According to a report, the NBA’s Board of Governors will be updated on discussions by the league’s competition committee related to changing the seeding rules for the NBA Playoffs.
At issue was last season’s circumstance when the Portland Trail Blazers, with a 51-31 record, were seeded ahead of a pair of teams with 55 wins—the Memphis Grizzlies and San Antonio Spurs—by virtue of winning the Northwest Division title.
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CBSSports.com’s Ken Berger reported that the competition committee was looking closely at the rule that guarantees a top-four seed for teams that win their division, regardless of record.
Division titles in today’s NBA are essentially meaningless, considering that teams play less than 20 percent of their games against divisional opponents (four games each against the other four opponents for a total of 16 games).
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The top records in intra-division play, followed by overall record and division standing:
Atlantic: Boston Celtics (12-4/40-42/2nd)
Central: Cleveland Cavaliers (11-5/53-29/1st)
Southeast: Atlanta Hawks (12-4/60-22/1st)
Northwest: Portland Trail Blazers (11-5/51-31/1st)
Pacific: Golden State Warriors (13-3/67-15/1st)
Southwest: Memphis Grizzlies (9-7/55-27/t-2nd)
But here’s the thing: While teams played 16 games against teams in their own divisions, they played 18 each against the teams from the other two divisions in their conference.
So why are we placing such emphasis on winning a division title again?
By record, Portland should have been the sixth seed in the West, playing the Los Angeles Clippers in the first round of the NBA Playoffs, while Memphis and San Antonio should have faced off in the No. 4 vs. No. 5 series.
This sort of thing has happened before. In 2011-12, the Celtics were the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference with a 39-27 record, a game worse than the Hawks (40-26). In this case, it wasn’t egregious—Atlanta still got home-court advantage for the first-round series, and lost—but the broader point remains.
That point: Since NBA schedules are not built to emphasize divisional play, why reward division winners with seeds that have not been earned?
But the NBA has a history of favoring divisional winners, dating all the way back to the merger with the ABA in 1976.
After the merger, the top six teams in each conference earned spots in the NBA Playoffs, with the top two seeds (and first-round byes) going to the division champions.
In 1977-78, that meant the Phoenix Suns (49-33) played a best-of-3 series against the sixth-seeded Milwaukee Bucks, while the Denver Nuggets (48-34) got a first-round bye because they won the Midwest Division.
No big deal? Tell that to the Suns, who lost that first-round series to the Bucks.
Under that playoff format, the same seeding error occurred repeatedly. How repeatedly, how about every single season between 1977-78 and 1982-83, including three seasons in a row (1979-80, 1980-81, 1981-82) where the anomalous seeding occurred in both conferences.
After the playoffs expanded to 16 teams in 1983-84, the seeding issue continued. That season, a 52-win Philadelphia 76ers team was seeded third, behind a 50-win Milwaukee team that won the Central Division and, out West, a 48-win Portland club was seeded behind a Utah Jazz squad that won 45 games en route to the Midwest Division title.
So there’s roughly 40 years of history that the NBA is swimming upstream against.
NBA schedules haven’t emphasized divisional play since the merger, so it’s silly to put so much extra weight on winning one’s division.
FanSided
In baseball, teams play 19 games against teams in their own division, 76 games total—nearly half of their schedule. So winning your division is sort of a big deal.
But in the NBA? You could draw the divisions out of a hat from each conference and the results would be nearly the same.
I mean, teams play opponents from the other conference nearly twice as often (30 games) as they do their own divisional “rivals” (16 games).
Berger’s report indicated the Board of Governors may not actually hear a recommendation for a specific change until its October meeting.
As long as the ridiculous rule is gone before next April’s NBA Playofs, I don’t care when they actually vote on it.
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