NBA: Radical, Not-So-Radical Ideas To Fix East-West Imbalance

Once upon a time, it was the East that was the dominant conference in the NBA. Then the West got bigger and badder. Then it was balanced for awhile.

But since the late 1990s, it’s been all about the West and the cycle doesn’t seem to be ending.

Of course, it makes sense—if you’re a free-agent basketball player, would you rather winter in warm weather or Wisconsin? California or Cleveland? Boston or the beaches? Texas or Toronto?

Last season, two teams in the Western Conference—the Phoenix Suns (48-34) and Minnesota Timberwolves (40-42) finished with better records than the eventual No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference, the Atlanta Hawks (38-44).

In 2012-13, it was the Utah Jazz (43-39) and Dallas Mavericks (41-41) sitting at home while the Milwaukee Bucks (38-44) advanced to the postseason.

Much has been discussed regarding ways to fix the inequity.

In November, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban—one of the few true mavericks (yes, I did, sue me) among NBA owners—floated a realignment idea:

Cuban’s idea was to take the three Texas teams—his Mavericks along with the San Antonio Spurs and Houston Rockets—as well as the New Orleans Pelicans and place them in the Eastern Conference, while shifting the Chicago Bulls, Indiana Pacers, Detroit Pistons and the Bucks to the West.

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Old-timers such as me chuckled at that—we still remember the 1970s, when Houston and San Antonio were in the East while the Bulls, Pacers, Pistons and Bucks shared space in the Midwest Division in the Western Conference.

I’ve spent some time kicking this around and I have three different ideas, ranging in radicalosity (a special term just coined for this article) from these three classifications:

1) Plan A—Not much radicalosity.

2) Plan B—Keanu Reaves radicalosity (Whoaaaaaa!)

3) Plan C—Sanity-challenging radicalosity (Are you out of your f***ing mind????)

That’s the order in which they will be presented, A to C.

Plan A—Tamper With Geography

Geography seems to be the biggest barrier to equalizing competitive balance between the conferences. Some find geography to be a very arbitrary thing, others are bound to it by what seems to be a blood oath.

I remember reading a tweet a few weeks ago (and no, I don’t recall the source) stating how lucky Cleveland was to be in the Eastern Conference. My thought was, “Yes, very fortunate indeed that the state of Ohio didn’t land in Oregon—that would really confuse the hell out of people.”

Some have proposed just taking the teams with the 16 best records and calling them the playoff teams—a proposal I have a problem with because of the schedule inequities that would not be dealt with under such an idea.

But I do have a modified proposal that I call the cross-conference eliminator.

Let’s look at 2013-14 again.

That left out the aforementioned Suns at 48-34, having finished ninth in the West with the same record as the No. 3 seed in the East.

So under the geography tampering scenario, Phoenix is penalized for not finishing in the top eight of its own conference, but rewarded with a playoff berth for clearly outperforming the No. 8 team in the East.

Yes, Phoenix is now placed in the East for the postseason and seeded according to its record—with the caveat that a cross-conference eliminator team cannot win a tiebreaker and gets placed beneath any teams with the same record.

That gives us a different looking playoff tree.

The Suns move into the East and assume the fifth seed, behind Toronto and Chicago—who each finished with the same record as Phoenix.

The remaining three Eastern teams shift down a seed—Washington to No. 6, Brooklyn to seventh and Charlotte to No. 8.

In this scenario, Minnesota—at 40-42—is still out because its record is worse than Charlotte’s.

Taking this scenario back through the 16-team playoff era, we’d have had:

• 2012-13: Utah (43-39) replacing Milwaukee (38-44) in the Eastern playoffs and seeded seventh, ahead of Boston (41-40).
• 2011-12: Unchanged.
• 2010-11: Houston (43-39) replacing Indiana (37-45) in the Eastern playoffs and seeded sixth, ahead of New York (42-40) and Philadelphia (41-41).
• 2009-10: Houston (42-40) replacing Chicago (41-41) in the Eastern playoffs and seeded eighth.
• 2008-09: Phoenix (46-36) replacing Detroit (39-43) in the Eastern playoffs and seeded fifth, ahead of Miami (43-39), Philadelphia (41-41) and Chicago (41-41).
• 2007-08: Golden State (48-34) and Portland (41-41) replacing Atlanta (37-45) and Philadelphia (40-42) in the Eastern playoffs; with Golden State seeded fourth, ahead of Cleveland (45-37), Washington (43-39) and Toronto (41-41); and Portland seeded eighth.
• 2006-07: Unchanged.
• 2005-06: Utah (41-41) replacing Milwaukee (40-42) in the Eastern playoffs and seeded eighth.
• 2004-05: Minnesota (44-38) replacing New Jersey (42-40) in the Eastern playoffs and seeded seventh, ahead of Philadelphia (43-39).
• 2003-04: Utah (42-40) and Portland (41-41) in the Eastern playoffs, replacing New York (39-43) and Boston (36-46). Utah seeded fifth, ahead of New Orleans (41-41) and Milwaukee (41-41), and Portland seeded eighth.
• 2002-03: Houston (43-39) replacing Orlando (42-40) in the Eastern playoffs and seeded seventh, ahead of Milwaukee (42-40).
• 2001-02: Unchanged.
• 2000-01: Houston (45-37) and Seattle (44-38) replacing Orlando (43-39) and Indiana (41-41) in the Eastern playoffs, with Houston seeded seventh and Seattle seeded eighth.
• 1999-2000: Unchanged.
• 1998-99: Charlotte (26-24) replacing Minnesota (25-25) in the Western playoffs and seeded eighth.
• 1997-98: Washington (42-40) replacing Houston (41-41) in the Western playoffs and seeded eighth.
• 1996-97: Cleveland (42-40) replacing L.A. Clippers (36-46) in the Western playoffs and seeded sixth, ahead of Minnesota (40-42) and Phoenix (40-42).
• 1995-96: Charlotte (41-41) replacing Sacramento (39-43) in the Western playoffs and seeded eighth.
• 1994-95: Sacramento (39-43) replacing Boston (35-47) in the Eastern playoffs and seeded eighth.
• 1993-94: Unchanged.
• 1992-93: Orlando (41-41) replacing L.A. Lakers (39-43) in the Western playoffs and seeded eighth.
• 1991-92: Houston (42-40) replacing Miami (38-44) in the Eastern playoffs and seeded sixth, ahead of New Jersey (40-42) and Indiana (40-42).
• 1990-91: Unchanged.
• 1989-90: Unchanged.
• 1988-89: Washington (40-42) replacing Portland (39-43) in the Western playoffs and seeded eighth.
• 1987-88: Indiana (38-44) replacing San Antonio (31-51) in the Western playoffs and seeded eighth.
• 1986-87: Unchanged.
• 1985-86: Phoenix (32-50) replacing Chicago (30-52) in the Eastern playoffs and seeded eighth.
• 1984-85: Unchanged.
• 1983-84: Golden State (37-45) replacing Washington (35-47) in the Eastern playoffs and seeded eighth.

