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If there were no conference split, current matchups:

(1) Rockets vs. (16) Heat
(8)Pelicans vs. (9) Spurs

(4) Celtics vs. (13) Jazz
(5) Blazers vs. (12) Pacers

(2) Warriors vs. (15) Nuggets
(7) Thunder vs. (10) Sixers

(3) Raptors vs. (14) Wizards
(6) Cavaliers vs. (11) Wolves

— Hardwood Paroxysm (@HPbasketball) March 22, 2018

i'd much rather watch the actual playoff matchups than this!

yeah that's not a super great argument in favor of it

35-7-17 has to be one of the best zero turnover games ever

Most assists w/o a TO since TOs became official stat. Straight maestroing out there.

I would watch the shit out of all those series tbh, but the argument in favor of 1-16 seeding is more that the best teams make the playoffs, not necessarily that it always improves match ups (tho in the long run this should be the case)

yeah... i still feel like as a viewer i don't really care if the 9th best team in the west gets screwed out of the playoffs, i'd rather see match ups that make sense and build rivalries

what does "make sense" mean

btw O_O

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/22870675/san-antonio-spurs-held-players-only-meeting-imploring-kawhi-leonard-return-playoff-push?sf185246339=1

wow jeez

i kinda love some of those 1-16 matchups as well. if they re-organized it all new rivalries would form. some of the classic rivalries dont mean much any more anyway.

Most assists w/o a TO since TOs became official stat. Straight maestroing out there.

Keep seeing this stat but was certain CP3 had 20, sometime back and yeah there have been 42 such games

http://bkref.com/tiny/xKdjY

kinda figures it was really hard to take the ball away from Muggsy Bogues.

No conference arrangement looks a lot better just if you swap out the Heat for the Bucks (dysfunctional as they are). Need to see new and improved Playoff Giannis even if for a sweep

i kinda love some of those 1-16 matchups as well. if they re-organized it all new rivalries would form. some of the classic rivalries dont mean much any more anyway.

― they call me melo gelo (Spottie), Thursday, March 22, 2018 1:00 PM (twenty seconds ago) Bookmark

i don't mean rivalries in the grand sense but rivalries on a 3-4 year cycle. like bulls/pacers or bulls/magic in the 90s, or the way the bulls, celtics and pacers all got several cracks at the lebron-era heat. right now we have the looming celtics/cavs kyrie/bron matchup, the celtics and wiz have bad blood, the raptors have gotten clowned by the cavs several years running. this kinda stuff is what really makes the playoffs juicy to me... seeing this year's celtics team playing the jazz in round 1 and blazers in round 2 would be a bit of a buzzkill to me

yah i can see that, just think new rivalries like that would happen naturally

does that really materialise if teams across conferences don't see each other more than twice in the regular season?

that is a potential issue yah, they would def have to figure out some scheduling problems

the greatest rivalry of all time is celtics lakers

id like to see there be a greater chance of the two best teams being on opposite sides of the bracket is my main desire with a re org, also 1st round matchups generally suck who cares

Fair, but that started when there were much fewer teams in the league

would be nice if they went back to best of 3 in the first round if they go this route, increases the odds of an upset but also would end those series a lot quicker, less chance of injury for the better/later rounds

best of 3 makes for an exciting first round but upsets lead to imbalanced second rounds. Would rather the games get better as the stakes get higher

think spottie meant best of 5

I don't really see the argument for going to best of 5 tho unless you want to increase the chance of upsets, which I don't really

yeah sorry

man i was wondering what was up with Manu's statement the other day about Kawhi not returning.

kawhi is being very derrick rose-like here huh

Yeah it's really weird...

I had the same thought about kawhi and rose and it terrified me

Sometimes coming back from injury is mental, hope it works out, I want to see peak kawhi terrorizing fools and straight yoinking the ball from people again

I don’t really care at all about the 1-16 stuff aside from the occasional year when a conference final is the de facto finals but even that I don’t much mind like the year the shaqobe lakers were presumptive champs coming out of the west and got clowned by the Pistons was hilariously and would cause hot take Twitter to self combust if it happened now

And I’m with j0rd on the 3-4 year mini rivalries that happen in conferences, those are the best

I mean outside of giant geological scale rivalries like lakers Celtics, but you can count on a couple heated series in the first or second round in each conference every year. I guess it would develop with a 1-16 format too

the two best teams being in one conference isnt occasional, itd happen 50% of the time just randomly and has happened a lot more than that via the enduring dominance of the west

Assuming there’s only two conferences *galactic brain jpg*

That’s a fair point but I have a weird sentimental attachment to the geographic distribution of sports over the purest contest of best ness

It only really bothers when 1 and 2 are in the same conference AND the gap between 2 and 3 is very large like this year but this year doesn’t bother me that much for some reason

it super bothers me lol, i dont care as much about the mediocre teams that miss the offs altogether tho i figure might as well have the best teams in there

also wld make jockeying for playoff seeding way more intense since there are more teams in play youd be much less likely to have a secure spot, thered be fewer meaningless games late season less resting guys and so forth generally itd ramp up the sweet competition we all desire

If kawhi is a broken player now, we can still take solace in the many years of excellence he provided before he suddenly turned into d-rose. Many more years than d-rose was intact. I'd prefer he came back whole, though.

the door is cracked open for the rockets. are they favored at this point?

Kerr On Steph’s ankle: “It’s as close to 100% as can be.” He added that it’s not 100% though, and that the summer will be needed for that.

— Melissa Rohlin (@melissarohlin) March 22, 2018

warriors are still -125 favorites to win the championship, rockets in second at +200

raptors are +1000 which seems quite low

seems v low

no one trusts the raps lol

last night didnt indicate much reason to trust them, also the game before.

Couldn’t be anymore incorrect lol https://t.co/xo4yVyOvn2

— Danny Green (@DGreen_14) March 22, 2018

yeah was going to say, the meeting happened, but a lot of toher reporting is that it wasnt tense. green, brandon paul, and rudy gay have all come out and publicly said it wasnt that big a deal

w all the other weirdness this season w the spurs / him you gotta believe where there's smoke there's fire a bit tho

kemba has 35 at the half. 7 threes.

10 threes still in 3rd q

lmao theyre up 101-57 hes prob not gonna play any more

Charlotte stars shine in back to back nights against teams that wouldn't make the NCAAs. Way to go guys!