it has been clear for a while (but especially after last season) that the west a fair bit better than the east from the 2-10 seeds. the current playoff system does not mitigate any of these complaints as it uses a very standard 8 east and 8 west teams (plus play in shenanigans). this does not take any nuance of conference skill gap into account. here is a method that potentially could fix some of those complaints:

the first step would be to remove conferences entirely in the post season while still retaining the 2 8 team brackets, but have it be based on record rather than conference this time.

the next step would be to give the teams with the top 4 records regardless of conference have one of the top 2 spots on either side of the bracket. for instance, last season it would have been the celtics, thunder, nuggets and wolves (pretty much unanimously the best 4 teams last season with the exclusion of the mavs)

the final step would be to have the remaining 12 spots utilise conference rankings (which should have more parity between the two conferences now that the top teams have already made it) to keep conference rivalries and any conference importance alive at all.

again using last season as an example, the top 6 in each conference would be the knicks, bucks, cavs, magic, pacers, and 76ers in the east (ranging from 50 to 47 wins), and the clippers, mavs, suns, pelicans, lakers, and kings (ranging from 51 to 46 wins).

while there are most likely some improvements that could definitely be made, as not too much thought was put into the fine details of this, more so just the big idea; i feel that this fixes a lot of the east v west complaints that i’ve seen in not only my time on r/nba, but also as a basketball fan in general, while also maintaining a different style and image from other leagues and tournaments that may just take the best 16/32/whatever teams.

lmk what you guys think and if there’s any glaring issues that i’ve made while thinking of this idea.