The NBA's finally done it: no more preferential treatment for division winners.
Many knew this day would come soon, what with all the talk of playoff structure reform, divisional re-thinks, and lottery re-jigging. Change to the NBA has long felt inevitable--and now, finally, it is here.
It's been officially announced that all playoff teams will now be seeded 1 to 8 regardless of their divisional standing. The first tiebreaker will be decided based on head-to-head record first and then division title consideration. This puts all of a playoff team's hopes completely on its regular season record and devalues the prestige of the division banner.