The Inside The NBA folks seem to have no idea how a tournament works and it’s difficult to listen to them talk about this tournament.
Why is point differential such a difficult concept for them to understand?
Candace Parker’s idea is to ignore the group and just advance the top teams with the best records, out of all the groups. Then what’s the point of the groups? It’s a tournament. I don’t think she realizes that point differential would still come into play.
Chuck wants the 2 top teams in the West to advance because they have the best regular season records. Let’s ignore the fact that they couldn’t play well in the tournament.
This tournament has a lot of potential as we saw in that Kings/Warriors game. Most of those plays in the 4th quarter would’ve never occurred if this was just a regular season game.
I do believe that these games need to be independent of regular season games though.
If you’re still struggling to understand how tournaments with groups work, play some FIFA or watch any sport outside of America. It’s a really fun system.
Have the 18 coaches who didn’t win or take second in their group select the fourth team in each of their respective conferences.
Selection has to be one of the three runner ups per group. Coaches can’t vote for their own team, of course. Adds some discussion and drama to the wildcard. In the case of a three way tie, do tech differential.
If players don’t want point differential, the NBA won’t keep it, which sucks because I want teams to just absolutely run scores up in group play.