Should Something Be Done About the NBA's Playoff Structure?

In last year's NBA playoffs there was much controversey and questions about the NBA's seeding structure when the Dallas Mavericks faced the San Antonio Spurs in the second round of the playoffs. The Mavericks had the second best record in the Western Conference and the third best record in all of the NBA behind the Spurs and Pistons yet were still the 4th seed in the Western Conference.

The NBA's current playoff was set up so that each division winner were given the first three seeds based on thier record and then the rest of the conference was seeded after that. So despite the Mavericks having 16 more wins than the Nuggets they were seeded lower. It worked out in the end for the Dallas Mavericks as they ended up going to NBA finals, but it bothered fans as they felt that the Western Conference finals were played out in the second round of the playoffs.

This year there may be even more controversy when you will possibly see 4 or 5 teams from the Western Conference who have a better record than any team in the Eastern Conference. The disproportionate amount of talent in the Western Conference is becoming a little absurd and something needs to be done about it.

Should teams like the Houston Rockets or Utah Jazz really be punished for their geographical locations? Both of them have nearly the exact same record as the best team in the Eastern Conference which is the Pistons. But while the Pistons will cruise through the early rounds of the playoffs playing inferior teams like the Magic and the Nets, the Rockets will have to battle through teams with an even better record than their own.

A possible solution to evening the playing field would be to run the NBA playoffs like the NCAA tournament. Not in the aspect of having each round of the playoffs be one game because that only works for the NCAA because of the massive size of the playing field. The best of 7 series is great for the NBA as it really gives the better team the chance to prove they are the best team.

What the NBA should borrow from the NCAA is how they set up the seeding. The NCAA tries to set up the tournament so if the best teams based on the end of season rankings win each and every game then eventually the number one and number two would play each other in the finals.

The NBA should set up four different "regions" not based on any sort of geographical locations but have the four best teams in all of the league seperated. Then the next best four teams get the number 2 seed in the different regions and so on.

The NBA conferences have never been seperate like the American League and National League in baseball. So purists should not argue that by mixing the seeding of the two conferences will tamper with the history of the game or anything like that.

If the season ended today the playoffs COULD look something like this:

GROUP A
Dallas Mavericks (1) vs. Golden St. Warriors(16)
Chicago Bulls(8) vs. Miami Heat(9)
GROUP B
Utah Jazz(4) vs. Denver Nuggets(13)
Detroit Pistions(5) vs. Washington Wizards(12)
GROUP C
San Antonio Spurs(3) vs. LA Clippers (14)
Houston Rockets(6) vs. LA Lakers(11)
GROUP D
Pheonix Suns(2) vs. Orlando Magic (15)
Cleveland Caveliers(7) vs. Toronto Raptors(10)

Setting up the playoff structure this way would not only be more fair but much more exciting, sort of like what the addition of the Wildcard did for Major League Baseball.

The 4 through the 8 seeds in the proposed structure are only seperated by 4 games and some of those are only seperated by one game. That would mean a lot to a team like the Bulls or Cavaliers who by just pumping out a few more wins would mean the difference between having to play the Mavericks in the second round or playing the Jazz in the second round.

Nothing can be done about the playoff structure this year as it is too late and maybe next year this won't even be an argument if somehow the East can catch up talent-wise with the west. But for the future, something should be done to ensure that the best teams are not only rewarded for the regular season play but you give the fans a good chance of seeing the best possible and most deserving matchup in the finals not the second round.