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rexerexer wrote:

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Okay, so what's the friggin' point of getting a seed if it's not going to matter anyway? Sorry... I'm a Houston fan and love to see them have home-court, but Utah is the 4-th seed. They should have the home court over the Rockets. Otherwise, don't call them "seedings."

Now having said that...Go Rockets.

Berkmaniac wrote:

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The NBA is stupid that's why.

Well, it's not entirely stupid. The NBA made a partial fix to what appeared to be broken in the 2006 playoffs. The current playoff seeding rules were put in place after the 2006 playoffs, when the teams with the 2 best records in the Western Conference during the season, San Antonio and Dallas, met in the 2nd round of the playoffs (i.e. before the Conference Finals). The playoff seeding rules at the time awarded the 3 division winners with the top 3 seeds in the playoffs, in order of their records, regardless of whether any 2nd place team had a better record. That caused the problem, because the 2006 final regular season records had the Spurs with the #1 seed, winning the Southwest Division with 63 wins; the Suns with the #2 seed, winning the Pacific Division with 54 wins; and the Nuggets with the #3 seed, winning the Northwest Division with 44 wins. The Mavs finished the season as the 2nd place team with the best record in the Western Conference and were awarded the #4 playoff seed, but the problem was they had 60 wins on the season, which was more than any other Western Conference team except San Antonio. Both the Spurs and Mavs won their 1st round series and met in the 2nd round as the #1 and #4 seeds. There was much controversy about that at the time, as many people (apparently, including the powers that be in the NBA) felt that the Spurs and Mavs should have had the opportunity to meet in the Conference Finals, and not beforehand. I concur; however, I'm not sure the solution chosen was the best resolution of the problem, but who knows? Anyway, the Rockets have benefitted both years that this system has been in place. I just hope they can capitalize on it this year.

The NBA decided to allow the division winners to have an automatic top 4 placement. That way, if a 2nd place team had a better record than one or two of the division winners, then that team could attain a #2 or #3 seed, and stay away from a 2nd round matchup vs. the top seed. In choosing to do it that way, the NBA continued to give credence to the notion that winning your division should be rewarded. They also gave credence to overall records by providing that Home Court Advantage would be determined by the team with the better overall record, despite the playoff seeding. Some would say that the Home Court Advantage rule makes the seeding a moot point, but in reality it doesn't, because seeding still determines who the teams play and when. Other possible solutions included:

1. Seeding by record through the best 8 records in the conference. However, although not likely, this could result in a division winner being left completely out of the playoffs.
2. Re-seeding after the 1st round of the playoffs.

Go Rockets!