NBA: No team in the East deserves the 8-seed

No team in the Eastern Conference deserves the 8-seed; we explore ways to make the NBA Playoffs more enjoyable

Just one month into the 2019-20 NBA season, the Eastern Conference playoff picture is already shaping up pretty close to how we imagined. Everyone thought the top six teams in the East would be, in no particular order, Boston, Milwaukee, Miami, Toronto, Philadelphia, and Indiana.

This has remained true and will likely be the top six teams in the East come playoff time. However, after those six teams, it drops off a cliff. Currently, in the 7 and 8 seeds are Orlando and Charlotte. Orlando starts off slow but they have an elite defense and will likely retain that 7-seed going into the playoffs.

As mentioned, the 8th seed is currently occupied by the Charlotte Hornets, whom a lot of people pegged as potentially the worst team in the league coming into this season. The Hornets are led by second-year guard, Devonte’ Graham who has been a revelation this season.

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With that said, Devonte’ Graham should not be the best player on a playoff team, that is just embarrassing for the other seven teams in the East. The other teams potentially in the running for this 8th seed in the East are Brooklyn, Atlanta, and Detroit.

A lot of people thought that Brooklyn may be the team to grab this spot coming into the season, and they may very well be, but they don’t deserve it. Neither do the Hawks, the Pistons or the Hornets.

That is why I am proposing three possible solutions to getting an actually good team in the playoffs instead of just throwing whatever East team manages to get 38 wins in there.

Solution No. 1: Seed 1-16

This idea has somewhat been talked to death over the last couple of years, and for good reason. Seeding this way would actually give equal opportunity to the best 16 teams in the world to compete for the NBA championship, rather than the best eight teams from the East coast and the best eight teams from the West coast.

There is really no excuse not to seed this way. The only reason it hasn’t been done is that some owners of garbage Eastern Conference teams won’t vote to pass this because it lessens their chance at making the playoffs, and thus, lessening their chance at additional revenue.

If the playoffs were to start today and we seeded 1-16, the teams in the playoffs would be. Boston, Milwaukee, the Lakers, the Clippers, Houston, Denver, Miami, Toronto, Philadelphia, Indiana, Dallas, Utah, Minnesota, Phoenix, Orlando, and Sacramento.

This would result in only seven teams being taken out of the East and nine teams out of the West. However, this doesn’t account for some good Western Conference teams that have started slow such as Portland, San Antonio and possibly New Orleans when Zion comes back.

In my opinion, this would simply make for more entertaining playoffs and would eliminate those awful first-round series like Milwaukee vs. Detroit last year that just isn’t a fair match up.

Solution No. 2: Take nine teams out of the West

This idea is a little more out of left field but it makes sense. The Western Conference has dominated the East for decades. Whether that be due to poor ownership in the East or just pure coincidence, the west has been running the NBA.

That is why I am proposing we simply take nine teams from the Western Conference and seven teams from the Eastern Conference where the 9-seed in the West would then play the 1-seed in the East. Fans of lower-tier Eastern Conference teams may not be too fond of this idea and to them, I say, too bad.

Solution No. 3: Give the 1-seed a bye

The easiest solution to this problem would be to simply not take the 8th team out of the Eastern Conference and to give the 1-seed a bye to the second round. This makes sense on a lot of levels.

First, it would eliminate an incredibly boring 1st round series that no one watches anyway. Second, it would give high-level Eastern Conference teams more incentive to play hard in the regular season to fight for the 1-seed. And third, it would also give the lower-seeded Eastern Conference teams more incentive to play hard in the regular season as well, because there are fewer seeds for them to fight for.

I am personally a huge fan of solution No. 1, where we just take the best 16 teams in the NBA. However, this idea does seem unlikely to ever happen and thus, this idea of giving the 1-seed a bye could possibly be a viable solution.