Hollinger: How to fix playoffs

"East" Half
(1E) Detroit vs. (8W) Golden State
(4W) Utah vs. (5E) Chicago
(2W) Phoenix vs. (7E) Washington
(3E) Toronto vs. (6W) Denver

"West" Half
(1W) Dallas vs. (8E) Orlando
(4E) Miami vs. (5W) Houston
(2E) Cleveland vs. (7W) L.A. Lakers
(3W) San Antonio vs. (6E) New Jersey

"East"
Detroit vs Utah
Phoenix vs Denver

"West"
Dallas vs Houston
Cleveland vs San Antonio

"East"
Utah vs Phoenix

"West"
Houston vs San Antonio

Finals:
Utah vs San Antonio

 

Why not just seed 1 through 16? I also think they should have increasing number of games: 1st round - Best of 3. 2nd round - Best of 5. 3rd round - Best of 7. Finals - Best of 9.

 

They'll never reduce the number of games.

But they should play every other night. I lose interest when there's a long lag.

 

Thats actually not a terrible idea but it would never go through. That change is soo dramatic. It doesn't look like the system will change that much ever.

 

If they just made every series 5 games with only 1 day between games it would be exciting enough.

 

On the one hand, I am okay with this idea. On the other hand, Hollinger is the same guy who just last week created some kind of system to rank the 1999 Spurs as the 8th greatest team ever, so I'm having a hard time thinking any idea of his makes any sense...

 

And I thought I had a lot of time on my hands. First Hollinger spouts off crazy no credibility stats, now this? Someone euthanize that clown.

 

That's always been my stance.

 

The East needs better management and a fairer share of the talent pool.

It's all cyclic anyway, the Celtics, Pistons and Bulls dominated the competition year in, year out in the past that at some point the balance would tip to the West.

In saying that, I agree that the quality of the East champions in recent years with the exception of the Pistons is poor.

Any of the NBA finalists that the the Celtics, Pistons and Bulls defeated would have destroyed today's East champions and would have given the Spurs/Lakers a real fight for the title.

And yet for some reason, the East always seem to win the All-Star Game.

 

I love that people write these articles as if the East hasn't won 2 out of the last 3 NBA finals.

 

or just get rid of conferences and top 16 teams make playoffs

 

This argument doesn't stick when you consider the road each team has to go through.

Dallas and the Lakers in '06 and '04 had to beat the Spurs in the 2nd round just to get to the Finals. Put that up against whoever Miami or Detroit faced and its apparent that the EC team was fresher, giving them the edge to win it all.

Under a one-pool system, the odds of '04 Det and '06 Mia even getting to the Finals would be more difficult.

 

what ever the hell they decide to say or do, you can't deny the fact that the West is way over stacked talent wise than the East is. it really doesn't matter if the East wins All star games, its not like we have 4/5 players out of a team to play team defense. those allstars are chosen because they're good and they appeal to the public. allstar games are <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Nba championship. and just because 2 out of the last 3 championships have gone to the East, the Rockets in the East would be..(checking the record..) OMG WE'D BE BEHIND DETROIT?!?! doesnt that mean if we played more east teams we'd be seeded higher? yeah and we're only 4th (barely) in the west. what does that tell you?

(it should tell you that the west has many championship caliber teams than the east does therefore they should be rewarded)

 

Sorry but I think Phoenix wins that series and plays San Antonio in the Finals. Makes you wonder especially since the 2nd round matchup between these 2 teams was brutally epic until David Stern f^cked up big time. That was the best series of the playoffs in terms of equally matched teams.

Stern will never do this because he wants Lebron in the Finals. The current rating slump is because of boring San Antonio and if you put Suns or Lakers especially Kobe vs Lebron than the ratings would be really high. Lebron is not the problem but Spurs overpowering the Cavs is the true catalyst.

 

or everyone knows spurs are going to win...

 

Yeah but people also like the David vs Goliath angle.

That's why everyone watched the Warriors vs Mavs. Honestly at the start of the series no one gave Golden State a chance against 67 game winner. Yeah most people will lie no and say other wise but at the time Mavs had this thing in the bag until they got owned by a one-legged Baron Davis. See that series was fun to watch period.

Spurs are boring as hell and they make you go to sleep. I enjoyed watching Lebron against the Pistons 1 on 5 basketball in over time of game 5.

The only time the Spurs are worth watching was when they played the Suns and that was because of "cheap shot Bob" and Bruce Bowen trying to end careers.

People want drama and entertainment. If Lebron goes out in the next game and drops 50 then watch how quickly people will tune back into this series. I'm not saying it will happen but that is what is needed to pull a good audience. Jordanesque heroics is what people want to see and so far they have been let down by Lebron.

 

You know, I don't know that I think this is the case anymore. Because guess what? The last time the East was the stronger conference there were two major differences:

1. Star players didn't leave their teams via free agency nearly so often.
2. The draft had just barely been changed to a lottery system and so the full effects of that hadn't yet been seen.

Now every year veteran stars defect to teams with a chance to win an NBA championship and of course those teams are basically all in the Western Conference. And that's not even including the cases in which terrible Eastern Conference teams have decided to rebuild so they've sent their superstars to the West - I.E. Iverson, Artest, McGrady.

Meanwhile, while the worst teams are really all in the Eastern Conference, a good half of the teams with the worst records in the league are always in the Western Conference because they have to play the tough Western Conference teams so much. Further, teams like the Cavs, Magic and Raptors reach a ceiling because they reach a certain level where they'd still be a pretty bad team in the Western Conference but in the Eastern Conference they're making the Playoffs - resulting in sub par draft picks.

I was praying Oden would go to the Celtics and become the second coming of Bill Russell - and I've been hoping for years that the Knicks would somehow miraculously get their sh*t together. But year in and year out they make dumb moves because GM's like Danny Ainge and Isiah Thomas exist. I've really begun to think that some sort of measures are going to have to be taken if they're going to balance out the conferences. They probably took several steps in the right direction when they made it possible for teams to offer their free agents one more year than other teams can offer and I also think making high school kids go to college at least one year may help because it's going to make it easier on teams to accurately assess talent. Still, more needs to be done because the Finals are worthless. Honestly, despite the fact those championship Pistons teams were good, I'm really not sure they would have won if the Western Conference teams they played hadn't been beaten up by three rounds of teams just as good as them while the Pistons were able to coast to the Finals.

 

I like Hollinger's idea. Reward the better teams by pitting them against more crappy opponents in the first round, thus increasing the team's chances of advancing further and playing more games in the playoffs which equals more profits. Meanwhile, all the crappy east teams would be bounced out of the first round, and wouldn't get as much playoff profits as they would with this current system. Now that's an incentive for GMs to improve their teams.

 

I mean, can you believe that Cleveland has probably made 5 times more money off their playoff run than the Houston Rockets? And we would rape Cleveland 5 out of 7 times.