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NBA: Division Title Perks Eliminated With Playoff Format Change

By Phil Watson

Apr 28, 2015; Houston, TX, USA; General view of seats on the Houston Rockets bench before game five of the first round of the NBA Playoffs against the Dallas Mavericks at Toyota Center. Mandatory Credit: Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports
Apr 28, 2015; Houston, TX, USA; General view of seats on the Houston Rockets bench before game five of the first round of the NBA Playoffs against the Dallas Mavericks at Toyota Center. Mandatory Credit: Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports /
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The NBA on Tuesday, at last tumbling to the fact their divisional races are utterly meaningless, adopted a change to its playoff format on Tuesday that will seed the bracket based solely on a team’s record, per ESPN.com.

Gone is the top-four protection for teams that win their divisions, a scenario which reared its head in last season’s Western Conference playoffs when the Portland Trail Blazers were the fourth seed despite finishing with the sixth-best record in the West.

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That ultimately pushed the San Antonio Spurs to the sixth seed, where they matched up with the Los Angeles Clippers, rather than the fifth spot, where they would have played the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round, with Portland taking on the Clippers.

Tiebreaker procedures also changed with the decision, with head-to-head results now listed as the first tiebreaker for seeding and home-court advantage.

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A team winning its division would win the tiebreaker if their head-to-head record is even. Previously, a division champion was given home-court advantage if it met a team with the same record in the playoffs.

The evolution of the schedule has rendered divisional play statistically insignificant.

Teams play just 16 of their 82 games against teams in their own divisions, as opposed to 30 against teams from the other conference—something the NBA should look at changing, but won’t as fans would howl if they didn’t get their annual visit from the Minnesota Timberwolves (OK, so probably not so much that)—and 18 games against opponents from the other two divisions within their conference.

That’s right—the NBA was awarding an advantage to teams winning a division despite the fact they played fewer games against those opponents than they did teams from the other two divisions in their own conference.

As it is, playoff seeding is being determined by an overall record that is derived from playing nearly 37 percent of games against teams that don’t compete in the same playoff bracket, which to me seems to be a special kind of stupid.

But marketing leaves the NBA over a barrel on the issue of the interconference home-and-home series.

Could you imagine the howls from the owner or owners of teams that would not get a visit from LeBron James if interconference play were to be reduced to say, one meeting a year between teams?

What would an extra 15 games a season in a team’s own conference mean?

Two more divisional games would add expand that number to 24 games within the divisions. That would account for eight of the extra 15.

They could also add extra games so that each opponent in the other divisions in the conference have four meetings each—a total of 40 games which brings us to 64.

That leaves three games which, if the NBA owners weren’t so locked into their 82-game money-laundering scheme, could be eliminated.

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    • But in the real world, maybe teams could play home-and-home series with three interconference opponents per year, leaving 18 interconference games on the schedule.

    The three home-and-home opponents could rotate annually.

    That would leave a schedule where each team played 78 percent of its games against the clubs it is competing with for playoff spots.

    Novel concept, no?

    But for the time being, let’s just be happy that divisional winners will no longer get a reward for what is the smallest part of their annual schedule. This was a change that was long overdue.

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