What If The NBA Had No Conferences?

[santeesioux]

Mar 30, 2011 - So long as the BCS exists, no other major sports playoff system can possibly look truly terrible; college football's bowl system is so backwards -- and, as it turns out, corrupt -- that quibbling over the way the NBA's playoffs work seems like quibbling. In other words, it could be worse, much worse. Imagine basketball's version of the Chick-fil-A Bowl, featuring the Timberwolves and Nets!

But something is broken in the NBA, and it's the conference system.

Every year, the East admits four to seven good teams to the NBA playoffs, and one to four crummy teams. Every year, the West leaves at least one solid team outside of the NBA playoffs, because all eight teams in are really, really good. And that's not just a loose interpretation of memory: that's what actually happens. The graphic below shows the records of the No. 8 and No. 9 teams in each conference since 2003.

n seven of the past eight seasons, the No. 9 team in the West had a better record than the No. 8 team in the East. That means that the NBA didn't take the top 16 teams to the playoffs -- it took the top 12-15, plus a bad team or four while better squads got early start on their beach reading. In the one year where the first team out for the West wasn't better than the last team in for the East, the teams' records were tied.

Pretty interesting read, more here.

http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2011/3/30/2079706/nba-playoffs-east-coast-bias

 

[Wheels]

damn europeans and their single table standings! In all seriousness though, while I agree about it being crap that an 8th seed and sometimes 6th and 7th in the east is worse than an 9th seed in the west, with an imbalanced schedule, I dont know how to go away from conferences.

 

[BlazerCaravan]

Egads, the bottom 8 have a tough road to hoe... talk about establishing parity!

 

[Eastoff]

I'm lazy and not reading the article right now, but does the author account for the possibility that the top teams in the east might be better than the top teams in the west. If this were true, the teams in the east play those better teams more frequently then the lower teams in the west. What I'm really getting at, is in order for this to be truly balanced, all teams would have to play each other equally. There is also the factor that teams in the west play earlier in the day when they go east, say 4pm their own reference time. While teams from the east playing in the west play closer to 10 or 1030 their own reference time. This could be an unfair advantage as well. Thus all games must be played in the same location, at the same time, with equal number of games amongst every opponent.

 

[Wheels]

good lord someone who used more words than me to explain their stance for once thank you!!

 

[BlazerCaravan]

Thus all games must be played in the same location, at the same time, with equal number of games amongst every opponent.

David Stern is attempting to alleviate this problem by relocating every team to Los Angeles or New York.

 

[Wheels]

David Stern is attempting to alleviate this problem by relocating every team to Los Angeles or New York.

hahah repped.

 

[Rhal]

There are problems everywhere you play (especially denver, FU YOU DENVER AND YOUR CRAPPY HARD TO BREATHE AIR!) you should be able to get used to them after a few years in the league. Time of play differs when East plays West and West plays East but you just gotta roll with that as a player. Shouldn't be that much of an unfair advantage, not close to the playing really good teams on back to backs.
The Standing systems allows 1 to 4 "bad teams" in regardless of conference. 10 years ago we had the opposite effect for a few seasons. The conference system is a way to justify fair play when you have 4 games every season vs other teams in your conference and only 2 vs teams in the east. The thing I think should change is how the Divisions in the conference is set up. Why the hell are Minnesota and OKC in the Northwest conference?
I'm not sure how you would change the NBA's playoff system to better balance it out. Maybe take Division winners and then the next 8 teams with the best record after that. You would find a ton of bitching if you were NYK and your bracket was LA/ Winner of Por/Pheonix because of how much air travel you would doing.
I at the moment cannot figure out a more fair way of doing it without doing way to much work that i'm unwilling to do before heading into work.