If the season ended today, Chicago would get into the playoffs 5 games below .500 and Phoenix would be out of the playoffs at 8 games above .500?
I don't think teams below .500 should be able to compete for a championship.
If your conference doesn't have enough >.500 teams you should be able to borrow teams from the other conference.

Posted by Panos:

If the season ended today, Chicago would get into the playoffs 5 games below .500 and Phoenix would be out of the playoffs at 8 games above .500?
I don't think teams below .500 should be able to compete for a championship.
If your conference doesn't have enough >.500 teams you should be able to borrow teams from the other conference.

What would be the point of having Conferences then?

If you wanted to lump everyone together and just put the best 16 teams into the playoffs this is what you would have to do and then get:

Teams Sorted by Full League Only

Detroit (who's #7 at the moment) is -1 in the win column.

I wouldn't value that so high. While the East has some bad teams, the West has worse ones. The West has FIVE teams with 20 wins or less, and one with only 25 (Warriors). The West teams are definitely getting their records padded playing these scrubs.

[Edited by - K22 on 03-24-2009 5:45 PM]

It doesn't seem like a great idea, but I think it has something to do with markets and whatnot. If it was the top 16 teams overall, then how many Eastern cities would lose out on play off action? It could cause a complete shut off in interest from these places, and considering the state of the East the last decade, this would be horrible.

Right now out of the top 16 teams in the NBA - 9 are in the west, 7 in the east. So you'd only be booting out Chicago and replacing them with Phoenix.

Not quite the imbalance it's made out to be?

What's the worst is the extra division. That really just plain messed everything and everyone up. That poses the biggest threat to allow a really crappy team into the playoffs just by virtue of winning their division. What happens when one year comes along where one division has all 20-win teams? The winner of the DIV gets to the 3rd seed in the conference LOL.

Posted by K22:

Posted by Cosmic:

What's the worst is the extra division. That really just plain messed everything and everyone up. That poses the biggest threat to allow a really crappy team into the playoffs just by virtue of winning their division. What happens when one year comes along where one division has all 20-win teams? The winner of the DIV gets to the 3rd seed in the conference LOL.

I believe the league changed that rule b/c teams were blatantly tanking into #6 to play #3 (the worst division champ record),

Now the rule is that the top 4 seeds are decided by the three division winners and the top team after that. So if any of the 2nd place teams has better records than any of the other division champions - they get to move up to #3 or even #2.

[Edited by - K22 on 2009-03-25 08:13 AM]

Interesting...if they did that then why not just reverse the error in the first place and kill off the extra division?

Typical NBA: Make one rule, watch it screw up the game, but instead of rescinding the first rule they make up a second rule to try to fix it. What in the hell kind of management is THAT!?

Instead of enforcing traveling they make traveling legal by calling it a hop step or a crab dribble.
Instead of removing the zone defense, which made it tough for superstar players to go 1-1, they make a new rule where you just can't touch the superstar players.
Instead of removing the extra division, they make a new rule that ensures that winning the extra division is largely meaningless now.

LMFAO at this hack league....