The 2010-11 Toronto Raptors lost their best player in franchise history (Chris Bosh, of course) to free agency last summer. Their point differential is minus 2.7. The have a 2-8 record on the road. Their best player is named “Andrea,” although he does double as my favorite player to use in the new “NBA Jam” for Xbox (eight blocks and seven three-pointers don’t lie). At no point this season will this 8-13 team be considered one of the top teams in the league. Fine, right? Every league has bad teams. But if the NBA playoffs started today, the Raptors would face the Boston Celtics in the first round.
If you’re looking for a reason why the NBA struggles to have casual fans care about the regular season, look no further. The NFL has only 16 games per team, and every weekend is a major event. Baseball gets a little boring at times, but with only eight playoff teams you can’t afford to take the regular season off. But in the NBA and NHL, there are actually more playoff teams (16) than non-playoff teams (14).
How do we know this hurts the regular season? Aside from the fact that at least one bad Eastern Conference team will make the playoffs this season, we can also consider last year’s Boston Celtics as well as Boston’s largest player this year — Shaquille O’Neal. Last season the Celtics appeared dispirited and over-the-hill down the stretch, limping to the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference and looking for all the world like a potential upset candidate to Dwyane Wade and what at the time passed for the Miami Heat. Of course, the Celtics beat the Heat, ended LeBron James’ tenure with the Cleveland Cavaliers, outmuscled the Orlando Magic and came extremely close to winning the NBA championship. They just needed time to rest their old stars, time they could afford because they had no threat of missing the playoffs.
An even more extreme example is Shaq’s entire career. For years, Shaq has used the regular season to play himself into shape for the postseason, knowing that the playoff bar is set so low that all that really matters is his postseason performance.
ESPN writer John Hollinger keeps a continually updated system of playoff odds, simulating the NBA season 5,000 times every day and keeping track of each team’s chances at the playoffs. Thirteen teams already have an 87 percent or better chance at the playoffs, meaning that it is likely that only three playoff spots will be challenged during the rest of the season. And the season is only one-quarter over! Where’s the excitement in that?
I’m not suggesting that we halve the number of playoff teams to a baseball-like four per conference: If the playoffs started today under such a system, among those left out would be the 14-8 Atlanta Hawks, 14-8 Oklahoma City Thunder and 13-7 New Orleans Hornets. But more playoff teams than non-playoff teams is far too many — by definition that implies that a below-average team is a viable candidate to be considered the best in the nation. March Madness in theory gives this opportunity, but only the worst of the automatic qualifiers are truly below-average teams, and 68 tournament teams doesn’t sound so unreasonable when you remember that there are 350 NCAA Division I men’s basketball programs.
My favorite solution? Six playoff teams from each conference and a football-style format in which the top two seeds get first-round byes, with five-game first-round series instead of seven to shorten the amount of time the top four teams are idle. This gives too much advantage to the best teams, you say? Fine! More advantages for the top regular-season teams gives more incentive to try in the regular season. Wouldn’t you rather have a Magic-Heat game late in the season full of bad blood as they strive for the second seed and an extra week of rest, or are you fine with having Chris Paul sit for long stretches of time in strings of meaningless games as the Hornets stop trying because the difference between the fifth seed and the seventh seed isn’t worth risking his knees?
The Western Conference has seven teams at 14-8 or better right now, so this system would definitely kick out a strong team. But I’d rather make Oklahoma City, Dallas and Utah race to the bitter end than watch a slew of 39-win teams fight over who gets to lose to the Los Angeles Lakers or San Antonio Spurs.
Here’s one more reason eight playoff teams per conference is too many. One of the following teams is going to make the NBA playoffs: Toronto, Milwaukee, Charlotte, Cleveland, Detroit, Washington, Philadelphia or New Jersey. A playoff system watered down to this degree is an insult to the top teams and to the importance of the regular season.
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