Mark Cuban continues to alter the course of NBA history. His verbal antics during this year's NBA playoffs have forced the league to admit there was a flaw in the system. The league has even gone so far as to correct the problem that has always existed but has rarely arisen. Leave it to Mark Cuban to find an obscure loophole and jump into it head first.
The issue the NBA had to deal with was this: The Dallas Mavericks finished the regular season with the second best record in the Western Conference. Division winners are automatically given the top seeds in the playoff bracked based on regular season record, then the rest of the 8 slots are filled out by teams with the best records. Dallas had a better record than the #2 and 3 seeds, but were given a lower seed position because San Antonio had won the division. The end result is that the top two teams in the conference, San Antonio and Dallas, had to play each other in the conference Semi-Finals, rather than in the conference Finals.
Dallas dealt with the sitution by beating San Antonio in the Semis then beating Pheonix in the Conference Finals, before losing to Miami in the Championship series.
It was a minor glitch in the system, but the NBA has corrected it. Now the top 3 seeds will get thier spots, then the teams with the next best records will be filled in..... wait... that still leaves the possibiilty of this situation happening again!
Ok.. here is an idea that the NBA should consider: Lets guarentee each division winner a spot, but still seed ALL positions based upon thier record at the end of the season. That would completely eliminate this problem. It does create the possibility that an entire division could enter with the top four seeds in the conference, but the odds of that happening are very remote.
Either way, the fans got to see the top two teams in the conferance battle in a 7 game series. That is what is important. Who really cares which round of the playoffs it happened in. One team was going to be eliminated by the other eventually.
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