Last year, we had the unfortunate joke that saw the #6 Clippers have the home court advantage over the #3 Nuggets ... while the Memphis Grizzlies had the Western Conference's 4th best record, the #5 seed, and got to face the Mavericks in the first round.
Then, the second round saw the Spurs and Mavericks play ... the two best teams in the Western Conference. Not really fair.
Because of that, the NBA decided to revamp the playoff seeding proceedures to make the top four seeds be the three division winners and the second place team with the best record. Then, those teams will be seeded according to overall record.
Not bad. Except that we saw both #5 seeds have the home court edge over the #4 seeds [not that big of a deal] and we have a very ugly second round of the NBA playoffs.
Right now, there are two premiere playoff matchups and two duds. If you told me that the Pistons-Bulls was the Eastern Conference Finals and the Spurs-Suns were the Western Conference Finals ... we'd all understand. But they're not. That's the round before. We also get treated to the Cavs-Nets and Jazz-Warriors.
This lends advice to go three ways with this: just seed the teams 1-16 ... seed each conference 1-8 without using the division titles for anything ... or reseed between rounds.
These divisions are crap. It's meaningless. Right now, the Southeast [Heat], Atlantic [Raptors] and Southwest [Mavericks] champions are out of the playoffs. Why reward these teams with a better seed when it means nothing more than bracket placement?
Instead, just do what the NHL does and reseed between rounds. That way, the Spurs would play the Warriors, Suns play the Jazz, Pistons play the Nets and Bulls and Cavaliers go at it.
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