Milwaukee Bucks would be big losers in 1-16 seeding NBA Playoffs format
Milwaukee Bucks could be big losers in 1-16 playoff format
Over the last couple of weeks, there has been much speculation about what the resumption of the 2019-20 NBA season will look like. Will Adam Silver and the league’s decision-makers elect to bypass all remaining regular-season games? Will they take 20-24 teams to the “playing bubble” and have some sort of “playoff-plus” format?
There are so many potential ideas in play, and nothing has been finalized or even agreed upon. Everything, including the return itself, is still fluid.
With that said, one emerging idea is seeding the 16 best teams 1-16 and playing the playoffs through one big tournament – a proposal that many fans and media have been calling for. It’s something that is being strongly considered now, in a time where the league could be prime for an experiment.
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Milwaukee Bucks would see a difficult road
While the 1-16 seeding format would bring plenty of interest to the NBA and perhaps be the start of a great change moving forward, it would also bring some difficult roads for some contenders. One specifically, the Milwaukee Bucks.
The Bucks would arguably see the toughest road to winning the 2020 NBA Championship. As it currently stands, the Bucks would enter a 1-16 seeding NBA Playoffs as the No. 1 seed.
However, instead of playing through the Eastern Conference and then play either the LA Clippers or Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals, the Bucks, in a 1-16 playoff seeding, would have to beat both the Clippers and the Lakers in order to win the title.
Even though the Bucks, led by probable 2020 NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, have the talent and ability to do so – they were on pace to finish with the best record in the NBA and were winning at a close to 70-win pace before the hiatus – the Bucks would essentially have to win two championships this season to win one.
What a 1-16 playoff format could look like for the NBA. 👀 pic.twitter.com/Jisyvvmi22
— theScore (@theScore) May 25, 2020
Before the hiatus, the Bucks were the best and most consistent team of 2019-20. Even though they fell short of the NBA Finals last season, many projected this team to represent the Eastern Conference against one of the two Los Angeles teams in the Finals.
While that very well may still be the case, if the NBA does embrace a 1-16 seeding playoff format, the Bucks could find themselves in a scenario (barring an upset) where they will have to dethrone Kawhi Leonard (in the semifinals) and LeBron James (in the finals) in a best-of-seven series before lifting the Larry O’Brien Trophy.
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Perhaps that might be most fitting for the coronation of Giannis Antetokounmpo, but the road to a championship won’t be easy for the Milwaukee Bucks as a whole. With championship windows being so volatile in the NBA, a much more difficult road to a championship than usual is never a great thing. That’s exactly what the Bucks would be facing in this new playoff format.