THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

It would have to be done in a way that did not add any length to the post-season.  One game playoffs are crapshoots and I’m sure the Red Sox would’ve loved to have played in two of them against teams they had nearly 10 wins more than. 

I think instead of finding ways to lengthen the season, we should be looking at ways to shorten it, or end it earlier so we aren’t having the most important (World Series, LCS) parts of the season being effected by cold weather.
vr, Xei

For the NBA I like this.  It should be accompanied by shortening the regular season, which I have lost all ability to care about.  The Cavaliers have essentially been playing an 82 game warmup for their real season.

Initial thoughts:

I don’t like just anyone having a chance to make the playoffs/win the championship—it makes the regular season less important (see: NCAA basketball).

Tango’s show that 162 games of baseball says as much about team quality as 32 basketball games.  So any mediocre (or bad) team who makes the MLB post-season has a reasonable chance of winning the World Series.  We’ve already had an uproar over the 82-win Cardinal team winning the WS (which cheapens it, in my opinion).

If anything I’d advocate picking 2 WC teams who played a one game playoff immediately before the first round of the playoffs.  Would keep things exciting and give the #1 seed a small advantage.

Or maybe (better for NBA), include any team within X games of the last playoff spot in a mini-playoff.

#2. Boise St. played a meaningless 14 game schedule in College football this year.  And they say that the best thing about the BCS is that it makes the regular season more important.  In otherwords, I’m with you on the NBA regular season being too long.  Some bean counter has probably determined that it is the best way for each team to make money.  If you cut the NBA season short by X games, that is X less games the Nets, Knicks and Clippers have to earn money from ticket sales.  Oh wait, what ticket sales.
vr, Xei

I actually like this idea for the NHL… not to determine the playoff rounds, but as a “play for your draft pick” tournament.  Teams 17-30 get into two pools of seven teams and play a double-round robin; top four teams from each pool go into a single three-round bracket, best-of-three.  Winner gets first overall pick. 

The comparative talent and short rounds are enough to give the worst teams a fighting chance.  At the very least, that’s six extra home games’ worth of revenue for clubs that likely really need it.

There would be issues with traded picks, such as Toronto and Boston this year.  You obviously wouldn’t want the Leafs playing for the Bruins’ draft position.  Any traded picks could be slotted exclusively on records; the team in question would have to sit out the Draft Tournament, though.  It would hurt to lose the six (plus) games of revenue but it would make those picks more valuable and possibly increase the return on them, thus improving the team more quickly - kind of the whole point.

NBA fan piping up to say that if the regular season lasted 9 months and the playoffs were played over the final 3 months, I would watch it. I never understood how fans could complain that the season is too long.

#5 I’m having trouble conceptualizing your draft pick idea.  If your goal with the draft is to redistribute talent to bad teams, then your idea doesn’t work.  The worst of the worst teams have next to no shot at the earliest picks.

Since you’ve created a playoff for bad teams (more games, more fans, etc) you’ve created an incentive for decent teams to finish 17th rather than 15th.  They get the benefit of post-season revenue (even if the tickets are cheaper) and a chance to get that extra $30 mil in franchise value from signing the next Sydney Crosby.  Since they’d likely be knocked out in the first round of the normal playoffs, they could probably earn more money by going to the finals of the draft pick playoffs.

Also, I’m pretty sure there’d be a lot of pissed off players if they know they’re risking injury just for a draft pick.