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How the NBA should have done this season


pf9

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1. 60-game schedule - 72 is too much if you want to get players in the Olympics

2. Temporary realignment:

Atlantic: Boston, Brooklyn, New York, Philadelphia, Toronto, Washington
Central: Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Indiana, Milwaukee, Minnesota
Pacific: Golden State, LA Clippers, LA Lakers, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento
Southeast: Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis, Miami, New Orleans, Orlando
Southwest: Dallas, Denver, Houston, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Utah

Abolition of Eastern and Western Conferences for this year only. No cross-division play this year, 12 games against each team in your division to reduce the amount of unnecessary travel.

3: Playoffs

Top 4 teams in each division play a best-of-three first round (first game at lower seed, remaining games at higher seed) and best-of-five second round (2-3 home court format, first two games at lower seed).

The five divisional playoff winners would gather at the home court of the team with the best record still in the playoffs. The two with the worst regular season records would play a two-game points aggregate series, while the top three play a round-robin to determine their final seedings for the NBA semifinals (ala NHL last season). If the round robin finishes at 1-1 apiece, the tie-breaker would be aggregated points. All five of these games would take place at the same venue to reduce unnecessary travel.

The NBA Semifinals and NBA Finals would be 2-3-2 best-of-seven.

The addition of Minnesota to the Central Division and Oklahoma City to the Southwest (albeit with the latter's current line-up restored once COVID is over) would become permanent in the future under my proposal to add teams in Seattle and Vancouver, which would both be in the Northwest Division (the division Minnesota and OKC are in now).

I feel this is a much better set-up than what the NBA agreed to do. And I'm always saying teams should play more division games, that they currently don't play enough compared to the other major sports leagues (something that would be fixed upon expansion to 32, with every non-division matchup occurring twice a year, and division matchups 6 or 7 times depending on the size of the division).

Edited by pf9
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Well the NHL has done several things right that the NBA did wrong in approaching this season.

The NHL adopted a temporary realignment and ban on cross-division regular season play, and did not allow cross-division postseason play until the round of four.

The NBA failed to do all that. There's no reason that there has to be regular season meetings this year between the Lakers and the Spurs for example, or the Cavaliers and Heat, or the Celtics and Trail Blazers. That's too much unnecessary travel. And the NBA doing things the way they chose runs a greater risk of spreading COVID-19 far and wide.

Furthermore, under my proposal Toronto would have played home games in Buffalo.

MLB also did a much better job more or less with their 2020 season than what the NBA is doing this season. Here's what MLB got right in 2020:
1. Regionalized schedules (East VS. East, Central VS. Central, West VS. West only, though it could have been even better with a temporary realignment, placing Toronto [based in Buffalo] and the 7 Northeast US teams in one temporary division, the 6 remaining Eastern Time teams in another, and the two remaining divisions being one with the Central Time Zone teams, and the other with the Mountain/Pacific Time Zone teams).

2. Limited travel for the playoffs: all wild card series were played solely at the venue of the higher seed (though MLB should have just seeded their teams by record rather than giving priority to teams who finished in a certain position in their division), and all remaining playoff series were held at neutral sites in something of a bubble format.

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Furthermore, the MLB playoffs under a temporary realignment would have had the first round at the venues of the 1 and 2 seeds in each temporary division, and home venues of teams that did not make the playoffs would be used for the Division Championship Series as neutral sites (using a corresponding venue for each division, like Pittsburgh would have hosted the DCS of the Northeastern-based division). Two of the neutral sites chosen for the Division Championship Series would have served as the venues for the National Semifinal Series, and one of those venues would be the venue for the World Series.

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MLB's temporary alignment in 2020 would have been this:

East: Baltimore, Boston, NY Mets, NY Yankees, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Toronto (at Buffalo), Washington
Mideast: Atlanta, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Miami, Tampa Bay
Midwest: Chicago Cubs, Chicago Sox, Houston, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minnesota, St. Louis, Texas
West: Arizona, Colorado, LA Angels, LA Dodgers, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle

Again, no cross-division play until the postseason.

Edited by pf9
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27 minutes ago, pf9 said:

So I look at it as the NBA turning around from doing a good job handling the pandemic, to doing a bad job handling it.

NBA did just fine.  The players dropped the ball.  I'm not sure how anyone could disagree with that one.

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15 hours ago, CWood21 said:

NBA did just fine.  The players dropped the ball.  I'm not sure how anyone could disagree with that one.

Yup.  Flying on a private jet is just as safe no matter where you travel, and safer than a bus likely.  The hotels in different cities aren't any different than hotels in someone's region.  The problem is they aren't in a bubble so these young guys thinking they are untouchable go and have fun carelessly.  They could just as easily do that if they stayed in their region as discussed here. 

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Ignoring the MLB tangent in the Basketball sub, that is a lot of moving parts for very little, if any, positive impact, at all.  All of the pre expansion moves could just as easily be made, when/if there is actual expansion.  I'm not seeing the improvement, outside of saving some airline miles.  

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Plus under my format, there would be no dumb play-in games.

If you finish in the top four of your division in this format, you should be in the playoffs without any question. No 4/5 play-in games.

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