In a move that will likely have fans of quality basketball cheering and fans of mediocre teams in weak divisions heaving quiet sighs of disappointment, the NBA has decided to seed its playoffs by win-loss record, rather than guarantee top-four protection to the teams that win their division.
The decision was unanimously approved by the NBA’s Board of Governors on Tuesday.
Should teams have identical won-loss records, new tiebreakers have been implemented as well. Head-to-head match ups will be examined first. If the head-to-head record doesn’t break the tie, then the seeding will be decided by whether a team won their division (so, winning the division still means something, even if its rarely going to matter).
Sure, this isn’t quite the basketball panacea of simply having the 16 teams with the best win-loss records duke it out in the playoffs but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. Now, fluky conference standings (like how the Trail Blazers were awarded the fourth seed in the Western Conference playoffs despite having a worse record than both the fifth seed Grizzlies and the sixth seed Spurs) will be a thing of the past.
