The NBA is considering several plans to return to play as the board of governors comes close to a decision. Here is why group play is the best way to return.
The NBA came out of a conference call with its board of governors Friday one step closer to returning to play.
The league has targeted July 31 as its return date — giving teams ample time to go through a training camp and get back to some playing shape before games begin. But how the league will return is still a matter up for debate.
Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reports the league is planning to approve commissioner Adam Silver’s recommendation to return to play with either 20 or 22 teams at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney. That call is expected to take place Thursday. But there are still some things to work out before then.
Owners are largely planning to pledge support for Silver's final recommedation on a plan, which teams expect to include invitations for 20-to-22 teams to resume the season, sources tell @ramonashelburne, @ZachLowe_NBA and me. https://t.co/8waxNm1Dpc
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) May 29, 2020
This was good news for NBA fans because the season’s resumption is on its way. There is light at the end of this tunnel.
But the how of the NBA’s return and the way the rest of the season will play out is still completely unknown. The league does not have that part nailed down yet.
This week, group play ideas began circulating around NBA twitter. And while there are still calls to simplify the NBA’s return to play, most notably from John Hollinger of The Athletic (subscription required). There is nothing simple about this.
A group/stage play idea is the only way to balance the interests of the teams at the top and the teams at the bottom while still respecting the regular season.
And I think I have a plan to make a group play system work.
The Play-In Idea
The desire to have more than the current 16 playoff teams will mean the returning teams will need the motivation to be at the campus site. And that means a playoff spot is likely up for grabs.
There is no secret that whatever format the league returns in, the Orlando Magic will have to fight for their playoff spot beyond the regular season — really beyond what they have earned.
Even if the league comes back with more than six games (which seems to be the popular proposal at the moment), the odds of the Washington Wizards making up the 5.5 games necessary to catch the Orlando Magic are small.
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Under normal circumstances, any return scenario would almost automatically clinch a playoff spot for the Magic. The Orlando Magic, of course, still has something to play for in catching the Brooklyn Nets for seventh, trailing the Nets by one-half game.
But manufacturing a play-in tournament seems to be the approach the NBA wants to take.
The Magic should welcome that in some respects. It probably would help their long-term growth and development more than going straight to the playoffs. The team should be hungry for a chance to play its way in and get experience in pressure games. It is rare they would get playoff-type games they can win considering their seeding.
Still, the team should get some advantage in any play-in tournament. The idea I have bounced around is giving the eighth seed a double-elimination advantage. The team trying to oust them from their spot has to win twice while the eighth seed only has to win once.
The NBA certainly fears this becoming too gimmicky. But they do not want to go straight to the playoffs. That is the one thing the players have made clear to the league.
The challenge the NBA is facing is figuring out how to balance everyone’s interests.
The league seems to be hesitant to get rid of conference distinctions — Eastern Conference teams especially do not want this precedent with the league’s current competitive balance. But it still needs to make the trip worth the time for anyone who arrives at Disney. There are no perfect solutions. The league needs to pick an idea and go for it, with the understanding it is an experiment for the uniqueness of this situation.
And that is why group play works.
Group play balances all the interests
Some type of preliminary group play or round-robin play is used as the opening round in the World Cup in both soccer and basketball. It is essentially a way to give “lesser” teams a chance to compete in major tournaments with a chance to advance while still making sure the top teams advance.
Yes, sometimes there is an upset. But that is the magic of these one-off tournaments.
The NBA would want to capture that opportunity for a team to upset and advance out of group play while still giving the top teams the best opportunity to advance and have an advantage when the “knockout” phase begins.
To be sure, this is the biggest concern of any group play format.
The league does not want a situation where the Milwaukee Bucks or Los Angeles Lakers go cold and miss out on the playoffs. But, also to be sure, it feels like the NBA is trying to find a system that will make sure Zion Williamson and the New Orleans Pelicans have a chance to make the ever-lucrative playoffs.
