Andrew wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by "a championship series between two teams with no relation to each other". They're all playing in the same league, dividing the teams (amongst other advantages) allows the league to easily devise playoff brackets.
I meant that the NBA finals is composed of two teams who play each other once a year, and ahve no relation to each other, besides the fact that they are in the NBA. Conference final mathcups are usually much more exciting than the finals, as it usually takes at least two games before the teams figure out how to play each other, or build up any kind of general dislike.
If the playoffs are more interleague, not only do you get the best 16 (or 8) teams regardless of who they played throughout the season, but you get more rivalries between teams that do not usually match up. The other thing I notice is that in this era of one conference being so much better than the other, a team like Detroit built up their record against a weaker competition, and so far has onl faced minor adversity in the playoffs. They coasted into the playoffs, and still won all four games against Milwaukee by at least 10 points. How do you justify allowing a team that lost more games than they won a chance to win the championship.
If my suggestion was in place already, and the opening round looked like this:
Detroit vs. New Jersey
San Antonio vs. Memphis
Dallas vs. Cleveland
Phoenix vs. Miami
...then every round would be competitive, only the teams who deserve a chance at the championship are given that opportunity, and new rivalries are built between the leagues best teams.
This also would start to affect the teams that don't get in, as the pressure to win during the regular season grows. Teams can no longer make millions off playoff revenue from a team thats only .500.