Earlier this month at Crossover Chronicles, staff writer Joseph Nardone wondered what the playoffs would look like if seeded 1 through 16, obliterating the artificial division imposed by conferences. Plenty of other bloggers and publications have pushed for a reworking of the NBA’s playoff format along these lines.
A lot has also been written in “NBAWorld” on the need to get rid of the seeding alteration which gave the Portland Trail Blazers the No. 4 seed in the Western Conference, due to their standing as Northwest Division champions. This seeding alteration is what’s responsible for the unfortunate pairing between the Los Angeles Clippers and San Antonio Spurs in the first round of the playoffs. There’s no good reason to have one of the league’s five best teams — very possibly better than anyone in the East (especially with the Kevin Love injury) — out after the first round because of a cruel bracketing plot twist.
The central problem with the reseeding according to division championships: The teams with better records aren’t playing teams with worse records. The Clippers were supposed to be rewarded with their No. 3 seed. They should have drawn Portland. Yet, this odd seeding quirk has wronged Los Angeles, a team that’s now one game away from elimination at the hands of the Spurs.
You know all this, however. Why bring up this discussion, then?
Here’s the answer: Overvaluing division championships isn’t going to be the focus of this piece. We’re going to try to explain something that either hasn’t been explained before, or hasn’t received quite as much emphasis as it should.
What are we talking about? Simply this: While it’s debatable to value division championships, the point which often goes unnoticed is that divisions are now small… at least, they’re smaller than they used to be.
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Twenty years ago, the NBA had four divisions, three of them consisting of seven teams.
Just over 20 years ago (1993, the last year without a wild card in the playoffs), Major League Baseball used four divisions, all of which contained seven teams.
The NFL, in the process of expanding, chose to reduce the size of its divisions from five teams (in six divisions) to four teams (in eight divisions).
Only hockey, among the four major North American professional team sports, has increased the size of its divisions. The NBA is with the majority… and it’s on the wrong side of this issue.
Let’s put the matter plainly: Winning a division means more (or at least should mean more) if it’s a larger division and the schedule is appreciably balanced. The irony of the NFL giving a division champion an automatic playoff berth AND playoff home game is that NFL teams play only six of 16 games within their divisions. Yet, as we saw with the 2014 NFC South, a team can fail to achieve even a .500 record and earn a home game against a team that reached double-figure wins during the regular season.
In the 2012 regular season, the Detroit Tigers were hardly the best team in the American League during the regular season, winning only 88 games. Yet, the smaller size of a division compared to 22 years ago meant that the Tigers had to beat out only four teams, not six, to make the playoffs with a wild-card bye. If those four teams in a small-size division all stink (and in 2012, they pretty much did), one half-decent team can get a playoff ticket.
Just to complete the point with the 2012 Detroit Tigers, had the 1993 American League East existed (with the Tampa Bay Rays added to make an eight-team division), the Tigers wouldn’t even have finished in the top three. Re-slotted into the weaksauce A.L. Central, they made the playoffs and then reached the World Series.
The American team-sport obsession with small divisions works squarely against honoring both quality and results in the regular season. The ultimate result is supposed to be based on winning more games than other teams, but small divisions make it easier for less accomplished teams to make the playoffs at the expense of superior ballclubs.
In the NBA, as we’ve seen, the rewarding of Portland for winning a mediocre division — one with only one playoff team (the Southwest Division, by contrast, put all five of its teams in the playoffs) — has skewed the balance of power and forced the Clippers and Spurs to play one round before they ought to have played, if not two.
Cast aside, for a brief moment, the argument about whether or not a division champion should get seeding or playoff protections (or both). Focus on this central point instead: Is winning a five-team division as impressive as winning a seven- or eight-team division?
If Portland won an eight-team division, it would be a million times easier to say, hey, the Trail Blazers did something worth celebrating… and protecting in a bracket or seeding structure. Winning a five-team division in which no other opponent reached the playoffs? THAT is why the Clippers drew the Spurs in round one?
It’s not proportionate, is it? Not for a five-team division in a country which just can’t get away from smaller divisions in professional team sports.
