Sometimes Life Isn't Fair
Josh Patashnik gnashes his teeth over the dominance home court teams have had in the second round of the NBA playoffs this year. He argues
the way the playoffs have unfolded thus far provides a compelling argument for returning to the 2-3-2 format (where the higher-seeded team hosts Games 1, 2, 6, and 7), as opposed to the 2-2-1-1-1 format the NBA uses now for the first three playoff rounds. When home-court advantage is as determinitive as it’s been so far, with home teams going a combined 22-2 in the second round, it’s incumbent upon the league to do whatever it can (within reason, of course) to give lower-seeded teams a leg up.
Wow. There are so many different things going on (and going wrong) in that statement that I’m not sure where to begin. Let’s start with the numbers. Yes, the second round saw an abnormally high number of home teams winning this year, but it’s a statistical aberration. Home teams will have either a .880 (22-3) or .920 (23-2) winning percentage after tonight’s game seven between the Spurs and the Hornets. But over the NBA’s history, home teams have about a .600 winning percentage, and in the playoffs that number goes up a little bit to .650/.700 or so, depending on the year.* So before we go around making radical changes to the structure of the playoffs, we should probably increase the sample size to, say, more than one round of one year’s playoffs.
Patashnik then argues that “it’s incumbent upon the league to do whatever it can (within reason, of course) to give lower-seeded teams a leg up.” I can’t think of a better distillation of the liberal mindset than that sentiment. It’s well known that home court advantage is a valuable commodity in the playoffs. Said advantage is determined by performance during the regular season: It’s a total meritocracy. Better teams win more games, and better teams that try harder win still more games. This is why a team like the Spurs doesn’t deserve home court advantage in the last two rounds of the playoffs–they coast through the regular season and turn it on at the end. Compare that to the Celtics, who, under the fiery gaze of Kevin Garnett, played every game like it was game seven of the NBA finals. Which team, in your mind, has earned a seeding benefit in the playoffs?
But according to Patashnik, all that hard work should be thrown out the window because of some ridiculous notion of “fairness.” The 2-3-2 system does much to erase the benefit of home court advantage (travel time is reduced, and the lower seeded team can build up much more momentum throughout the series). Why should a team that has worked hard throughout the season to secure a better seeding in the playoffs not be rewarded come playoff time?** Furthermore, why is it “incumbent on the league” to give less-worthy teams “a leg up” in the playoffs? They could have gotten themselves a leg up by, I don’t know, playing better.
Heck, maybe we should give lower seeded teams home court advantage! Think about it: the teams that win more games tend to have better players and better coaching staffs. How unfair! It’s not an 8 seed’s fault that it doesn’t have Kobe Bryant or Kevin Garnett…why should it be punished doubly, having to play against superior competition AND away from home? Why stop at the playoffs? Just because every team in the NBA plays under the strictures of a salary cap, that doesn’t mean that all teams do an equally good job securing talent. David Stern should break up dynasties like the Lakers or the Spurs or the 90s Bulls and redistribute that talent around the league in order to give other franchises “a leg up” during the regular season. That’s the only way we’ll have real fairness..
*I performed a cursory search on Google for a story I saw last week about winning percentages in the playoffs over the last seven years, but I couldn’t find it. Just take my word for it when I say that home teams winning 90% of the time is a bizarre statistical occurrence and not really a cause for alarm.
**Another problem with Patashnik’s plan is that it further devalues the regular season, which many people (NBA fans included) argue is far too long. If home court advantage dips nearer to nil there will be even less incentive for teams to give it their all for 82 games than there is now.