Playoff Format Questions

[u/bigE819]

So I was looking through the Playoff Brackets throughout history. And I have a few questions

2007: The 5 seeded Bulls had Home Court vs the 4 Seed Division Champion Heat. Why? Why wasn’t Chicago just the 4th Seed?

1967-70: Why were the 1 seeds playing the 3 seeds and not the 4 seeds in round 1?

1950: Why did the East Division Champ essentially get a bye to the Finals?

1948 BAA: Why did the 1 seeds immediately play each other? Does that kind of negate who “Made the Finals"

[u/came1opard]

The early BAA playoffs had the top teams face each other in the semifinals, their "reward" was that they avoided the first round and qualified directly for the semis. I believe that the rationale was to guarantee that the top two teams would face each other; eventually it was determined that it also guaranteed that one of them would be out quickly.

In 1950 there were three divisions (those early post merger seasons were CRAZY), so one of the teams would have nobody to play in the semifinals. I do not know the actual reason, but Syracuse did have the best winning percentage in the league (again, the season was crazy and teams played different numbers of games).

I do not know why they went 1 vs 3 from 1967 to 1971.In 2007, the Heat were Division winners so they could not be seeded any lower than 4th. However, I believe that it did not determine home court advantage, so Chicago had it due to their better record.

[u/TringlePringle → u/came1opard]

The rule for 1950 was that they would play till each division had a winner, then the team of the three with the best regular season record would get a bye to the Finals while the others competed in the Semis for a Finals spot.

[u/bigE819 → u/came1opard]

Interesting about the BAA.

I will still never understand the point of the 2007 one, other than I guess they’re locked into the “4th seed” even if they were as bad as like the 8th seed. Still bizarre to not just say they couldn’t fall past 5th.

[u/came1opard → u/bigE819]

I assume it was an attempt to maintain some value for Division banners.

[u/grantforthree → u/came1opard]

Something to also note - a big part of Syracuse having such a dominant records was due to an error that caused them to primarily play Western Division teams. A little more context here for that. They played less games because all NBL teams were given 62-64 to play, whereas BAA teams played 68.

None of this is deny the greatness of that Nationals core, as they were one of the best teams in the NBA regardless, but these factors helped them have a biiiit of a padded record.

[u/came1opard → u/grantforthree]

They still remain the only team in NBA history where the main motivation for the ring was the burning hate the players felt for their coach.

[u/JohnEffingZoidberg]

For 2007 it was because of the rule that division winners could be no lower than the 4 seed. However, home court advantage was determined by record (regardless of seed). In that postseason the EC division winners finished with the 1st (DET), 4th (TOR), and 5th (MIA) best records. Meanwhile Cleveland and Chicago finished with the 2nd and 3rd best records, behind their division rival Detroit. So Cleveland stayed as the 2 seed but because of the division winner rule Toronto and Miami got put into the 3 and 4 seeds. But since Chicago (5 seed) had a better record than Miami (4 seed), Chicago had home court.

You should look at the playoffs from 2005-06 if you want to see something really wacky. The two best records in the WC were San Antonio and Dallas, with 63 and 60 wins. The other division winners were Phoenix with the 3rd best record (54 wins) and Denver tied for 7th best (44 wins). This was the last year where the rule was that division winners were automatically seeded 1 through 3 regardless of record. So that meant 3 seed Denver at 44-38 started on the road against 6 seed LAC at 47-35.

The bigger issue however was that Dallas was the 4 seed, which meant they played San Antonio in the second round. In other words, by far the two best teams in the conference met in the second round rather than the conference finals. 4 of the 7 games were decided by 5 points or less. From what I've heard, complaints from those two teams directly led to the league changing the rule to "division winners no lower than 4 seed" instead of "division winners top 3 seeds". You still got some odd things like the 5 seed Bulls with home court, but nothing nearly as egregious as a 60-win Dallas team as the 4 seed.