My colleague Kevin Nimmock has served up an excellent analysis of the NBA’s newly announced playoff rules. This topic is so important I’m going to weigh in as well.
To recap: the NBA has decided to seed playoff teams strictly according to their regular season record, rather than allocating a top-four spot (and home court) to Division winners.
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For the Toronto Raptors, the luxury of being able to coast by virtue of being Atlantic Division champions has just been unceremoniously removed. In my rankings, the Raptors, who are not an elite team in the East, are going to be in a serious battle for the fourth seed.