The NBA’s New Playoff Format Is A Game Changer

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver recently said that the NBA could seriously alter the rules for playoff seeding in the upcoming 2015-16 season. With this news, many basketball pundits are applauding Silver and the rest of the NBA decision makers. This reform was a long time coming.

With the new proposed playoff formatting, the top eight teams in each conference would make it to the playoffs in the exact order of their record. Currently, there are certain stipulations in place to reward division winners regardless of their record. With the changes, no longer would a division winner be guaranteed a top four playoff seeding, but rather regardless of the team winning their division, they would be slotted by their winning percentage.

Simply looking back at the last 10 seasons of the NBA, there have been numerous instances in which a division winner has benefited from this rule. This past season alone saw the Portland Trail Blazers rewarded with the number four seed simply for winning the Northwest Division. With the impending change, the Trail Blazers would have had the six seed and pushed the Grizzlies and Spurs into four and five, respectively.

Over the past nine NBA seasons, there have been four total instances where the seeding has benefited the division winners regardless of record. In 2007, both the Eastern and Western Conference had instances of this happening. In the West, the Jazz got the four seed over the Rockets, but it did not have much effect, as the Rockets still held home court advantage. However, in the Eastern Conference the Heat and Raptors both sat above the Bulls in seeding even though the Bulls had the best record of the three. Instead of the three, four, and five seeding being in the order it was as Heat, Raptors, and then the Bulls, it should have been Bulls, Heat, then Raptors and would have changed the NBA playoffs completely that season.

Even though the Bulls swept the Heat in the first round that season, they should have been playing the Nets. If they had beaten the Nets, they would have faced the Cavaliers instead of the Pistons, and they possibly could have moved on to the Eastern Conference Finals. This past season, the Spurs should have faced the Grizzlies and could have moved on to the second round, but we will never know now because hindsight is 20-20.

With the new rule, there will inevitably be doubters who are against any sort of change. However, if you look back as recently as the 2005-06 season before the current playoff seeding rules were enacted, the division winners were guaranteed a top three spot. In the final season of that rule, the 60-win Dallas Mavericks were relegated to a fourth seed in the Western Conference behind a Suns team that had 54 wins and a Nuggets team that won its division with just 44 wins.

If commissioner Silver’s provisions are enacted for the upcoming season, it would halt instances like these that seriously alter the way in which the end of the season unfolds. Not only that, but deciding the playoff seeding solely based on record would make both teams and fans happy. It would stop the discrimination against good teams that simply have a successful division.

These are the exact reasons why the NBA has decided to change its playoff format, however, it is still unknown how exactly it will be changed. No matter how you look at it, there will always be detractors and there will always be supporters. In the end, the hope is that the NBA can at least get a little closer to truly getting it right.

[Image via NBA.com]