Big Z Man 1990
Registered User
I've come up with something better, which I did this years ago and have been advocating for its adoption for years.
The top 16 teams overall would all clinch playoff spots, but the teams would still nominally be sorted by conference.
But if one conference has 9 or more teams in the top 16, the teams ranked below 8 in that conference get sent to the other conference for the pre-Finals playoff rounds and are seeded accordingly.
Under this format, the top 8 teams in the West would all compete in the Western half of the bracket, while the 9th-place team in the West, Memphis, would clinch the 7th seed in the East, while bumping the actual 7th place team in the East, Boston, to the 8th seed, and the 8th place team, Washington, would miss the playoffs altogether.
This is similar to what the CFL has done for a quarter century.
However, I wouldn't have implemented this for the 2020-21 season due to the pandemic. Rather, I would have eliminated the conferences for the season, and collapsed the 6 divisions into 5, limiting play in the regular season and the first two rounds of the playoffs (top 4 teams in each division) to divisional opponents only (like NHL and to a lesser extent, MLB did). I have no idea what the NBA's gripe with the idea of more division game is, but it is stupid, and I want more division games upon expansion to 32 teams, it's time to make divisions matter in regular season scheduling again.
The five divisional playoff winners would gather at a neutral site for a one-time-only round, with the three best remaining teams playing a round robin to determine the top three seeds for the NBA semifinals, and the two remaining teams playing a two-game points aggregate to determine the fourth seed in the NBA semifinals.
The top 16 teams overall would all clinch playoff spots, but the teams would still nominally be sorted by conference.
But if one conference has 9 or more teams in the top 16, the teams ranked below 8 in that conference get sent to the other conference for the pre-Finals playoff rounds and are seeded accordingly.
Under this format, the top 8 teams in the West would all compete in the Western half of the bracket, while the 9th-place team in the West, Memphis, would clinch the 7th seed in the East, while bumping the actual 7th place team in the East, Boston, to the 8th seed, and the 8th place team, Washington, would miss the playoffs altogether.
This is similar to what the CFL has done for a quarter century.
However, I wouldn't have implemented this for the 2020-21 season due to the pandemic. Rather, I would have eliminated the conferences for the season, and collapsed the 6 divisions into 5, limiting play in the regular season and the first two rounds of the playoffs (top 4 teams in each division) to divisional opponents only (like NHL and to a lesser extent, MLB did). I have no idea what the NBA's gripe with the idea of more division game is, but it is stupid, and I want more division games upon expansion to 32 teams, it's time to make divisions matter in regular season scheduling again.
The five divisional playoff winners would gather at a neutral site for a one-time-only round, with the three best remaining teams playing a round robin to determine the top three seeds for the NBA semifinals, and the two remaining teams playing a two-game points aggregate to determine the fourth seed in the NBA semifinals.
