Los Angeles Lakers fans are eagerly waiting for the NBA season to resume.
Basketball fans can expect to see the Los Angeles Lakers back in action sometime in July as the NBA is set to resume its regular season at Disney World Orlando. While this is a big step in the process, there is still a lot to figure out how to operate the league once the year resumes.
The league could look to play out the rest of the regular season, or at least a good portion of it, to fulfill television contracts as well as give the teams that are on the fringe of making the playoffs a chance to get into the playoffs.
This also has the added benefit of giving players some games to get back in the rhythm of things before the playoffs start. The one potential drawback of this plan, though, is that the NBA is butted up against time and would be better off ending the season as soon as possible without compromising the playoffs in any way.
There have been multiple ideas that have stemmed from this. One is having a seeded playoff bracket instead of the traditional conferences and another is introducing a World Cup-style group play format for the first round of the playoffs before picking back up in a traditional seven-game series format.
There are so many different ways the league could do this and this truly is an opportunity to be innovative. I wanted to take a crack at it and give my two cents on what could be a innovative and quick way to do it.
How the Los Angeles Lakers and the rest of the NBA can resume:
Okay, so the players obviously need time to get back into speed and that is absolutely factored into this. I am assuming that the league is going to give teams several weeks to start practicing at the Orlando facilities before the season officially starts in mid-July. As long as the guys are staying in shape, this two-week window should be enough to get most guys somewhat ready.
From there, we introduce my personal idea (this is not a report of the league considering it, just an idea) that helps fulfill television contracts as well as get the teams that are already locked into the playoffs some reps.
The first problem is getting the games in for the regular season while allowing those fringe teams to have a chance of making the playoffs while also not risking the teams at the bottom of the league that have nothing to play for.
Realistically, we have to give every team something to play for. Without something to play for, it doesn’t make sense for teams like the Atlanta Hawks or Golden State Warriors to show up. Thus, I introduce step 1:
Step 1: Group-style play for the bottom three teams in each conference for better lottery odds
The NBA hates tanking and perhaps they can introduce a way to reward teams for winning games in this format. Yes, it would give a team like the Golden State Warriors, who could play Stephen Curry, an advantage as they are more talented than the other bottom teams in the league, but that is a risk that the Warriors then would have to decide to make.
The idea is this: take the bottom three teams from both conferences (Pistons, Hawks, Cavaliers, Suns, Timberwolves, Warriors) and put them in their own “lottery group”. Each team plays the other two teams in their conference twice, and the other three teams in the other conference once.
We then sort the lottery odds for the bottom six teams in the league based on their standings in this mini-season.
That gives us a total of seven games, which is right around what people such as Mark Cuban has proposed to fulfill TV rights and get guys into shape. Seven is the magic number here. Remember that.
Step 2: Determine the final two playoff spots
Seeds 1-6 are locked in, no matter what, with seeds 7 and 8 being up for grabs in each conference. The plan is to take seeds 7-12 and put them into a World Cup-style group, similar to the lottery group.
Every team plays the other team in the conference once, giving each team five total games played. To give some advantage to the higher seeds, the seventh seed would play the 12th seed a second time as well as the other conference’s 12th seed to get to seven.
The added games, on top of the ones already played between each conference’s 7-12 seeds, would look like this:
- 7th seed: Extra game vs. 12th seed + game vs. other conference’s 12th seed
- 8th seed: Extra game vs. 11th seed + game vs. other conference’s 11th seed
- 9th seed: Extra game vs. 10th seed + game vs. other conference’s 10th seed
You get the point. The two teams in each conference with the best record after this seven-game group play make the playoffs. It does kind of hurt of the seventh and eighth seeds as they could theoretically miss the top 2 by one game but have a better overall record, but quite frankly, these seeds don’t go far in the playoffs anyway and are already super closely contested.
We have to give every team something to play for.
Step 3: The top-six seeds in each conference
The top-six seeds in each conference still need something to do and need to get to the seven games played as well. The problem is that we need to give them something worth playing for (such as seeding) while also giving them the opportunity to get in shape.
This is the one group where the regular-season record up to this point matters. It will not outright be the standings of the groups we are creating, but how their record in the groups impacts their regular-season record.
We also do not want the top-six team’s in the conferences to play each other too much as they are likely going to see each other in the playoffs, so here is what we do:
Every team in the top-six will play every other top-six team in the other conference. So for example, the Los Angeles Lakers would play the 76ers, Pacers, Heat, Celtics, Raptors and Bucks. Needing one more game to get to our magic number, the one extra game the Lakers play would be a second game against the sixth seed in the East, the 76ers.
The extra game for the two-seed in the West would be against the five-seed in the East, the three-seed would play the four-seed, etc.
From there, we add the win-loss total from those seven games to the regular-season records and determine the seeding of the top-six seeds that way. The reason we do this here and not for the seventh and eighth seed is that seeding in the top-six is way too important to determine in seven games, whereas seven games can give us the final two playoff teams that will probably lose in the first round anyway.
That way, theoretically, the farthest the Los Angeles Lakers could fall is the third-seed in the West while the highest the Rockets could theoretically go would be the second-seed. Enough games for movement, but not too many where we have the Sixers as the one-seed and the Bucks as the five-seed.
From there, we hop into the normal NBA Playoffs, split between two different conferences, even though the 1-16 seeding idea greatly benefits the Los Angeles Lakers.
What do you think of my proposed idea? Would you like to see the Los Angeles Lakers come back and play under this format? Let me know in the comments below.