The NBA is reportedly considering reseeding the 2020 NBA Playoffs 1-16 according to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, which could produce some pretty wild postseason results in an already-chaotic season for the Boston Celtics.
Windhorst believes the idea will fall flat with team owners, who will have to vote on the motion for it to be instituted in this or any season.
While it could produce some compelling matches in the “bubble” one-site playoff location currently being considered at Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando, Florida, there is likely trepidation about what such a move could do in future seasons.
Long-standing rivalries with nearby teams might become rarer, with less opportunities to create new ones to drive viewership and ticket sales. And depending on who you draw, the travel could be arduous once games are held in home arenas again.
But who might the Celtics be looking at facing if they did kick the tires on this radical shake up of established playoff protocol? Before we figure that out, let’s look at how things can play out in the current system.
As of now, the Boston Celtics would face Atlantic Division Rival Philadelphia 76ers if the regular season ended today, Boston in third place and the 76ers in sixth.
But it’s not out of the question that a restart of the 2019-20 season in Orlando or some other location could see the Indiana Pacers, in a tie with Philly but owning a tiebreaker, drop to sixth.
The Miami Heat could in theory as well, but at two games ahead of the 76ers and the Pacers, it would take a serious collapse for that to happen.
In a similar vein, at three games behind the Toronto Raptors and 2.5 ahead of the Heat, the Celtics seem all but assured to finish third. But where would they sit in a field of 16?
When expanded to the full league standings, Boston takes a bit of a hit — as might be expected given the Western Conference long history as the stronger conference.
In this scenario, the Celtics would be seeded fifth overall — but little else would change based on the current standings, as they’d face the 76ers yet again as the 12th overall seed.
However, even a short resumption of the regular season might shake things up a lot in a full-league reseeding.
In this scenario the Dallas Mavericks would join Philly and Indiana in three-way tie in terms of record, and the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder as teams joining the Heat as clubs in range of falling to the 12th seed.
Moreover, the Los Angeles Clippers, Denver Nuggets and Utah Jazz are also all within two games of Boston, injecting even more chaos into potential first-round matchups.
On one hand, while Boston would absolutely love to miss the Sixers in the first round, it’s not out of the question that the Mavericks, Thunder and particularly Rockets loom as potential alternatives.
Not exactly the sort of early-playoff warm-up most teams earn by securing home court advantage with one of the NBA’s eight best records – perhaps another reason why this measure isn’t likely to pass.
It’s a question worth asking.
Do we really want matchups we’d have only seen in the NBA Finals producing pitched battles early in the postseason, and old rivalries with teams like the Los Angeles Lakers both becoming rarer, and more common before the Finals?
Or do we need to change the way we look at things?
Would the expanded range of teams make it harder to game plan for opponents in team construction and training — and if so, would that be better or worse for the fan as an entertainment product?
There’s no way to know without trying, but given the feedback ESPN’s Windhorst is hearing and the generally conservative nature of team governors on such issues, it seems unlikely we’ll ever know.
Then again, the prospect of replacing Philadelphia with the Rockets as a first-round matchup might not make that such a poor proposition for most Celtics fans, anyway.
