The NBA continues to deny that conference imbalance is enough of a problem to require seeding the top 16 teams in the playoffs regardless of what side of the Mississippi they call home. (The Memphis Grizzlies play east of the Mississippi but are in the Western Conference, owing to their nativity in Vancouver.) Despite two decades of Western Conference superiority, the league office doesn’t believe there’s enough reason to rework the playoffs, risking additional travel for teams.
Our 3-step plan to have open NBA Playoff seeding while making East owners happy
NBA Playoff seeding is unfair, but won’t change as long as East owners are benefiting from the system. Here’s one way to fix that.
Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports
That’s why we can’t even get NBA franchise owners on the record about open seeding in the playoffs: the league won’t even put it to a vote. While league officials publicly cite the added travel burden, one wonders if that’s a cover for the real reason it’ll never go to vote: because East franchise owners will unanimously vote it down, denying any chance at the two-thirds passage it needs.
Conference imbalance, explained
Here’s an explanation on the dominance of the NBA’s Western Conference, starting with some data. I covered this in greater detail in 2014.
- West teams have a winning record against the East in 17 of the past 18 seasons. The West has a 57 percent winning rate against East teams over the period.
- In 14 of the past 18 seasons, the West No. 9 seed (who did not make the playoffs) has had a better record than the East No. 8 seed (who did make the playoffs). This is incredible and unacceptable. It’s the strongest possible evidence as a deep, intractable imbalance. And it’s totally unfair to the West teams getting shut out.
- West teams have won 14 of the past 20 NBA titles. In many of those seasons, the Western Conference Finals have been considered the de facto NBA Finals.
Why is this a problem?
- Conference imbalance has knock-on effects on the league. Because playoff teams are not in the NBA Draft lottery, mediocre East teams are disadvantaged in the draft almost every year. The imbalanced regular season schedule also helps the worst West teams really goose up the loss column, advantaging their placement in the lottery.
- It leads to awful NBA Finals with some regularity, including in 2018. Sweeps are bad products.
- It’s inherently unjust to have better teams out of the playoffs due to mere geography. If you want a fair competition, that’s a black mark.
- Conference imbalance gives dodgy teams (like the 2018 Cavaliers) clearer paths to the NBA Finals than would a fairer system.
The height of corporate folly is forcing a board vote you know will go down in flames. It’s a waste of time and embarrassing, and sets political capital on fire. Calling Eastern team owners cowards won’t be effective even if they were to vote down open seeding.
The travel issue that the league brings up is bunk. League officials claim open seeding would add 40,000 miles on average per postseason. But as I wrote earlier this month, Western teams are already disproportionately impacted by long playoff travel. No East team currently has to travel more than one time zone away in their postseason bracket. West teams routinely move two. Just by the nature of American geography, the East teams are closer and more concentrated. Miami and Milwaukee are the most far-flung Eastern Conference cities at 1,200 miles. Portland and New Orleans are 2,000 miles apart.
The added travel burden is as much about just keeping the current skewed travel burden on the shoulders of the West as anything.
So if public shaming won’t work, and if the travel issue is hot air, what is there to do to actually make progress on open seeding?
Good old-fashioned bribery.
Here’s a plan to guarantee some additional playoff revenue to East teams while opening up seeding to something a little more fair. If it works as designed, it might also deflate the incentive to tank just a bit and build some excitement for the stretch run of the long NBA regular season.
Step 1: Open seed the top 12 teams
The top 12 teams by record get into the playoffs and are seeded regardless of conference. Tiebreakers are pretty standard: head-to-head first, followed by a bump for conference or division champions, followed by in-conference record for teams from the same conference. If those don’t resolve it, flip a coin.
Here’s what the 2018 top-12 seeding would have looked like.
1. Rockets
2. Raptors
3. Warriors
4. Celtics
5. 76ers
6. Cavaliers
7. Blazers
8. Jazz
9. Thunder
10. Pelicans
11. Pacers
12. Spurs
The Spurs finished tied in the standings with the Timberwolves, but went 2-1 head-to-head, so they get the automatic top-12 berth.
