How can the Eastern Conference be fixed?

[PhoSita]

I think the strongest argument for preserving the conference alignments is that it builds rivalries.

You can see the easy counter-argument to this though, right?

I can argue easily that it prevents rivalries.

The East / West split prevents us from getting to see LeBron vs any number of West stars -- Harden, Durant, Chris Paul, Griffin, etc.  It prevented us from seeing LeBron vs Kobe.  In any given year, we can only hope for one of those matchups.

I think there's a strong case to be made that if you get rid of conferences, we'll be more likely to eventually see a more interesting variety of matchups between the various stars of the game, instead of watching LeBron spend 3 straight rounds facing tomato cans, not to mention settling for Paul Pierce trolling on the Raptors as the highlight of the Eastern Playoffs (much love to Pierce).

[PhoSita]

I think the strongest argument for preserving the conference alignments is that it builds rivalries.

When teams are slotted by conference, they are much more likely to match up with each other. This creates great dynamics like the Celtics/Cavs series of the late 2000s, or the Celtics/Pistons series in the late 1980s, or Detroit/Chicago a few years later, or New York/Chicago...or countless others where an up and coming team needs to "get over the hump" by beating the same team it's lost to for the last few years.

I'd argue that over the years, these have been the most compelling playoff series to watch. In fact, I'd say that these repeated matchups are the essence of what makes NBA playoff basketball great.

If you took away the conference/division structure, matchups would be more haphazard and you wouldn't get the same year-to-year persistence that leads to the truly storied pre-Finals series.

It's hard to have rivalries, though, when you don't actually play the other team all that much.

I think the way to fix the problems of the 82 game schedule is to play everybody twice, home and home, for 58 games.  Then play the remaining 24 games against the other four teams in your division.  It would drastically cut down on the problems of travel and would really restore rivalries.

Mike

I'm in favor of this.  Ideally I'd reduce the regular season to 66 games -- 4 games against your 4 divisional opponents plus 2 games against everybody else.  But what you describe works for the 82 game schedule.

[GC003332]

Seriously though does the league even really care about rivalries, they have been all about promoting the Star player for as far back as I can remember, it is only when you do get that Matchup that has a history to it that they come on in and flog it to death, Celtics-Lakers 08,10.
Each individual fan base has there own rivalries that they are aware of but from a league wide perspective it is all about the Star player and his journey more so than the team.