MVP Candidate and vanilla face of the league openly crying about play in games

[TOAD99]

Ridiculous right

Especially with how regular Morant has been this season

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Yes, the play in games in the World Cup are for getting in the World Cup. Not the playoff of the World Cup
I'll give you that I have no idea about cricket but that's mostly because it isn't a top 5 sport in the world. You don't see me talking about Team Handball lol.
And you are wrong about most football leagues, they uses goal difference, goals scored, points won in head-to-head meetings and away goals in head-to-head meetings.

The World Cup IS the playoff, breh.

211 teams spend 2 years working to qualify for a 1-month playoff, and the the last two teams in need a play-in game. Meanwhile in the NBA you got 30 teams working 6 months to qualify for a 2-month playoff. In those terms the World Cup play-in game is actually much bigger stakes.


And cricket is the #2 most-watched sport in the entire world, behind only soccer.

https://www.ballerstatus.com/2021/01/06/top-10-most-watched-sports-in-the-world-today/


You bytching about, "This only happens in American sports!" then bragging that you ignorant of literally the two most popular non-American sports in the world.

 

[nieman]

The play in game is made to stop those 9-11 teams from full on tanking. So instead of damn near ten teams tanking for the draft you got at best maybe five now. Orlando, Detroit, Rockets, Wolves, OKC. Maybe Cavs too. Everybody still fighting to be in the playoffs.

Not true. They can still tank a la Pelicans in the bubble.

Play-in games are not going to change that. There's always 2-3 teams battling for that final spot at the end of the season - it just gives the perception that it means more. If you can't establish positioning over 82 games in a sport like basketball, you don't deserve extra credit. However, if teams played like the 1st 10-15 games of the season mattered, there's no reason for anything on the back in, because you already have that cushion. Who at the beginning of the season will say "Let's aim for that play-in spot"

It's like purposely not doing your first 2 assignments because you know you can make them up during the end of the semester with extra credit. If you turned them in, you wouldn't need extra credit. There's a reason why current basketball fans are no longer tuning into the games faithfully, year-round. This just further pushes that narrative.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

And you are wrong about most football leagues, they uses goal difference, goals scored, points won in head-to-head meetings and away goals in head-to-head meetings.

"Most association football leagues only consider points, then goal difference and then goals scored when determining final standing.[10] A few leagues also consider such criteria as head-to-head records, but this is not the norm. One-game playoffs are typically held in a neutral venue, often a national stadium especially for playoffs involving teams with large fanbases....For example, the Premier League announced that there would be a one-game playoff for third place between Arsenal and Chelsea if the two teams had finished exactly level at the end of the 2012–13 season."

One-game playoff - Wikipedia


I wouldn't know personally though cause it ain't like I follow enough soccer leagues to know the rules for "most" of them.

 

[DjMe]

The Mavericks are 10th overall in the league in top to bottom standings

Yet they would have to play a play-in game (or possibly 2) for a 16 team tournament.
You don’t see what’s egregious about that?

The Mavericks would be the 4 seed and have home court in the East, but they have to play a play-in tournament in the West. You don’t see what’s egregious about that?

The 13th overall team in the league in the NY Knicks don’t have to play a play-in game, but the 10th overall team in the league does. You don’t see what’s egregious about that?

You’re talking about posters not understanding the rules and complaining just to complain while ignoring the elephant in the room. The fact that you literally have a team that is in the top 3rd of the league that will have to play a play-in game to qualify for the playoffs that puts 16 out of 30 teams in is pretty astounding.


Nobody in the thread has addressed any of this. I’m very interested in hearing a compelling argument why lesser East teams should have secure playoff spots over competitive West teams that have to do gimmick tournaments

I won't neg you--I dap instead--but your view is myopic. You're looking at one section of the standings and using it to justify wholesale changes to components of the sport that are interrelated in ways you don't understand.

Let's start at the micro level: the purpose of divisions/conferences. They essentially exist for 1 reason and 1 reason only: to increase profit margins for teams. With opponents closer to home, flights are quicker, travel is easier, and managing the logistics of the league as a whole is easier. The hand-in-glove relationship between the sport and the divisions which comprise it is the league schedule itself. All 4 major NA sport leagues have a schedule weighted to their division/conference structures.

• In the NFL, a team plays about 40% of their games vs division opponents, 75% against conference opponents.
• In the MLB, a team plays 48% of their games vs division opponents, 88% against conference opponents.
• In the NHL, a team plays 34% of their games vs division opponents, 63% against conference opponents.
• In the NBA, a team plays 20% of their games vs division opponents, 63% against conference opponents.

The takeaway from these numbers being: the conferences are separate entities from each other. All major NA sports play well more than half of their games (closer to 3/4ths) against conference opponents. This has the effect of rendering the regular season as essentially a round robin tournament to determine seeding for the conference playoffs.

The inverse of what you're complaining about is the bottom of the conferences. While the mid-tier Western teams would be higher seeded in the East, the bottom tier East teams are better than the bottom tier West teams: all but 1 team in the east is within less than 5 games of the 10 seed playin game; ONLY 1 team in the west is within 5 games of the 10 seed play in game. So the spread is there in terms of parity--maybe not the most exciting parity as far as fans are concerned, but it's there in the places you're not looking for.

Where you should be directing your ire, in my opinion, is on the meaningless nature of the divisions in the NBA. Look at the rate of divisional competition across the major sports: the NBA is by far and away the lightest on divisional scheduling--and it's not even close. Why this is, I have no idea. There are 2 options to remediate this problem, and one of them would actually correct what you see as the fault of the playoffs. That would be to eliminate divisions AND conferences, and have the league pooled as a whole, with an equitable schedule that isn't division/conference based. There are many ways this could be achieved--a simple formula might be to rank the teams by record at the end of the year, 1-30, and divide them into 3 pods: teams 1-10, 11-20, 21-30. You play every team in your pod 4 times (9*4=36) and each team in the other 2 pods 2 times (2*10*2=40 games) for 76 games. Then, the best 16, 18, 20 teams or whatever could be slotted into a bracket based purely on record.

The other way would be to increase the number of divisional-games a team plays. But that is a different conversation and consideration, and would involve beefing up the rewards for winning your division, which for some reason the NBA has always seemed averse to.

The NFL gets a lot of shyt for a lot of different reasons, but in terms of scheduling parity and rewards for winning your division (home playoff game) and winning your conference (first round bye), they are absolutely divine when it comes to these formulas. I do firmly believe (and this might be bias on my part) that scheduling formulas, division structure, and playoff "rewards" (byes, home court advantage) do more to contribute to fan interest in the sport than rule changes, pace of play, and all that. A well structured league and playoff system adds value to the regular season.

The problem with the NBA isn't the addition of 4 play-in games, it's that what they're "playing in" to has no reward for doing anything other than getting there in the first place, aside from an extra home game per series (assuming the series goes 7.)