The NBA postseason has arrived, the byproduct of a grueling 82 game regular season whose sole purpose is to establish seeding in the race to the Larry O'Brien trophy.
That positioning is important because it gives the higher seeded teams the privilege of starting their second season from the comforts of their home courts, but in some cases that is not always an advantage.
The more dominant teams will usually materialize in the course of a seven game series, and that team is usually the higher seeded team, unless the series is dictated by match-ups.
Match-ups were the bane of the Cleveland Cavaliers in last season's Eastern Conference Finals, and even though Cleveland had the better regular season record, they were undone by fundamental flaws.
The first round of this season's NBA playoffs offers a hand-ful of teams who could benefit from those same advantages in the match-ups, and the overall parity of the league.
Especially in the Western Conference, where all eight teams won at least 50 games, and seeds 2-8 were not established until the very last day of the regular season.
That type of parity could make the seedings mis-leading, and a much lower seeded team in the West coul ...
Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NBA
Article written by Hadarii Jones
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April 17th, 2010 by Hadarii Jones Leave a reply »
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