It is impossible not to realize star power holds some sway here. The NBA has to maximize its money-making stars — even if the world is hungry for sports and likely to watch anything the NBA puts out right now.
The NBA should be seeking a way to foster competition, give the teams outside of the playoff picture a chance to play their way in as motivation to play at Disney and still advantage the teams at the top so there is no situation where they get under-seeded or miss the playoffs.
And that is why group play works. And why I think my plan for it balances all these interests.
My Group Play Plan
So how would group play work?
For those unfamiliar with the idea, during World Cups (both soccer and basketball), all the qualifying teams are separated into different pots for competitive balance purposes and drawn randomly into groups. Those groups inform the next rounds of the playoff.
In the initial rounds of these tournaments, teams play every team in their group once. The standings after group play is completed determines the next phase of the tournament.
The NBA is not running a straight tournament. Essentially, group play would replace the remainder of the regular season. That is the best way to create some stakes, incentivize teams outside of the playoffs and give the better teams some pressure and stakes to play out the rest of the season.
The concern with group play is the early elimination of these top teams. But I think that is easily done away with by increasing the games and giving tiebreaker/seeding advantages to the top teams.
So this is how I would set things up.
The top 10 teams from each conference head to Orlando for a total of 20 teams at Disney.
Those 10 teams in each conference are separated into two groups of five. They can either be randomly drawn with the top two teams — the Milwaukee Bucks and Toronto Raptors — seeded at the top of each group or they can be placed by current standings (that would be my preference).
So your two Eastern Conference groups might look like this:
Group A Group B
Milwaukee Toronto
Miami Boston
Indiana Philadelphia
Orlando Brooklyn
Charlotte Washington
Some of those teams can be flipped within their seed line. I flipped the Charlotte Hornets and Washington Wizards, for instance, to ensure the Milwaukee Bucks got the advantage of playing the worst team in the grouping.
You could easily give Milwaukee and Toronto the top seeds in the group and then do a random draw of two teams out of the next four teams and another random draw of two teams out of the bottom four teams to balance the groups and give it some element of randomness you would get from a typical closing schedule.
The teams essentially are competing only against the teams in their group the rest of the season for those Playoff spots.
This format can also be expanded to the top 12 teams in each conference for two groups of six, but that would obviously take a bit longer to complete.
The teams within each group would play every other team in the group twice. That gives everyone eight guaranteed games for the competition. That is about the number of games the league seems to be settling on to close the regular season anyway.
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The key here is how many teams advance. This is what ultimately could make the plan more palatable.
Under my plan, four of the five teams advance out of each group to give us eight teams per conference.
On its face, this is a lot of teams and not much of a competition to get out of the group stage. But that is kind of the point.
It gives a boost to the teams at the top of the standings, giving them some cushion should they come out of the gates slowly. It alleviates the concern that the Bucks could go 2-3 and somehow miss the playoffs after their masterful season.
It would take a near-complete disaster for a title-contending team to miss the actual playoffs under this format.
But at the bottom of the standings, it gives teams outside of the playoffs a chance to get in. A very real chance to get in. It forces everyone to compete from the jump and have a chance to make the final (normal) playoff field with what is left in the regular season.
And so group play balances every interest.
It allows teams to get an eight-game run-up to the playoffs to get back into rhythm before the best-of-7 series begins. It allows teams to complete their regular season with essentially even schedules with the teams they are competing with.
It gets the competitive juices flowing by giving every team something to play for and to achieve. Every team has an equal shot at making the Playoffs. But it also gives a cushion for the better teams to land on should they struggle. It would take a real disaster for them to be the last place team in each group.
And essentially by advancing four out of the five teams in each group, it should keep all five teams competitive for the entire regular season.
Exiting group play
The twist under my plan is how we seed teams after group play is completed.
Typically in group play tournaments, teams are seeded in the next round — whether that is another group play round like in the FIBA World Cup or in the knockout round like the FIFA World Cup — based on where they finish in their groups. For example, typically in the FIFA World Cup, the winner of Group A plays the second-place team in Group B, and so on.
