By Jan Hubbard
ProBasketballNews.com
So much has been written about the quality of Western Conference teams that it has become a cliché to call the playoff race exciting. Perhaps the dumbest question that is making the rounds is when reporters ask players or coaches, “Is this the closest you’ve ever seen it?”
At a recent interview session, I heard the question and thought about grabbing the guy’s microphone and giving him a nice little tap on the head with it. At that moment, the Western Conference race looked like this:
One team had 46 wins.
One had 45.
Five had 44.
Is that the closest anyone has seen it? Is Jennifer Aniston hot? Is Michael Jordan wealthy? Has Charles Barkley gained weight?
As great as the West race has been -- and as great as it is going to continue to be -- there is an unfortunate aspect to it. After the debacle in the West two years ago when the two best teams in the conference met in the second round of the playoffs, the NBA made a slight adjustment to the playoff system rather than fix it permanently.
In 2006, San Antonio won 63 games and Dallas won 60. They were the two best teams in the conference. The NBA’s silly decision to award top seeds to three division champions, however, forced the Spurs and Mavericks to meet in the second round because the other two division champions were seeded ahead of Dallas.
That spoiled the Western finals. Mavericks-Spurs was a classic series and lived up to every expectation. The Mavericks won Game 7 in overtime on the Spurs home court, and then went on to a predictable conference finals victory over the Suns.
After the season, the NBA realized what everyone else knew -- the best system is one that allows the two best teams to play later rather than earlier in the playoffs. So it adopted a plan to seed the three division winners and the second-place team with the best record.
If that had been in effect in 2006, the Spurs and Mavericks would have been the top two seeds.
That was an improvement, but it did not answer the obvious question. What if three teams from one division had the three best records in the conference? Instead of being seeded 1-2-3, they would be seeded 1-2-5. Why does that make sense?
On that day when Houston had 46 wins, Los Angeles had 45 and New Orleans, Utah, Phoenix, San Antonio and Dallas had 44, the matchups would have looked like this:
Houston vs. Golden State (1-8)
Utah vs. Phoenix (4-5)
New Orleans vs. San Antonio (3-6)
Lakers vs. Dallas (2-7)
In terms of record, however, those pairings were not right. If the NBA went by strict order of record, these would have been the seedings:
Houston vs. Golden State (1-8)
Phoenix vs. San Antonio (4-5)
New Orleans vs. Dallas (3-6)
Lakers vs. Utah (2-7)
Who do you think the Suns would rather face -- a Spurs team that has won four championships in nine years and has eliminated them in two of the last three years? Or the Jazz?
Like others, the Mavericks want no part of the Lakers in the first round. They’d much rather take their chances with the Hornets.
This is the type of issue that results in NBA commissioner David Stern shrugging his shoulders and being dismissive. You know the deal. The champion has to take on all comers. Players love the challenge. They respond to it.
What that ignores, however, is that a playoff system should not reward a team that is inferior to another team for the simple reason of geographic location. If you are going to have competition and play games and count them in the standings and determine playoffs based on those standings, then a team that plays the same schedule and has a better record than another team should get the best possible advantage when the playoffs begin. That is indisputable despite any eloquent flippancy Stern might muster.
Here’s how weird the NBA playoff seeding system is. Let’s say that Utah wins the Northwest Division but has the fifth best record in the standings and a first-round matchup against the Suns. The Jazz would still be seeded fourth because it is one of three division champions.
OK, so the fourth seed has the home court advantage, correct?
Not under this system. The team with the best record regardless of seeding gets the home court advantage.
That means that Utah is seeded fourth and Phoenix fifth but the Suns still have the home court advantage.
Why?
Why not have Phoenix as the fourth seed and Utah as the fifth? The Jazz would still be a division winner and be able to hang that prestigious Northwest Division flag in the rafters.
With teams so close this season, it’s going to be a shame if one team’s chances of winning a title are determined by a first-round matchup. And it can happen.
Last season, the Mavericks met the Warriors in the first round and it was their worst possible matchup. That had nothing to do with seedings, but it was an example of how a matchup can adversely affect a team. Had the Mavericks had a different matchup and had won in the first round, they would have been favored in the second round against the Jazz. Then they would have played a Spurs team they had beaten in the previous year. If they won that series and advanced to the NBA Finals, they would have played an inferior Cleveland team.
Playoff seedings are important. They should be fair. And this season, after the most exciting conference race perhaps in history (yes, genius inquisitors -- we’ve never seen it this close), the team that emerges from the West may make it to the NBA Finals only because the seeding system did not reflect how the teams finished in the regular season.
And that would be a very poor ending to a very exciting season.
Jan Hubbard covers the Dallas Mavericks and NBA for the Fort Worth
Star-Telegram and is a regular contributor to Pro Basketball News.
