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26 sats \ 7 replies \ @grayruby 19 Feb \ parent \ on: The Bill Simmons Podcast • An NBA All-Star Fix Stacker_Sports
What if the team that ended up getting home court advantage in the finals only had one all star and that player scored zero points in the ASG? What did they do to earn their team the home court advantage? At least if it is based on record you actually have to win more games.
I think teams have enough incentive to win more games because of conference seeding.
I see what you're saying about earning it, but I don't think home court advantage in the finals is actually doing anything useful for us during the season.
Think about the extra benefits these incentives create. Teams are going to be trying harder during this middle part of the season, because they want to get their stars into the game that determines home court. That's also a way that winning can be rewarded.
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I don't know. MLB tried the whole try to win home field advantage thing for over a decade. Maybe the first couple years it added some intrigue but the quality of the games did not improve over that time period.
I suppose since the rosters would be smaller than baseball and you have only guys from top teams it could be better but I still don't like rewarding a potential home court in a game 7 of the finals for winning a meaningless game that the two finals teams didn't even play in.
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Interesting, I didn’t know MLB had tried this. That is why Simmons proposed the restriction to top teams, though.
Also, game 7’s aren’t that common in the finals and half of those would be the same either way. It seems like an incentive that feels more important than it really is, which is perfect.
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So let’s say Cleveland is the number one overall seed this year and they end up playing the Warriors who are currently the 10th seed. Maybe Steph and Jimmy catch fire and they get all the way to the finals. Unlikely but not impossible.
You would be ok with the 10th seeded Warriors having home court advantage because the West won the all star game?
In your scenario the warriors wouldn’t have even had any players in the all star game because they weren’t a top seed. Yet they could have home court advantage in the finals because guys from other teams won an exhibition game.
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Technically, in my scenario Steph would likely have gotten one of those two remaining spots, but I take your point. An easy enough fix for that would be only having it apply to the teams that were represented in the game, which could be another incentive for guys to actually play, or something like that.
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