But I think the NBA should preserve seeding and records from the regular season. To respect the nearly three-quarters of the season that have already been played, seeding for the Playoffs would be based on the total combined record of the regular season and the group play.
For instance, let’s say the Orlando Magic go 3-2 in group play and the Brooklyn Nets go 2-3 in the opposit group and advance out of the group play round. The Magic would earn the East’s seventh seed by one-half game by going a combined 33-37 whereas the Nets would be 32-37.
This seeding format also works to protect the top teams.
Say the Bucks struggle and go 3-2 or 2-3 in the group play. Assuming they stay in the top four (and tiebreakers can be regular-season record for this purpose too), they would still be the top seed in the Eastern Conference because of the regular season record they built before the league went on hiatus.
They essentially still get the benefit of the work they did through March.
Orlando Magic
All they would have to do is make sure they are in the top four of their group. That should not be a problem, right?
Another example, let’s say the Washington Wizards beat out the Brooklyn Nets for the final spot in group play. Or even the Brooklyn Nets and Washington Wizards outperform the Philadelphia 76ers in group play. That would be unfortunate as the Sixers had all but assured themselves a playoff spot, but everyone has to put something on the line here the burden cannot be merely on the 8-seed.
The teams would then be seeded in the playoffs based on their combined record. The regular season would still be rewarded, even if the Wizards finished ahead of the Nets in group play, the Nets and Magic would still hold a seeding advantage over them in the Playoff field.
The point of all this is to balance all the interests of the teams in the bubble.
It gives the top teams a chance to warm up and get themselves ready for the playoffs with minimal risk of missing out on the playoffs. It gives the teams outside of the Playoffs a chance to get into the Playoffs, making their trip to Disney worthwhile.
And a team like the Magic? Even this method still benefits them while giving them the best chance to maintain their playoff spot.
How it benefits the Magic
There is really going to be no way the league resumes its season that does not hurt the Orlando Magic in some way.
Run a play-in tournament and the Magic risk the chance of losing their playoff spot because of a bad game or some other advantage. The reality is the Washington Wizards had very little chance of making up the 5.5 games that separate them from eighth in the final 17 games. The Wizards had one of the toughest remaining schedules while the Magic had one of the easiest.
A play-in tournament that gives the Orlando Magic no time to catch the Brooklyn Nets also hurts. It seemed just as likely the Magic would have caught the Nets for seventh, making a lot of his hand-wringing somewhat moot.
The imbalance of the conference’s playoff chases also does not make matters easy for the NBA. It would be hard to justify conducting a play-in tournament in one conference and not in the other. Especially for closing the season purposes.
Sir Charles In Charge
The Magic probably gain very little from going straight too the playoffs. Or even just competing for the 7-seed, although it accomplishes some of these goals.
I believe the Magic should want their team to be put in a position where it has to play its way into the Playoffs. Orlando will get more for its young players from putting them in pressure situations and experiencing success in those situations.
Orlando’s win at Boston in the penultimate game last year was the ultimate gut check for the team. A loss would have turned the season finale into a play-in game. They showed tremendous poise and guts in winning that game on the road coming from behind. That win was as significant as any other.
The Magic certainly want to recreate that scenario. A game they have to win to avoid a play-in game, but still having the cushion they earned from the regular season.
The league as a whole wants a system that will give everyone something to play for while protecting the teams that have the best chance to win the Finals and get them into the Playoff field.
On top of everything else, the league wants to get back to normal as much as it can so all this talk of gimmicks and experimenting can end. they want to get back to business and give fans and players the Playoffs they deserve.
These are undoubtedly unprecedented times and some creativity is needed to make the most of the situation.
Group play does that. It gives everyone the incentive to play and the reward for doing so while also giving teams the ability to warm up and prepare for the Playoffs. It gives everyone what they want at the end of the day.