against the west? Bad move if they change it right now..

[Bucs80]

I don't like it....

Things will eventually even up.

[pillwenney]

If nothing else, it's interesting. I credit Stern for being open to the idea.

[Phobo_Phile]

I just don't think it's a good idea making decisions based on one season. So much can change in a single offseason. Yeah the west has been dominate over the east for quite a few years but really this is the first time (at least in quite some time) we've seen teams win 50 games and miss the playoffs. If it happens a couple seasons in a row then maybe, but no, not after a single season.

[CITYOFANGELSX3]

I dont see this happening.

[5DOM]

first rounds will be boring now

[Kosta]

It'll NEVER happen...

[panacea]

Is this an April Fools joke?

[Nate505]

I like it a lot. The playoff matchups in that setup would be more intriguging than the mathups in the current setup (although all the Western Conference playoff matchups should be awesome this year).

I do think it would be quite a bit of travel though. A Portland/Boston matchup would be a ton of time spent on a plane. Especially in a 2-2-1-1-1 setup.

[Buck You]

It would be a lot better than it is now. But I seriously doubt this happens. Let's see what the match-ups would be if the playoffs started today by using this system. Well at least if it was the top 16 records in the NBA.
1. Boston vs 16 Philly(Rout)
2. Detroit vs 15 Washington (Rout)
3. New Orleans vs 14 Portland(Young team vs Young Team)
4. San Antonio vs 13 Cleveland(Lebron vs the Spurs)
5. L.A Lakers vs 12 Golden State(Amazing match-up)
6. Phoenix vs 11 Denver(Amazing match-up)
7. Houston vs 10 Dallas(Tmac vs Dirk)
8. Utah vs 9 Orlando(Dwight vs Boozer)

Then I'm sure the winner of 1 vs 16 would face the winner of 8 vs 9 and so on. So 2nd round potentially we would have.
1 Boston vs 8 Utah
2 Detroit vs 7 Houston
3 New Orleans vs 6 Phoenix
4 San Antonio vs 5 L.A Lakers
Then

1 Boston vs 5 L.A Lakers
2 Detroit vs 3 New Orleans
Then
1 Boston vs 2 Detroit.

Hey, we could have an east vs east final! That would have a lot of irony in it. Wow, I had way too much fun with that.

Edit: I fixed it, I had it totally wrong before. It would probably be a lot different than this but these are the top 16 records in the NBA, so.