NBA approves welcome a change to its playoff seeding system

Doc Rivers/Photo by Associated Press

 

The NBA board of governors has agreed to changes in the playoff format that will now see teams afforded playoff seedings based on records rather than a combination of records and whether they won their division.

Beginning this upcoming season the  eight playoff teams in each conference will be seeded based on order of their regular-season records.

Most recently, any team winning its division was guaranteed a top 4 seed in its conference even if another team in the conference had a better record. Interestingly, that team still did not have homecourt advantage even if it had a higher seed, if it had an inferior record than the team it was playing. That, of course, made no sense because at that point, why even give a team a top 4 seed for winning its division if you’re not going to reward it with homecourt advantage?

Either way, this is a good move by the NBA board of governors, which made this change on the recommendation of the league’s competition committee.

Doc Rivers, Clippers coach and president of basketball operations, is on the competition committee.