How Eliminating Conferences for the NBA Playoffs Makes No Sense

This NBA offseason has been a wild ride. It’s been so wild that we’ve completely forgotten just how top-heavy and boring the NBA proved it was after this postseason. That’s what happens when fireworks have been going off on a daily basis like the 4th of July was a month long. Now that the dust has mostly settled and we’re turning off Woj and Shams notifications to avoid being updated about players like Ekpe Udoh finding teams, we know one thing:

The Western Conference is absolutely loaded.

In the past month alone Paul George, Jimmy Butler, and Paul Millsap have all left the Eastern Conference to head to the Hunger Games going on in the West. Now that the East is as top-heavy as can be while war wages out in the wild wild West, there is a push now more than ever to toss the two-conference setup and to send the top 16 seeds to the playoffs. As of now, it’s not something we’re going to see in 2018.

It’s pretty easy to see why the knee-jerk reaction is to just make one big bracket as soon as physically possible. We now live in a world where three teams out of the Jazz, Clippers, Grizzlies, Blazers, Nuggets, Pelicans, and Timberwolves won’t make the playoffs, while the Bulls, Pacers, Knicks, Pistons, Hornets, 76ers and Magic all have a chance of filling out the last two spots. This is not a world we want our kids to grow up in.

While people already want to light a candle for those fun young teams in the Western Conference that hit the offseason early while the Eastern Conference playoff teams may actually be the cause of vomiting, merging the two leagues into one for the postseason is the wrong move for a slew of reasons.

Traveling

First off, travel is a giant reason why this makes no sense. Yes, there are breaks in between games that would give teams the chance to travel. Some teams even get two or three days off at a particular point in a series when home court advantage is switched. This would still be absolutely brutal from teams expecting to make a championship run if they were unlucky enough to draw a team in a different timezone.

As Evan Wasch, the Senior Vice President of the NBA stated that 30% of games would be played in the same timezone. That’s absurd to ask of teams following an 82-game season. Even if you gave teams an extra day when they were traveling cross country, that would extend the playoffs even more than it already is. We would be on the verge of the NBA season ending near the beginning of July, a full eight months after it started.

Instead of hypothetically speaking about it, consider the 16-team playoff for this past season. The Warriors would be playing Chicago. While it may not be a drastic difference, it’s just one negative example that can only get worse considering which teams end up making the playoffs in the future.

Playoff Matchups

It’s completely reasonable to want to have the 16 teams with the best records in the NBA compete for the title. It’s only logic, and it makes it much easier to root for considering how much of a snoozefest this postseason was, but sadly there’s a flaw with that logic. The same exact 16 teams from the past season would have made it.

While it didn’t happen during the 2016–17 season, it would’ve happened one year earlier, twice. The only thing is, two different Eastern Conference teams would’ve made it in the Western Conference, not the other way around. The Chicago Bulls finished with a better record than the Houston Rockets, while the Wizards finished with the same record, but owned the tiebreaker of record within your own conference. We know the top dogs each and every year, but this just goes to show how often the bottom of the conference changes.

Even if you don’t focus on the records but the quality of the matchups themselves, is it even an upgrade? Golden State would face the Bulls, San Antonio would play the Trailblazers, Houston would play the Pacers, and the Celtics would round out the top four playing Memphis. The idea is to have the best teams in for the best games, but not a single one of those matchups sound attractive.

It could even get worse for future playoff rounds. Depending on how the NBA would decide to put each seed on which side of the bracket, the No. 5 seed Cleveland Cavaliers would be on the same side as the No. 1 seed Warriors. Now you’re taking away that same matchup we’ve (mostly) enjoyed in the NBA Finals over the past three years and replacing it with a possible Spurs matchup, which proved to be awful. It’s not fixing the blatantly obvious tilt in the NBA when it comes to talent. Whether you make the NBA one conference, two, or 15, the league will continue to remain unbalanced thanks to the surplus of talent ranging across only a handful of teams.

It’s Nearsighted

Take a look at everything that happened this offseason. In this offseason alone, we’ve already seen an incredible shift of power. Some teams that have been perennial playoff teams are about to fall off, while laughing stocks in both conferences have the chance to shoot up the standings in the immediate future. Why are we acting like something similar can’t happen next year, or the year after? These moves this season make the Western Conference way deeper with much more talent across the board — for now.

Nobody knows how these players are going to perform on their new teams. Nobody knows about the breakout players and rookies we haven’t even met yet. Nobody knows how the league is going to look a season from now. There’s no reason to shape a conference based on what we “think” we know. Only time can tell.

Time is something that could also prove to help the East in the long run. Boston not only got better now, but has an incredible young core in Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, and two potential high lottery picks a year from now to make them one of the best teams in basketball. The Process is looking like it could be a juggernaut in the future. Even teams like Indiana, Orlando, and Chicago who are banking on young talent to break through could reap the benefits when they’re proven right.

If we’re going to shape the league based on what we assume will happen, why not just have teams 2–17 play in the postseason, and the winner can take on the Warriors like they’re the Final Boss? If you want to predict the NBA like it’s a video game, treat it like one.

Any one player or team can come along and turn the NBA upside down. Let’s not turn it upside down before they get the chance to.