Finding a New Playoff Format That Makes Sense (For LeBron)
The NBA is looking into solutions to introduce some form of parity to its post-season. LeBron may not be okay with that.
In a recent interview, LeBron James, God Among Man, First Proof of Human Contact With Extraterrestrials and The Last Demigod in existence said that he would probably not be okay with the NBA changing it’s playoff format and/or seeding in the future.
Sure. That sounds about right for a player who’s made the last seven NBA Finals appearances out of the East, the kiddie pool of the NBA. It makes sense too. Just because you play, and happen to be good at, say, Call of Duty, doesn’t mean that you’d be excited with a prospect of actually going to real war. The current format supposedly rewards the best teams by having them play against lesser opposition to start, with the challenges getting progressively harder the further they get. Or in LeBron’s case, not hard at all until the very end.
Except, the West‘s top-4 currently hold a collective 14–9 record over the East’s top-4 (and that’s considering that Wizards haven’t even played half of their games against Spurs, Rockets, Wolves or Spurs), plus the bottom of the East playoff race looks like: “okay, sure, I guess they’re the team that makes it from the top of this trash-pile.” The West is historically just… better, which has left the NBA scrambling to find a way to balance things out, and deliver the most exciting Finals possible to the fans (just do 15 games of Warriors vs Rockets tbh).
How could the new format possibly look? Well, let’s take a look at some ideas that are not even remotely endorsed or reviewed by the Association.
Now keep in mind, LeBron has the veto vote. So whatever it is that we do has to appease the God of Gods and ensure that it leaves him with enough of a possibility to make it to the Finals that he agrees to the proposed changes.
The Top 16
This really is surface simple — just throw all 16 teams on one side of the bracket, NCAA style and let them all fight it out, with ideally, the top 2 seeds meeting in the Finals (although, as history proves that will never be the case). This eliminates us having to watch Warriors — Rockets a series early, and declaring it the “de-facto NBA Finals.” This also creates intriguing match-ups between teams that don’t play each other often in the regular season.
Picture this. Really imagine this in your heart of hearts. Burn it into your brain. The now-actually-coached Milwaukee Bucks take on the Golden State Warriors. Giannis has Kevin Durant in a torture chamber for seven whole games while a combination of Khris Middleton and Eric Bledsoe hound Steph Curry like the shark from Jaws. No game goes over 100 points and on the final possession of Game 7, the Milwaukee-five join hands and stretch the entire length of the court to blot out the basket. Golden State loses, Milwaukee now owns the Golden Gate Bridge.
LeBron’s Vote: “You mean I gotta play teams from the West early? NAH”
Run-Off Playoffs For the Bottom Two Spots
So now, let’s think of a different way to approach this. What if we give the bottom teams more of a chance. Instead of locking down the eight customary seeds, we leave seeds 7–10 wide open and make them play in a best of 3 mini-bracket (7th vs 10th and 8th vs 9th). This way, teams that are tighter together (and where seeding is decided by as much as .5 of a game) each team still stands a chance to either get bounced by the Warriors in 4 or make the Raptors sweat in 7.
With the proposed changes to the NBA Lottery, this also makes sense because it can give teams stuck in limbo who are not bad enough to drop into the lottery something to play for. Look at the Lakers this year. It’s clear they’re not making the playoffs even in the slightest, but they can feasibly finish 10th. They have 0 incentive to tank as they don’t have their own first-rounder. Wouldn’t the playoffs be more fun with LaVar Ball… Actually, forget I said anything.
LeBron’s Vote: “We still get to play against the East? Fine. Whatever”
The Euro — Lottery System
The Champion’s League system in Europe (that’s soccer for you folks) is a two-stage competition which includes group play and then knock-out, playoff-lite competition between teams. The twist? They re-draw opponents between each round. For the first round, the top-4 teams in the conference would randomly draw their opponents from seeds 5–8. In the second round, the two best remaining teams would randomly draw between their two possible opponents.
In this format, there’s always a random element to the playoffs, and it has the potential to create more upsets across the board, and keep the mystery alive until the very end without sacrificing most of the system we have in-place. Golden State would still be Golden State, but perhaps having to face the five-seed in the first round would challenge them a little bit more. Cleveland and playoff LeBron may actually get a more favourable match-up in this scenario, and go to the Finals again. Besides, the NBA can also make money by televising each subsequent draw.
LeBron’s Vote: “Lottery sounds like something you can rig, maybe we should try it.”
The LeBron Goes to the Finals System
This one is actually quite a simple idea, but it has two means to an end. One is that a team that has LeBron isn’t legally allowed to lose until the Finals, which means that even if they’re down 3–1 in a series and 20 points in the fourth, LeBron shall prosper. While, I’m a fan of never count LeBron out, we need to at least pretend like we’re not catering to him with this proposal.
The second idea is borrowed from The Ringer and their “cherry pick” strategy in which a team that wins a series is allowed to pick one of the opposing team’s players for the duration of the playoffs. So if Cleveland beats Milwaukee, they get Giannis for the rest of the playoffs, playing with LeBron. Sounds cool in theory, but remember, Golden State would also be adding bodies to their roster that have aged more favourably than Andre Iguodala.
Instead, let’s just make it so if a team beats LeBron, they get to pick up LeBron, and LeBron is the only one who this applies to. Much like the LeBron rule in refereeing (thou shall not call fouls on LeBron, but call everything, even a small gust of wind when it’s a foul against someone defending LeBron). This would provide other teams the incentive to win, because who doesn’t want to play with LeBron. This would also lead James all the way to another Finals appearance, and possibly a better team to take on the Warriors with.
LeBron’s Vote: “We should at least consider this.”
The beauty of all of these ideas is that they can be adopted separately or, depending on how much chaos you like with your evening basketball, can be mixed-and-matched, to your heart’s content (as long as every combination leads to LeBron making it to the Finals). And that way we all win. We get to watch the greatest player of his generation (and possibly ever) play as much basketball as possible and LeBron gets to continue his streak of making it out of the East, which is like being the best kid in a third-grade spelling bee.
Thanks for reading. If you liked it go ahead and smash that “applause” button, or not, I’m not your mother. Be sure to check out some of the other great writers here at Grandstand Central, and don’t forget to follow them on Medium. For more basketball from me (serge), tune into the Monday Report every Monday.
