It's probably an unpopular thing to say, but I don't really care who we play in the first round. If we're going to make any noise, we have to beat all comers in the West. I say, bring it on. Let them worry about us; I won't worry about them.
that's true, but just look at last year. portland and denver were approximately equal teams(i think portland was the better team). portland played houston who wasn't a great matchup for them(and was another equal quality team) while denver got new orleans that was falling apart and then dallas that wasn't a 2nd round quality team but lucked into facing a worn down and injured spurs team. teams of equal quality but their opponents were of very different quality and that lead to very different results. so yeah, you just have to beat everyone you play but it's definitely to your advantage to play the worse teams or the ones you match up best against.
I think he was referring to people who were talking about potentially purposely losing the final game of the season if it would allow Portland to get a better match-up. It came up in a few threads.
It may have to do with the seeding in relation to the division winners. I can never remember....do the top 3 seeds go to the division winners? If so, the Suns are going to be looking at 4th.
i know what he was referring to, though i was just commenting on this thread so if it has been coming up elsewhere then i definitely did miss it.
First of all, that's not what I said. I said I would take some satisfaction from Nate getting fired if we had self-destructed this season. I took a lot of heat for it and that was that. I don't see the relevance. What does it have to do with wanting to lose a game so we get a more favorable matchup in the playoffs? We got stuck with Houston last season, which was disastrous. I would have much rather had San Antonio or New Orleans. We're in a similar situation this year. Facing Utah or Denver would be a one-and-out matchup. I would much rather see us play Dallas.
draco commented that the blazers weren't a bad team anymore and shouldn't lose games on purpose. i replied that all i'd seen was you saying that and that in the past you'd said you would be ok with the team doing bad(or take some good out of it or whatever) as long as the end result was getting what you wanted. see how that is relevant? or how it is similar? bad season to get rid of a coach that you perceive is bad or a bad game to keep from having a matchup that you perceive is bad? shouldn't be too hard of a connection to make. yes, the best matchup for portland in the first round this year is dallas. yes, facing utah or denver would be bad for portland. but with a utah/phoenix game occurring at the same time as portland's final game and the standings as tight as they are, it seems unlikely to me that portland can control their 1st round matchup by intentionally losing a game.
Found it: Teams 1 to 4 in each conference are the three division winners and the team with the next best regular-season record, with the seeding of these four teams determined by regular-season record. The playoffs seedings of Teams 5 to 8 are based upon regular-season record. Ties are broken pursuant to the rules set forth below. So if I'm reading this right, the Suns could be #2 or #3. So, as another poster wrote, we should root for Denver & Utah to be 4/5 in either order so we avoid them. Then we hopefully stay in 6th or 7th & play Phoenix or Dallas. Which means....we want the Lakers to win tonight over Denver. http://www.nba.com/standings/team_record_comparison/conferenceNew_Std_Cnf.html
if i remember correctly from last year, the suns not winning their division only comes into play if they have the same record as a division winner. then the division winner automatically gets the higher seed(as the spurs got the higher seed than the blazers last year). as long as the suns finish the season with a better record than one of the other division winners, they can finish as the 2 or 3 seed.
I see the correlation now. I guess I thought you were trying to hit below the belt with that comment.
I wish we could freeze frame right now with Dallas in first round (did you see Mark Cuban's bombast about how they would beat Portland? Haven't done it yet this year!) and Phoenix/Utah in the second (cheering for Suns over Jazz).
Being a division winner only guarantees you the 5th seed. It will prevent you from falling to the 6th seed. It is worth very little. Winning a division does trump the normal tie-breakers of head to head season record. So if we tied with Dallas but they won the division they would still end up with the higher seed even though we won the season series. Technically the NBA rules state division winners are guaranteed the "4th" seed but they will not have HCA against a team with a better record so I don't see how you can call yourself a "4th seed" when your playing on the road against the "5th seed".
I don't think that exact seeding is possible, if you mean Phoenix and Utah are in a first round matchup.... If we get the 6th seed and play Dallas than Phoenix could be the 2nd seed but Utah isn't going to fall to 7th. So I'm hoping OKC gets matched up with the Suns then we would play the winner of them and even have HCA over the Thunder if both us and them were somehow able to win. I'd much rather have Utah and especially the Nuggets/Lakers on the other side of the bracket
