First Round of NBA Playoffs Showcase Serious Kinks in the Armor

With a four-point victory on Saturday the Utah Jazz ended the 2007 NBA playoffs' first round. This year's postseason opener featured many interesting subplots; the Warriors rise to prominence, the untimely fall of a 67-win team, the inability of a perennial All-Star superstar to lead his team to the second round, and the utter stupidity of the playoff system in place. For all the measures David Stern took last year to fix the NBA playoffs, he still has a system that does not work for several reasons:

Overemphasis on Divisional Play - After the Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs were forced into a second-round series last year despite holding the two best records in their conference, Stern made a change to assure this would never happen again. His solution? Guarantee division winners only a playoff spot in the top four seeds.

This rule allowed both the Miami Heat and the Utah Jazz to hold the fourth seeds in their respective conferences despite having inferior records to the fifth seeds (Houston and Chicago.) This snafu may not seem like a big deal right now. But what happens when a division winner has a worse record than a sixth seeded team? Just last year the Denver Nuggets division-winning record was the same as the eighth seed Sacramento Kings. So why do they deserve a better first-round match-up than a non-division winner with a better record?

The smart solution has always been to simply guarantee division winners a playoff spot and nothing else. Seed based on record and record alone.

Bad Second-Round Match-Ups - Remember the problem mentioned above with last years' Spurs and Mavericks match-up? This problem is eerily similar to that of this years', as the Phoenix Suns have to face the same Spurs in the second round. With the first-round defeat of the Mavericks, the Spurs and Suns have the best remaining records in the Western Conference.

So why do the Utah Jazz, a four-seeded team with a record of a fifth-seeded team, get to play the 42-40 squad from Oakland? And for that matter, why do the second-seeded Cavaliers get to play the sixth-seeded New Jersey Nets while the first-seeded Pistons face a team with the third-best record in the East?

The system, as it is now, is favoring teams with worse records in the later stages of the game. It is certainly not fair that one of the Jazz or Warriors teams is guaranteed a spot in the conference finals. The NBA should take a note from the NHL rulebook and match teams up based on seeds during the second round.

Odd Scheduling - Saturday night featured game seven of the final first-round series. It also saw the Bulls and Pistons start up their second-round series. In what other sport does one round start while the other one is still in progress? Is there some reason why the Bulls and Pistons are being punished with less rest time for finishing early in the first-round?

What is wrong with the NBA? Didn't they look at their schedules and notice there could be a collision between the first and second rounds of the playoffs? Is it really that hard to wait until every possible game of the first-round is over to start up the second?

The NBA playoffs are terrific for the most part. Basketball is an exciting sport and the intensity of the postseason is unmatched by most events. But the sheer stupidity of some small errors made this season have left my mind, and hopefully others', boggled. Hopefully David Stern notices these unfortunate mistakes and makes it a point to, once again, fix his playoff system.