Reactions to this ambitious(?) creative(?) finish-the-season plan?

[sturt]

So, okay. Say we dispense with the regular season, but use this as an opportunity to try something new and intriguing?

 

The top 24, 12 in each conference, qualify to participate in a one-time expanded playoff that begins with a 24-game round-robin "seeding" series preceding the real playoffs....

 

Which effectively allows the teams that actually had some valid and earned shot at the playoffs to potentially still qualify, while allowing all playoff participants a chance to get their legs back without having to take the time to do exhibition games nor any severe penalty if they don't perform well.

Teams #1-#4, and Teams #5-#8 , and Teams #9-#12 each play each other exclusively. So for any given team, they play 3 others 8 times.

 

- For that top group, they're playing strictly for seeding.

- For that middle group, they're playing for seeding, but also for survival--the last place team in the group doesn't make the playoffs. So that creates some drama worth watching.

- Then, the bottom 4 teams are actually playing for that one remaining playoff slot, so plenty of drama within a tier of teams that normally probably wouldn't draw hardly any TV ratings.

After that, conduct the playoffs according to the normal brackets.

 

The bottom 6 teams do what has been tossed around for years--they play for draft slots.

So, the worst you can do is end up with the #6 pick, but the best you can do obviously is win the #1. Each team plays the other five 5x.

 

So every team ends up with something more than 70 games played after all, and we use this unique situation as an opportunity to conduct what amounts to a post-season seeding round-robin (24 games played per team) and a post-season draft slots round-robin (25 games played per team).

 

EDIT: About those 4 teams in both conferences teams make the top 24, but then fail to get out of the round robin to play in the playoffs?

Let's give them one more game against each other, best of those 4 West teams versus best of the East, second best against second, third against third, and fourth against fourth. That way they also get at least 25 games like every other team in the league gets (ie, bearing in mind that all the playoff teams get 24 plus their playoff games).

Even better, let that one game also have draft slot consequences so that the winner of the two fourth-place teams gets the #7 draft slot, and the loser the #8... winner of the two third-place teams gets the #9, and the loser the #10... and so on.

 

(If it sounds familiar, it was posted in another thread on the Homecourt board, but it was buried underneath a miscellany topic.)