Around the League: Week 5 11/18-11/24

[Charlie Smithy!]

Starting to wonder if we passed up on a potential Larry Bird with Luka Doncic.

[Indy]

Starting to wonder if we passed up on a potential Larry Bird with Luka Doncic.

He seems more magic than bird

[Superbone]

I’d like a magic bird.

[O_Gardino]

I want a Hogwarts Owl, too.

[Split T]

He’s kinda a Lebron James Harden combo....probably more Harden as he’ll never have the Lebron athleticism/defense

[ShelC]

Yea I saw Harden and some Manu during the draft. Even a little Steph. These new generations of offensive players are just off the charts.

[Mori Chu]

This tweet from the official Cavs team twitter account cracked me up.

[AmareIsGod]

[Split T]

Does the in season tournament serve any purpose? Just money for players and bragging rights?

[Mori Chu]

These feel like a bunch of half-measures to me. If they're going to go to a 78-game season, why not go further and go to 72 or 70? Get rid of most or all of the back-to-backs; they're really bad for players' health. And I'm not sure I see any benefit to re-seeding just the conference finalists. Why? So we can watch the Lakers play Philly in the semifinals? What's the point of that?

[Cap]

If they're going to go to a 78-game season, why not go further and go to 72 or 70?

It would cost a lot of revenue.

[Split T]

These feel like a bunch of half-measures to me. If they're going to go to a 78-game season, why not go further and go to 72 or 70? Get rid of most or all of the back-to-backs; they're really bad for players' health. And I'm not sure I see any benefit to re-seeding just the conference finalists. Why? So we can watch the Lakers play Philly in the semifinals? What's the point of that?

They’re only going to 78 to make sure teams don’t jump past 82 if they play through the tournament. They won’t cut games, as Cap said, that’s just cutting money.

I do like the play-in for the 7/8 seeds. Keeps more teams invested in the season. Get a 10th seed and you’ve got a shot.

I do agree that reseeding just the conference finalists seems pointless. There have been times when the 2 best teams met before the finals(warriors-Rockets) (suns-spurs) but there’s no guarantee reseeding fixes that. The top teams in the east usually have better records because they play lesser teams. Abolishing conferences altogether seems like the best way to go, at least for seeding purposes.

I’d add two teams, make four 8 team divisions. Play each team in your division 4 times(28 games) and everyone else twice(48 games) That equals 76. The extra division games could be part of the in season tournament, with only 2 teams qualifying each year. However, I wouldn’t give any playoff benefits to winning the division. Seed the playoffs 1-12, then have a 13 vs 16 and 14 vs 15 game for seeds 13/14. Losers of those games would play the winners of 17 vs 20, 18 vs 19 games for seeds 15/16.

There could still be some schedule imbalance as the divisions won’t all be equal, but it would be better. It’s impossible to do a completely fair round robin schedule without drastically changing the number of games.

One thought is you designate which half of the division games(14 per team) are geared only towards seeding the in season tournament. Then the remaining 14 count alongside the 48 games against non division opponents to determine playoff seeding. So you’d have each team playing every other team twice and only those 62 games count towards playoff seeding. You could still count all 28 division games towards the in season tournament, 14 would count for both division record and total record. The other 14 would only impact division record.

So you could have a team go 23-5(11-3 in designated games) in their division, but 25-23 outside the division. So instead of being 48-28, they’d be 36-26 for playoff seeding purposes.

Or you get stuck in a crazy tough division and go 13-15(6-8), but go 32-16 outside the division. Your overal record of 45-31 is worse than the team above, but your record for playoff seeding would be 38-24, so you’d be seeded higher.

[Split T]

Though I guess in order to have an in season tournament you’d need to do the division games early. You could start the season and have each team play 14 division games. That would put you right about thanksgiving and then you play the in season tourney, which would be more like a kickoff tourney. Then you’d start the actual regular season. Not sure that makes a whole lot of sense...kinda just creates a super long preseason.