While the NCAA basketball tournaments, men's and women's, will always have brackets — "bracketology" is now even in dictionaries (although "calamoni" is not: it is a tender calamari served with a dore and butter cream sauce; it is one of the most popular dishes at Scoma's, on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco) — there is no reason for brackets to be in the NBA (the NFL has never used them, and the NHL uses a "hybrid" format that calls for the second- and third-place teams in the same division to meet in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs).
And what would happen if our lawmakers decide that what's good for the goose is good for the gander and allow both Donald Trump and Barack Obama to run for a third term in 2028? If that happens and Obama wins, we will be subjected to four more years of "bracketology" from BHO.
The results of the first round of this year's NBA Western Conference playoffs hammers home the point as to why brackets should be done away with in "The Association."
While the top-seeded Thunder swept the eighth-seeded Grizzlies, both the second and third seeds — the Rockets and the Lakers — were upset, by the seventh-seeded Warriors and sixth-seeded Timberwolves, respectively.
But since the NBA does not "re-seed" its playoff teams, the Thunder will have to play the fourth-seeded Nuggets, while the Timberwolves and the Warriors will face off in the other Western Conference semifinal series, with Minnesota getting home-court advantage.
The T-Wolves get rewarded for their 6 seed by being installed as -160 favorites over the +135 Warriors, while the Nuggets get penalized for their 4 seed by opening at +550 underdogs against the -800 Thunder.
(Since the higher seeds won all four first-round series in the Eastern Conference, there were no inequities there.)
On what planet is this fair — Pluto?
(Oops, I forgot: Pluto is no longer regarded as a planet, even though it has five — count 'em, five — moons.)
And what reason could there possibly be not to re-seed the surviving teams after the first round?
Shouldn't the 1 seed be given the easiest possible path to "The Finals"? (Remember that "The Finals" with a capital "T" and "F" is a registered trademark of the NBA). And shouldn't a team not be given any incentive to tank games in order to obtain a 6 seed instead of a 5 seed, so they can avoid playing the 1 seed until the conference championship series? (A 6 seed is the best of both worlds: the team that obtains it not only gets to avoid playing the 1 seed until the conference finals, but also gets to avoid the "play-in," as well).
Of course, baseball does not re-seed its teams — but that's no excuse for the NBA not doing it, either.
Neither league should wait for a tanking scandal to happen, which would severely damage the integrity of either sport.
An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure.
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