The conference semifinals in the NBA are at hand — and who's playing who is proving to be doubly unfair.
In the Eastern Conference, Detroit, the 1-seed, is taking on the 4-seed, Cleveland, in one semifinal series — while in the other series, it's the third-seeded Knicks vs. the seventh-seeded Sixers.
Shouldn't the pairings be Pistons/Sixers and Knicks/Cavs instead?
Meanwhile, out West, the top-seeded Thunder are playing the fourth seeded Lakers, with the sixth-seeded Timberwolves facing the second-seeded Spurs.
Rightfully, the Thunder should be playing the T-Wolves, and the Lakers should be playing the Spurs.
And if "re-seeding" adds a day or two to how long the postseason needs to complete?
As Hillary Rodham-Clinton famously said: what difference does it make? (During a 2013 Senate hearing, Mrs. Clinton, then Secretary of State, was badgered by Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson — deliberate pun! — about a video wrongly blamed for the Benghazi attack). File this in the same folder as "homicide bombing" and "freedom fries."
Wasn't Game 6 of the 2020-21 NBA Finals played on July 20 (because of COVID)? And is anyone clamoring to attach a Roger Maris-style "asterisk" to the NBA championship that the Milwaukee Bucks won that year? (For purposes of contrast, the Bucks completed a four-game sweep of the then-Baltimore Bullets in The Finals on April 30, 1971).
Plus with "Proposition 84" already having been approved by the NHL and taking in effect in the 2026-27 season (increasing the regular season from 82 games to 84 while cutting the preseason from eight games to four), the NBA might be willing to follow suit (the ABA played an 84-game slate in every season of its existence except its first two, while the NHL did it in 1992-93 and 1993-94).
Who knows? The NBA could even commemorate the advent of the 84-game season by bring back the ABA's trademark red-white-and blue basketball (and not for nothing, but Madison Square Garden is just a short walk from Madison Avenue!).
It seems so hypocritical of the NBA to be obsessed with a tanking problem that at least some claim doesn't even exist while openly condoning teams tanking to get a 6-seed rather than a 5-seed in the playoffs.
And didn't the NFL use 9/11 as an excuse to start playing the Super Bowl in February — something that has been done in all but one year since? And it has since added a second week's worth of football to that month, with a third such week likely once the 18-game regular-season schedule becomes a reality — which will also mean that the Super Bowl can be played on the Presidents' Day weekend, which has been the NFL's goal since time foregone.
So far as the regular-season schedule is concerned: in both the NBA and the NHL, it would be easy as 4-3-2 — each team playing its division rivals four times, the teams in the other division of the same conference three times, and the teams in the other conference twice (this assumes that the NBA will be adding expansion teams in Las Vegas and Seattle — and once that happens, that the league can realign each conference into two eight-team divisions, with one team that is currently in the Western Conference getting transferred to the East).
Furthermore, with more games within the same division, the NBA can go to a more division-based playoff format, with the top three teams in each division automatically qualifying for the conference quarterfinals, joined there by the two winners of the play-in, the winner of the game between the two fourth-place teams getting in as the 7-seed and the loser of the game between the two fifth-place teams being eliminated. The 8-seed would then go to whoever wins as between the game between the loser of the "fourth-place game" and the winner of the "fifth-place game."
The bottom line is, in either case, you either emphasize division rivalries, or you don't.
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