If you were to ask 100 people in a room about the length of the NBA’s first-round playoff series, you’d get a reasonable number of responses advocating a return to the best-of-five format:
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Yes, it’s hard to deny that there’s something about the Kevin Love injury in a 3-0 series which makes it easy to want to go back to best-of-five. The Cleveland Cavaliers — a big-dog title contender — had clearly proved to be superior to the sub-.500 Boston Celtics. The disparity in skill and aspiration between the two teams (one can carry this to other series that went to 3-0 in this first round, six in all…) makes it easier to think that the grossly inferior team will try to muck up the game and be an irritant. The Celtics certainly seemed to fit that profile on Sunday in Game 4 against Cleveland.
It’s one thing, after all, for a No. 2 seed to play a No. 3 seed. If one team gets a 3-0 series lead, the other team is still likely a very good team. A Game 4 situation — barring a major (abrasive) incident in any of the first three games — would feature an honest attempt by the trailing team to make its way back into the series. For a No. 7 seed, the gap relative to a No. 2 seed (compared to what a No. 3 seed might face) offers the temptation of wanting to be a troublemaker. A 38-win team might want to make mischief in ways that a 53-win team wouldn’t dream of doing.
This isn’t an automatic reality or a default setting, but the point to underscore is that if trouble does arise in a 3-0 Game 4 — as was the case on Sunday with Cavs-Celtics — it’s a lot more natural to think that an incident was a waste of time and energy. It feels like more of a shame that such a crucial injury occurred in a 2-versus-7 series compared to a 2-3 series or a 1-4 series. Consider, as a comparison, the thought that Stephen Curry could have been injured Saturday in a 3-0 Game 4 against New Orleans. That would have been such a waste if it had happened.
All this does support the contention that the NBA should go back to the best-of-five format for the first round.
However, instead of making that broad decision, the league could introduce a tweak to the system which would prevent unnecessary Game 4s yet also honor the work done by the best teams in the regular season.
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The 82-game regular season is supposed to be long enough that the highest seeds should be rewarded for finishing at the top.
The longer the regular season you play, the more you should be rewarded for a first- or second-place finish in any subsequent postseason tournament. The NBA, interestingly enough, is the best at honoring the work of its best regular-season teams. The NFL’s wild card winners, baseball’s wild card World Series teams, and hockey’s eighth-seeded Stanley Cup champions all show how teams that were ordinary during the regular season can get hot in the playoffs and win championships.
In the NBA, that sort of scenario is comparatively uncommon. This is a league in which the most successful regular season teams (top two seeds) regularly win. That’s a good thing, a feature and not a bug. Sports should want to produce outcomes in which their best teams win. The NBA playoffs are not March Madness — keeping those events separate in nature is what enables them to retain their special qualities.
Why is the NBA so tough for lower seeds and so good for higher seeds (again, the way things ought to be)? Let’s not duck the central answer: Four series are best-of-seven. It’s a lot like best-of-five sets in men’s tennis matches at Wimbledon, compared to the best-of-three-set format on the regular tour during the year. In a shorter match or a shorter series format, it’s easier to ride a brief but bright hot streak and prevail. The cause of the favorite — also known as the higher-seeded team or athlete — is served by preserving the longer format (five sets for a men’s match, seven games in a team-sport playoff series).
Seven games? The format is good for producing the best teams at the end of a long playoff season.
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You may be wondering, “Hey, the word ‘reform’ appears in the title of this piece — where is reform?”
Here’s the piece of reform, and it doesn’t need much elaboration: Second-round series deserve to be won with four wins and lost with four losses. Good teams generally play each other in the second round of a postseason and beyond it. However, in the first round, where teams with huge disparities in wins can meet repeatedly, it makes all the sense in the world to adopt a “skunk rule.”
This concept is easy to grasp: If one team gets a 3-0 series lead, the series is over. If the series is 3-1 after four games, play best-of-seven. However, if a 60-win team gets a 3-0 lead on a 36-win team, do we really need to play that fourth game? Shouldn’t a top team deserve extra rest if it can get a 3-0 edge on an inferior team? Building added rest into the playoffs — as an incentive for wanting to win series by a 3-0 count — would only make the postseason more exciting.
Making all first-round series best-of-five, though? That’s an easy invitation to a 43-win No. 7 seed to coast through the season and then turn on the jets against the No. 2 seed it knows how to handle. Keeping series at best-of-seven (except for 3-0 “skunks”) promotes the NBA playoffs as the test of champions.
That’s something to be preserved, even while we lament these six 3-0 series in the NBA first round.
You can truncate series and still preserve a best-of-seven format. We’ll see if the NBA and Adam Silver grasp this counterintuitive reality in the coming offseason.
