Playoff Seeding
I apologize; I didn’t write a recap of last night’s game. Instead I wrote a breakdown of the situation surrounding seeds 3, 4, and 5 in the Western Conference for the Daily Dime over at ESPN. It’s number 8 and can be found in the right-hand column.
As far as last night’s game goes: Yes, we did get a leg up from the referees. There’s no way around it. But considering all the ping pong balls the Kings will have this summer, you won’t hear a lot of moaning from them. Blazers and Rockets fans may be a different story.
Both Tim and I have busy days ahead of us, so it may be a little quieter around here than usual. Feel free to leave your thoughts about the Kings game in the comments section.
Glad to squeeze out the win. Let’s hope the Rockets lose once so that we can get home court in the first round at least. Good games from Udoka and Mason and a decent game from Gooden (make your free throws, Drew).
And WHY is George Hill still not playing??
Very lazy to not include Denver when your first hypothetical situation is if all three teams win out and considering Denver beats the Kings. Don’t even include the situation next time since all four teams will be tied–making it a useless paragraph
Any possibility of a 48minuteofhell playoff viewing party?
Daniel, I would guess Graydon didn’t have 10,000 words allocated by ESPN for this
I hate to see the refs ruining a game as much as anybody, but it’s hard to get too annoyed when the game is mostly of no consequence. Only 2 games left before the real stuff starts – finally.
I believe I remember reading after a similar situation a while ago that shot clocks, due to not having tenths of seconds, only display full seconds. So it shows 00 starting at .9, and going all the way down to the buzzer at true 0. Looking at the replay, Fin got the shot off .3-.4 seconds after the shot clock went to 00, thus getting it off with .6ish left on the shot clock. Instead of this being a blown call that swung a game, it was a great call by the official who had a great view of both the clock and the shot.
Bottomline: The refs messed up and it should not happen again, but we’ll take it. The NBA tolerates too much human error–Camera definition improvements and instant communication should be a part of the NBA game–the refs’ bias affects their calls. And I don’t even need to mention their names for regular watchers of the NBA, there are certain refs who should have their rights to ref certain teams revoked. For instance,I’m watching the Mavs-Hornets game and the Mavs are pulling away yet overly celebrating in beginning of the the third–bam, the refs call about three fouls to keep the game close.
Daniel,
It’s not that the paragraph is useless; it’s that it’s incorrect.
The Nuggets need only win one game to win their division. But If the Blazers, Rockets and Spurs win out, all 4 teams will be tied, as you say(the Blazers play their final game against the Nuggets). In that instance, both the Rockets and Denver would be division champs and Houston won the season series 3-1. So Houston would be the 2 seed and Denver would be the 3 seed. The Spurs would fall to fifth having lost the season series to Portland 3-1.
I was told, in order for Denver to secure the 2 seed, they needed only win one game. That’s incorrect. It was 1 a.m. so I was a bit tired but, admittedly, I should have double-checked.
Thanks for pointing that out. The Daily Dime is being edited to reflect the situation accurately.
And Will’s right. I was trying to work inside a strict word limit. But cutting corners is no excuse for inaccuracy.
Not that it ultimately matters, but according to espn.com, in their MVP voting, Tony comes in at 8th, with only two points. I don’t think top 5 is possible for Tony, even though I think he deserves it. (By top 5 I mean #5
)
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?page=MVP09
Jon,
You are correct that you read something similar to that – Mark Cuban talked about it last year. When the shot clock starts it starts at 24.9, and then rolls down to 23.9 (at which point the clock changes to 23). However, the shot clock horn is designed to go off at .9 instead of zero to account for this. The reason it’s done this way is so that the clock doesn’t sit on zero for a whole second before the buzzer goes off.
Either way, the accuracy of the shot clock and the entire timekeeping apparatus of all sports is inherently suspicious to begin with, so I find it hard to get worked up about it. Even Fisher’s .4 shot has never really bothered me that much (other than the fact it was an atrocious shot that he luckily got to go down) simply because if someone went through and meticulously checked every moment the clock was running when it shouldn’t have been or wasn’t when it should have been, it probably would have added up to some completely different number than 0.4 to begin with.
Anyway, here’s Cuban’s post about how the shot clock works.
http://www.blogmaverick.com/2008/04/21/an-nba-fun-fact/
My only two requests for refs in any sport are that they call the game (fouls, penalties, strikes) the same for both teams and they only call what they see not what they assume. I can live with humor error if a guy misses something but can not accept an official who injects themself into the final result by assuming things or making it about their ego.
Being that Finley was in full shooting motion when the shot clock went to “00″ (excellent point by Jon about zero equalling 0.9) and the red light did not appear on the backboard, I can understand why an official allows the play to finish. You want players to determine the outcome. We could point out the occasions were Parker was fouled driving the lane during the first quarter w/out a call. I’d rather think that things evened out as is often the case… At worst the game goes to O.T.
After the ref clock malfunction and missed foul call at New Orleans two weeks back, San Antonio need apologize for nothing.
Alright, thanks for the correction John. Good to have that clear before the post-season starts
Nice shot, Fin (errors aside). But it’s still painful to watch him play defense. His closeouts are excruciatingly slow, and if he actually gets there, his man goes by him before Fin can even turn around. I also noticed that Udoka tends to go under screens, especially if there is a series of screens, thus giving his man a few feet to work with, which often results in an open shot. Bruce is scrappy and fights over screens. Udoka needs to learn that technique too. Defense!
the daily dime part still seems incorrect. if denver, portland, houston and san antonio all finish with 54-28. denver (division champions), houston (division champions) and portland (they beat spurs 3-1) will be in top four. since their records are even, the seeding from 2-4 should be decided by the games between them (houston 5-2, denver 3-5, portland 3-4). then houston will be the 2 seed, and portland will get the 3 seed, despite denver is the division champions. this is bizarre…
Snake,
The Daily Dime is correct. Division winners is the first tie-breaker for 3-teams as well as 2 (best head-to-head winning percentage amongst all tied teams comes second). Houston and Denver trump Portland, at which point the second tie-breaker for two-teams (head-to-head) goes into effect. It is structurally impossible to be seeded above the winner of your division.