Why is nba finals 2 3 2 format

But, seeing as how the issue still exists, has not been remedied, likely will not be remedied, and just reared its head again, consider the following The Atheltics wouldn't have won at Shibe in either.

Of course I'm happy they broke a year championship drought in front of the home fans, and actually won and that the A's actually won a title in Philly in the first place. But if homefield advantage is actually supposed to mean something in the playoffs, then neither Game 5 should have ever been played in Philadelphia. The NBA adopted the format for the finals in at the behest of Celtics demigod Red Auerbach, who pushed for it in an effort to cut down on cross-country travel -- flying back and forth from Boston to L.

And, practically, the man was right. The series is more efficient both in terms of travel costs and in terms of the wear and tear long plane rides can take on players already fighting through injury on the biggest stage in their profession. That said, the creates one scenario that actually puts the team with homefield or homecourt at a disadvantage. The Mavericks were a better and more consistent team throughout the playoffs. However, the NBA needs to address this and make a rule change, so that the team with the best record can, in fact, have a home court advantage.

Enjoy our content? Join our newsletter to get the latest in sports news delivered straight to your inbox! Your sports. Join Newsletter. The only team to lose Game 6 at home and still win the title was the Spurs against the Pistons, which goes to show how evenly matched that Finals actually was. And even though the Celtics and Spurs came damn close in and , no road team won Game 7 of the Finals in the era. Sure, it is only two out of potentially seven games in the NBA Finals that get switched up at the end of the day.

The format is not exactly a revolutionary concept, as any fan of Major League Baseball will stand up to tell you, but what I always found curious is that it never received an official slang term or nickname over the years. Those middle three games were heavenly for a team if they took a game on the road in the first two and held their home court.

Ask the Pistons, who laid a smack down on the Lakers in Games 3, 4, and 5 to clinch the title in Detroit. The Heat did the same thing to the Oklahoma City Thunder in But that worm tended to turn at times during the Finals, too, and your home island wound up more maddening than the Island of Dr.

I remember as a kid thinking that the Lakers had won the title in after taking Game 1 from the Bulls in Chicago. Little did fans in Lakerland know what was about to occur.

The Bulls soundly won all three games in L. The Pistons did the same thing to the tortured fans in Portland when they beat the Blazers in five games. The most recent example was in when the Philadelphia 76ers, after taking Game 1 behind a virtuoso performance at Staples Center by Allen Iverson, got buried by Shaq and Kobe in Philly during their path to back-to-back titles. Beginning next postseason, the NBA has voted to disregard the fears of tedious travel and go back to the format that the rest of the NBA playoff series already use in the earlier rounds.

In order to look into what is to come, it is imperative to see what came before it, and in the case of this change in the NBA Finals format, we do have some history to fall back on. PeterEisentraut Actually, it makes sense. The conference rounds have more games even if both conference finals end in a sweep, that's eight games - and is not subject to the difference in format due to the low amount of games played - vs. Thus, more revenue. I'm willing to bet that there is more total revenue during conference rounds than NBA finals although the NBA finals itself may yield more than an individual conference round series simply because there are more games being played.

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