Plan B: Screw Geography, Balance The Schedule

Plan B is where things start to get a little … random … but bear with me.

It balances the schedule by keeping the two arbitrary 15-team conferences for scheduling purposes only—the actual postseason would be seeded by record, 1-16.

This would involve splitting the 30 teams into six, five-team divisions—similar to how they are now.

However, the divisional names—based on geography—are scrapped and the teams are randomly assigned by lot.

Think of it: It would give the NBA another made-for-TV event to run before the draft and after the Finals—the drawing of next season’s divisional assignments.

For purposes of demonstration, I took the 30 teams and randomized them, the re-randomized the list to create two conferences of three, five-team divisions each. Here’s what we ended up with:

Again, double-randomized—I didn’t care where teams ended up, so I had no dog in the hunt.

Here’s how the schedule works—heavy on divisional play—and still arrives at our magic number of 82.

Each team plays:

• The other four teams in its own division eight times (32 games)
• The other 25 teams in the league twice (50 games)

The divisional structure is used for scheduling only and it’s purely by the luck of the draw. But there is a plan even more “out there.”

Plan C: Screw Everything

In this plan, all 30 teams are lumped into one gigantic division.

The only problem with the 30-team division is that it is impossible to have (a) complete scheduling parity and (b) 82 games when all is said and done.

If every team plays every other team in a home-and-home, that gets us to 58 games (29 teams times two games).

It’s the remaining 24 games that are … problematic. In this scenario each team is assigned 12 additional home games and 12 extra road games, with each team having six teams they would not see a third time.

The schedule makers might face a challenge getting that all to balance out, but the software exists to pull it off.

In this scenario, of course, the playoffs would be broken into the top 16 teams in the one-league standings and go from there.

About Schedule Balance

Current NBA schedules are weighted toward playing the bulk of your games in your conference, if not necessarily in your division.

Under the current scheduling plan, teams only play 16 of their 82 games—19.5 percent—in their own division, playing each team four times (two home, two away).

The teams also play a home-and-home with each team in the opposite conference, making up 30 of the 82 games—36.6 percent of the schedule is currently comprised of games against teams you are not competing for playoff spots with.

Seems a little heavy to me, but fans will howl if they don’t get to see the Lakers come to town every year—while at the same time complaining incessantly about getting stuck with Utah every single season.

The rest of the schedule—36 games—is split among the other 10 teams in the conference. Six of those teams are played four times (24 games) and four of them are scheduled three times (12 games) to get to the magic number of 82.

Why is that the magic number? I haven’t the foggiest.

The 82-game schedule was adopted for the 1967-68 season, when there were six teams in each of two divisions—Eastern and Western.

Teams played everyone in their own division eight times (40 games) and each of the six teams in the opposite division seven times (42 games).

However, the 82-game scheduling format remained in place even as the league continued to expand—to 14 teams in 1968-69, 17 teams in 1970-71, 18 teams in 1974-75, 22 teams in 1976-77, 23 teams in 1980-81, 25 teams in 1988-89, 27 teams in 1989-90, 29 teams in 1994-96 and finally to 30 teams in 2004-05.

Epilogue

The realistic chance any of these plans would ever see the light of an NBA arena is somewhere between “really, really slim” and “no freaking way” (not discounting the possibility of being committed for even suggesting such heresy).

None of these is a perfect solution. That’s because there is no perfect solution, short of contracting teams to a point where the math works better—and with 82 games, if that is the gold standard, there is no amount of tweaking in the world to create a completely balanced schedule.

In the expansion era, only one league ever pulled that off—the NHL with 21 teams in 1979-80 and 1980-81. They played an 80-game schedule in which each team played every other team four times before seeding the playoffs 1-16 based solely on overall record.

For the record, the plan was scrapped after two seasons.

Why? Because the fans hated it; there weren’t enough rivalry games to their liking.

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