NBA to discuss possible changes to playoff format

[molly1984]

What do you think of possible changes to playoff format? I think they should just keep it as is, and it seems like that is what they are leaning towards. And like Stern says at the end of this article: "There's no change that we can make that makes everybody happy."


http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3370773

[garnett_21]

The only change I can see is making the division winners the top 3 seeds no matter what....this year, Utah is the NW division winner, but has 4th seed, and does NOT have home court advantage....I don't get how they did that one

why would the seeding go to the 16 best records in the NBA? that would be 10 west teams and 6 east teams this year....so doing that could pit 2 west teams against each other for the championship....I don't know, I just think it's fine how it is....why mess with it? it doesn't sound like it would improve it

[molly1984]

i forget what year they changed it, but that was how it was before (the top 3 were the division winners), but they changed it because sometimes the division winner had many less wins. basically i think they should just pick something and stick with it, you can't let a few weird seasons (like this year, how the west all had way better records than the east) change things for good.

[demonpower55]

They changed it either last year or the year before that, when a 60 win club (Spurs, I think) had the 4th seed. I think a division title shouldn't mean anything; so if you win the division with 40 wins (not likely, but speaking hypothetically), you are guaranteed a playoff spot? I agree something needs to change, but it would be better if they go by the win-loss column for each conference, it's both fair and logical.

[RenegadeLonghorn]

I think they should leave the system as is. I don't see a solution unless you want to take the top 16 teams from the East and the West. But how are you going to have conference finals/champs that way?

[angel0430]

If something is not broken, why fix it!!!!

[blalock_collector]

I think they should leave it alone.

[nadeau01_johnson48]

Leave it alone....if you take the "16 best teams in the NBA" and format it out, you would have had the Lakers (3rd best team in the NBA) playing the Wizards (14th best team in the NBA) in the first round, and would have had Boston (1st) playing the Trail Blazers (16th). How's that for travel?

I mean, who wouldn't want to go back and forth from Boston to Portland, and from LA to DC every few days?

Sounds like a bad idea to me.

[molly1984]

you bring up a good point about the travel. i agree it makes more sense to keep it as is with the two conferences.

[garnett_21]

nadeau01 - that is very true! and with gas prices going thru the roof, why make it cost more to go to games??? cuz if they changed it, you know the price of tickets to game would go up too.....and this time they'd have an excuse lol