Isaac
Years ago
Effective for the 2015/16 season.
Previously, every division winner was guaranteed a top-four seed regardless of record.
Now, conference seeding will be purely based on win-loss records, and tiebreak criteria will take into account head-to-head results for seeding and home-court advantage before division title is a factor.
XY
Years ago
Last year was particularly confusing. I had to go and learn the seeding rules to make any sense of it, which took a while and was still then not logical or easy to follow. San Antonio dropping from 3rd to 6th seed on the final game of the season was bizarre.
I suspect they have changed it just because the number of complaints from media organisations that couldn't understand it.
What would the playoffs have been last year under the new system (hoping some site has done this work already...)
XY
Years ago
Nothing different in the East.
In the West, either Memphis or the Spurs would have seeded 4th and got home court advantage in the first round instead of Portland and they would have played each other. Portland would have been knocked out by the Clips instead of the Spurs.
Bear
Years ago
Mike & Mike covered this on Foxtel last night, quite extensively too.
I think it is the way to go, but conference champions mean a lot to the yanks, so they still need to get their heads around the idea some.
Easier to employ this concept in a competition like the NBA or MBL where they play every other team and play so many games, but in the NFL for example, there are too few games and conference games become crucial to their ladder position.
Still, it is a move in the right direction IMO.
Indigo Wolf
Years ago
This is a better rule than what they used to have. There are way too many good teams in the western conference all stacked up in one division. There's only 1 team in the east right now that can compete for a championship, and that is the Cleveland Cavaliers. As for the west, we have the Spurs, Warriors, Thunders and even the Rockets.
So this is just the right thing to do.
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