RebKell's Junkie Boards

[Richyyy]

[NYSports56]

So they've killed off all of the interesting regular season games now that there is no real reward for being anywhere but over the 8/9 line. It's been shown that home court advantage is not incentive enough--every major sport has proved that coaches will rest their players in big games down the stretch even if a seed is on the line. You need a bye as compensation for teams to truly fight for a seed.

In the past, every team was fighting for something during the regular season. Now the only teams fighting will be the ones in danger of missing the playoffs. And those aren't exactly the glamour teams.

The games between the top teams will not be as intense as they were last year. And again, if they happen near the end of the year, you could easily see the two top teams playing on the last game of the season with first place on the line...and rest all their starters. It's happened in baseball before they added the second wild-card, and several times in the NFL.

It's a shame that when you give byes, you have to make things single elimination so that the teams with the byes don't get flat from waiting. It's a shame that you can lose one game and be out. But if you're in single elimination, you failed to demonstrate over a full season's schedule that you deserved any better! It was more than one game that determined your fate: the 32 you played before it mattered too!

It should also be noted that, as unpalatable as single elimination is to some, elimination games are the thing that draw in TV viewers. The early round games 1 and 2 are a hard sell to the average sports fan unless they're already die-hard fans. This even applies to me if I don't have a rooting interest in the series.

This was a mistake. I think that everyone who focused on the "unfairness" of single-elimination is missing the forest for the trees. This now turns the WNBA regular season into a pre-season for most of the good teams instead of giving all of the late games playoff-like intensity. Even the NBA realized the need for play-in games, leaving hockey and now the WNBA as the only professional sports where it's only a two tier system where you're either in or out. Every other team has other goals for the top teams that are worth competing for.

[Richyyy]

You make some good points. I do think the number of different meaningful levels of playoff qualification meant that the regular season stayed competitive because there was meaning to each level. The problem was that the same system also then devalued the regular season, because a team that finished 3rd over 30+ games could have their year immediately ended in one game. A team that finished 8th over those same 30+ only needed to win two to be in exactly the same semi-finals.

It's hard to come up with the perfect system when they're working within pretty tight time-constraints.

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Independent WNBA coverage: http://www.wnbalien.com/

[Randy]

I agree completely with NYSports56. I think the main problem people had with the system was when their team lost in one and one to a team with a worse record. So they became vocal about it (probably players and fans) and the league gave into the whiners. However, of the 24 games played under the old system, I found only 9 that could be classified as upsets, some where the upset team had only a game or two better record. Of those, 4 were due to the Mercury who the beat the Storm, Liberty and Sun (2x). Maybe they won because they had Diana Taurasi........

[undersized_post]

Keep the old format but make the 3v6 and 4v5 a best of three series and don’t reseed after each round. So you have:

Play-in game: Sudden death
5v8
6v7

1st real round: Best of 3 series
4v(Wof5v8)
3v(Wof6v7)

Semis: Best of 5
2v(Wof(3v(Wof6v7))
1v(Wof(4v(Wof5v8))

Finals: Best of 5
Remaining two teams

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RebKell's 2021-2022 NCAA Fantasy League Regular Season Champion 🏆

[Stormeo]

Ya can't please everybody. I feel lucky in that these changes were pleasing to me.

[NYSports56]

[DFWub2018]