Seeding Problems

The current seeding system can, and in the East's case does, produce
questionable situations where it can be to a team's advantage to lose
a regular season game. What's the best seed to have in the 4-8 range?
It may be that 6, which would produce a first round against Boston, is
better than 4 or 5 which would be the Bulls or Indiana (BTW, I'm not
accusing Washington of anything here). As an example, let's say that
in the final game of the regular season, the first seed plays the team
that's in ninth position, a half game out of eighth. Who could blame
them for resting their star players to get ready for the playoffs in a
game that has no effect on their own seed position?

Seeding problems like this happen in a lot of sports and games and
they're hard to prevent. Even a simple system where you just take the
teams with the best records isn't immune to it, but the current system
exacerbates the problem.


Regards,


Kent Feiler
www.KentFeiler.com