A proposed 30-team NBA playoffs
Forget resuming the regular season. This plan gets all teams some meaningful games and preserves advantages for teams that have already performed well.
Good morning. Let’s stay home and think about basketball.
La Grenouillére, Claude Monet
The NHL, which operates on a similar calendar to that of the NBA, is reportedly looking at playing a 24-team Stanley Cup Playoffs upon the coronavirus sports shutdown ending.
The NBA seems very interested in resuming this season at some point, and I’m not sure it makes much sense to try to pack in the last 20 or so regular season games and a proper postseason. It would make more sense to cut straight to the playoffs.
So how do you put together a proper, somewhat fair 30-team NBA postseason that doesn’t disregard the regular season to date and ensures every team gets at least 10 more games (five at home) this year?
Here’s my idea. It wipes the remainder of the regular season off the table and gives you an 11-week playoff involving all teams. If you began in early June, you’d finish in late August. Shorten the 2020-21 season (start around December) and you can fit it in.
First: Group Stage (3 weeks)
Six groups of five teams, with each team getting a home-and-home against each team in their group. Keep teams in their conferences to reduce travel and seed by regular season record.
East A: Bucks, Sixers, Wizards, Knicks, Cavaliers
East B: Raptors, Pacers, Magic, Bulls, Hawks
East C: Celtics, Heat, Nets, Hornets, Pistons
West A: Lakers, Rockets, Blazers, Spurs, Warriors
West B: Clippers, Thunder, Grizzlies, Kings, Timberwolves
West C: Nuggets, Jazz, Mavericks, Pelicans, Suns
Everyone advances out of this round, but performance here impacts seeding in the knockouts.
Second: Best-of-3 Knockout Rounds (2 weeks)
This is to get down to eight teams. The Bucks and Lakers receive first-round byes regardless of their group stage performance. The other current top-3 seeds in each conference (Raptors, Celtics, Clippers, Nuggets) can be seeded no lower than No. 4 in the first round. Everyone else slides in according to their seed from the group stage. Ties are broken by regular season record.
Here’s what each bracket looks like in the first knockout round:
BUCKS/LAKERS BYE
8 vs. 9
4 vs. 13
5 vs. 12
2 vs. 15
7 vs. 10
3 vs. 14
6 vs. 11
The second round is also best-of-3 the surviving teams (Bucks and Lakers play the winner of 8 vs. 9, etc.). At the end of this, you’re down to eight teams total, four in each conference.
Third: Best-of-5 Quarterfinals (2 weeks)
When you get to what would traditionally be the second round of the playoffs, you bump it up to best-of-5 series.
Fourth: Best-of-7 Semifinals (2 weeks)
Conference semifinals, best-of-7, just like usual.
Fifth: Best-of-7 Finals (2 weeks)
Your normal (by some definition of the word) NBA Finals.
After all of that, you can consider the NBA champion to have earned it. The worst teams have a reason to try — best-of-3 series aren’t as unpredictable as single elimination, but they are still prone to a little madness — and the best teams still have some distinct benefits from being stronger in the regular season.
This isn’t appreciably shorter than just finishing the regular season and doing the normal playoffs, but it might be a better use of everyone’s time.
Also, the NBA could just not prioritize rushing back a season amid a pandemic. We’ll see.
Links
Donovan Mitchell tested positive for coronavirus without any symptoms, which means that if Rudy Gobert hadn’t been sick, Mitchell would have felt normal and been unknowingly spreading the virus to others for weeks, which is a great reason for everyone to stay home right now, even if you’re well.
Great piece from Henry Abbott on what the NBA could be doing right now: using its resources and expertise to treat health care workers like prime athletes. (TrueHoop is free for the month, by the way.) Judd Legum on what Amazon owes people. Jonathan Myerson Katz on a response being up to the people.
The Bay Area is the first American metro area is shut down everything deemed non-essential. It follows since the Warriors were the first NBA team to be shut down. It seems like other cities/regions are going to follow.
The NBA won’t be drug testing during the shutdown. Not the first concern I had, but alas …
Ja Morant SLAM cover! More importantly: LANG WHITAKER SLAM COVER STORY!
Big ups to Shea Serrano, a real hero.
Mike Sykes reveals the truth of Air Max Day.
Cool project from High Post Hoops to simulate the NCAA women’s basketball tournament with analysis and everything.
And finally: Spencer Hall teaches you how to work from home.
Be excellent to each other. And stay home.