Competition Committee To Evaluate Whether NBA's Division System Remains Necessary

http://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/231017/Competition-Committee-To-Evaluate-Whether-NBAs-Division-System-Remains-Necessary


Competition Committee To Evaluate Whether NBA's Division System Remains Necessary



In an interview on Sirius XM NBA, Adam Silver said that the competition committee will evaluate whether divisions remain necessary.

David Stern added that he is less concerned about divisions and more concerned with a good team missing the playoffs due to the conference structure.

Silver will take over as commissioner of the NBA on Feb. 1, 2014.

Via Jeff Zillgitt/USA Today



bob
MY NOTE:  Or a team that isn't so good making the playoffs because their division uniformly sucks and then they're not in the lottery but a good team that should have made the playoffs doesn't but gets a lottery pick.  Not that anything like that could possibly happen, right?


.

Interesting that they're opening considering this. I do think that divisions are meaningless except for:

• Downgrading a high-performing team unfairly in playoff seeding because they have an even better-performing team in the same division

• Upgrading a low-performing team unfairly in playoff seeding because they happen to be the best of a really lousy division.

The division setup impacts scheduling in a limited way. Here's how scheduling works:

• You play each out-of-conference team twice (30 games).

• Of the other 14 teams in your conference, you play 10 of them four times (40 games).

• You play the remaining four teams in your conference three times (12 games). These four teams are always outside of your division.

30 + 40 + 12 = 82 games

So the division setup has only a minimal impact on scheduling.

Since the only significant impact is to create unfair scenarios, get rid of divisions altogether.

Even more interesting are Stern's comments about conference imbalance, which they have pooh-poohed in the past as a transient thing that would work itself out over time. This is the first time I've heard the league acknowledge in any way that it's an issue that they may have to deal with.

The East has been inferior for years top to bottom, but it's only now getting attention. Amusing.

Even if the NBA gets rid of divisions, it wouldn't matter. Why? Because there are always going to be a few teams over .500 that miss the playoffs in the West.

The only way to ensure the best records get in the playoffs is if you eliminate conferences altogether.

But if that happens, out of the 16 playoff teams, only 3 or 4 would represent the traditional Eastern Conf.



KJ