RealGM

Instead of a win, the winning team gets a tiebreaker that trumps everything else, even H2H, whether they wind up in a 2 or multiple-way tie. I'm not saying that IST performance should factor into tiebreaking in general, this is just for the team that wins the whole thing.

You could also apply this to lottery teams. If the team that wins the IST winds up in the lottery with the same record as another team, they win that tiebreaker as well and get better lottery odds.

Wouldn't an additional win act as a tiebreaker anyway? The lottery team scenario is interesting but I don't think it would apply to IST finalists very often. Maybe if you own the picks for another lottery team it'd be useful, but seems like a really convoluted prize.

The nba cup should get himecourt advantage if he gets to the finals..

levon wrote:Wouldn't an additional win act as a tiebreaker anyway? The lottery team scenario is interesting but I don't think it would apply to IST finalists very often. Maybe if you own the picks for another lottery team it'd be useful, but seems like a really convoluted prize.

Right now the final game has zero value to anything. It doesn't count as a regular season game. So making this count as a plus but not counting the loss against the losing team would be a good reason for fans and players to care.

levon wrote:Wouldn't an additional win act as a tiebreaker anyway? The lottery team scenario is interesting but I don't think it would apply to IST finalists very often. Maybe if you own the picks for another lottery team it'd be useful, but seems like a really convoluted prize.

Yes but this way every team finishes with 82 games, and the IST runner-up doesn't get penalized.

NyKnicks1714 wrote:

levon wrote:Wouldn't an additional win act as a tiebreaker anyway? The lottery team scenario is interesting but I don't think it would apply to IST finalists very often. Maybe if you own the picks for another lottery team it'd be useful, but seems like a really convoluted prize.

Yes but this way every team finishes with 82 games, and the IST runner-up doesn't get penalized.

Honestly I don't understand why the first point is even an objective (not criticizing you, just trying to understand why the league doesn't want more than 82). Like is it for symmetry in the data? Will it break their hardcoded database queries?

Also, why don't we want the runner-up to get penalized? The loss will count as 1/83, not 1/82. I highly doubt we'll ever get to this point where the Finals runner-up is eliminated from play-in contention because the loss in the IST final messed up their record.

Give the IST champ every tie breaker.

And give them an additional draft pick (becomes trade eligible immediately, and is exception to the stepien rule)

place that pick in 7th spot in draft lottery order.

If it doesn't move up, then it gets placed in 15th spot in the draft order.