NBA Insider with Ken Berger

Cleveland – John Hollinger of ESPN.com has come up with the best solution I’ve heard for fixing the NBA playoffs and addressing the Western Conference dominance that has given us another uninteresting mismatch in the Finals.

David Stern is quick to point out that the Eastern Conference has won two of the last three championships. True, but the West has won six of the last eight, and the Spurs appear poised to make it seven of nine. San Antonio’s first two victories in this series were barely competitive.

Here’s how the Hollinger Plan would work: The playoff seedings would remain the same, with the teams ranked 1-8 in each conference. Then, No. 1 in the West would play No. 8 in the East, No. 2 in the East would play No. 7 in the West, etc. This wouldn’t necessarily rule out an East vs. West matchup in the Finals, but if the teams from the East weren’t good enough, they’d be weeded out by the superior West teams in the early rounds.

For example, cross-matching the playoffs would give us intriguing first-round matchups such as Utah vs. Chicago and Cleveland vs. the Lakers. If the Cavs and Spurs faced each other, it would’ve been in the second round – not the Finals.

If it had been done this way this year, the Spurs or Mavericks might have faced the Pistons in the Finals – but Detroit would’ve needed to get past Golden State in the first round and Phoenix or Utah after that. If form held, we’d be watching the Mavericks or Spurs against the Suns in the Finals, which would be a heck of a lot more entertaining than what we’re watching.

Here’s how Hollinger explains it:

As you can see, Phoenix versus San Antonio – “the real Finals” – wouldn’t be possible until the final round, rather than in Round 2. And in the second round, we’d get the current doozy between Cleveland and San Antonio, which is entirely appropriate.
Also, if Cleveland did make it to the league’s final four, it at least would have had to beat a team with a winning record, which was not true this year. Don’t you think the league would have preferred that to what actually happened?

Instead of a neutered East, each side of the bracket has some real teams in it. Utah versus Chicago as a first-round series would have been outstanding, as would the LeBron versus Kobe matchup when the Cavs played the Lakers. And the Nuggets, instead of getting ambushed by a first-round pairing against eventual champion San Antonio (just pretend it’s next week already), would have had a much more friendly pairing against injury-wracked Toronto (a matchup that instead benefited a 41-win New Jersey team).

There are problems of course, starting with travel. The 2-3-2 format would have to be used in all rounds, to prevent ridiculous travel scenarios. Also, the league and TV networks would frown upon a system that could give us an all-West Coast Finals. But don’t you think fans on the East Coast would be more inclined to watch a thrilling San Antonio-Phoenix series than San Antonio-Cleveland?

Don’t hold your breath for this to happen. Even if you could convince Stern that the current Western Conference superiority isn’t a one-time thing, but a trend that’s a decade in the making, a decade of evidence wouldn’t be enough for the NBA to make such a drastic change. But I would argue that cross-matching in the playoffs would have the unintended side effect of prompting the East teams to get it together and be more competitive. As it is now, there’s little incentive for the East to catch up to the West because everyone knows that each of the conference’s eight playoff teams will have a shot at making it to the Finals, no matter how bad they are. Take away the incentive, and you can be sure competitive balance would return.

The idea of conferences and even divisions in sports has become somewhat antiquated and not particularly useful anyway. There are 30 teams in the NBA. The best of the best, no matter which conference they play in, should be the last teams standing.