2. Introducing: An 8-team play-in round
Next, you’d enter the next four best teams in each conference into a one-game play-in for a playoff berth. This is your new opening day of the NBA playoffs on that third Saturday of April: a quadruple-header of do-or-die games.
Seed these eight teams by conference and according to record and tiebreaker. Each conference would have four seeds, and the top East seed would play the bottom West seed. And so on.
Here’s how it would’ve shaken out in 2018.
East seeds: Heat (1), Bucks (2), Wizards (3), Pistons (4)
West seeds: Timberwolves (1), Nuggets (2), Clippers (3), Lakers (4)
Lakers at Heat
Clippers at Bucks
Wizards at Nuggets
Pistons at Timberwolves
You take those four winners and insert them in the overall bracket according to regular season record. For example, if the Heat, Clippers, Wizards, and Timberwolves won, the Wolves would be No. 13, the Heat would be No. 14, the Wizards would be No. 15, and the Clippers would be No. 16.
If East franchisees remain opposed because their teams in this zone are frighteningly weak, you could make a subtle tweak to guarantee each conference a couple more playoff spots by seeding the play-in teams by conference. In other words, you could have the East No. 1 vs. the East No. 4, and so on, to guarantee two East and two West teams would emerge from the play-in round while gaining the benefits of the extra game and getting open seeding.
3. Switch to full-time 2-3-2 scheduling.
The 2-3-2 schedule previously used for the NBA Finals reduces potential travel, and benefits lower seeded teams just a bit. Good! While it was miscast as a Finals-only novelty, using for the entire postseason seems reasonable. Higher-seeded teams who lose one at home and get swept on the road don’t deserve to move on. They are the worse team. Suck it up.
With those tweaks, and just assuming the team with a better regular season record won each play-in game, here’s how the 2018 open seeding bracket would have looked.
Rockets (1) vs. Bucks (16)
Jazz (8) vs. Thunder (9)
Celtics (4) vs. Timberwolves (13)
76ers (5) vs. Spurs (12)
Raptors (2) vs. Heat (15)
Blazers (7) vs. Pelicans (10)
Warriors (3) vs. Nuggets (14)
Cavaliers (6) vs. Pacers (11)
So what’s the upshot here?
- The 46-win Nuggets get into the playoffs over the 43-win Wizards, albeit through an assumption the Nuggets would also have to beat the Wizards head-to-head under our scheme.
- Regardless of the outcome, Nuggets-Wizards for a playoff berth would be incredible, laden drama. Clippers-Bucks would be quite saucy as well, and seeing what the Lakers and Pistons would do with a 1-game shot against superior teams would add some real intrigue. Even if open seeding fails, a play-in round of some sort a la Major League Baseball seems worth pursuing.
- Three actual 2018 first-round matchups (Jazz-Thunder, Blazers-Pels, Cavs-Pacers) are replicated with open seeding. The only playoff team who experiences substantially worse first-round travel than what actually happened in 2018 is the Sixers (1,500 miles to San Antonio vs. 1,000 to Miami, which should be mitigated by the 2-3-2 format). Toronto also travels further (Miami vs. D.C.), but since that’s within the East and could happen any year under the current scheme, that’s not particularly relevant.
- The East effectively trades a guaranteed spot in the playoffs for the Wizards for a shot at their No. 9 team the Pistons getting in. The West trades a guaranteed spot for the Timberwolves for shots at also getting the Nuggets, Clippers, and Lakers in.
- The Hornets and Pistons have reason to continue to play hard and try to win down the stretch. So do the Lakers, but they did that anyways since they didn’t have rights to their own lottery pick.
- Check out this possibility: Warriors vs. Cavs in the second round, Warriors vs. Raptors in the semifinals, Warriors vs. Rockets in the Finals. How it ought to have been.
The big question
Is the bonus revenue from the two guaranteed home play-in games for East teams worth the risk of losing one or more actual playoff teams? Is it worth giving up a guaranteed spot in the NBA Finals? Is it worth giving up an easier path for its softer teams?
Probably not. But it comes closer than just plain old 1-through-16 open seeding. It will probably take another two decades to convince the league and Eastern franchise owners that conference imbalance is serious and persistent enough to do something. That doesn’t mean we have to stop talking about it.
