Bulls vs. Rockets preview, a.k.a. relegate the Eastern Conference already

on brackets day, a new exciting play-in bracket idea

The Bulls season is still going on. It’s a bit deflating, even watching some good #competitive basketball, where we not only know what’s going to happen but know how the organization will spin it after the season. They’ll say this stretch of games was very important and informative and inflate the success, while the rest of the league is literally messing around with tanky and/or hurt opponents.

The Houston Rockets are a bit Bullsian though: they did not buy or sell at the deadline (though they made a single trade looking towards next season, so infinitely more active than the Bulls), and though have suffered serious injuries are remaining #competitive and hanging around the Western Conference play-in race:

they traded for Steven Adams, which dashes my dreams of dumping Vuc on them

I’ve railed on this before - perhaps every year for the past twenty - and it just stinks on ice that the Eastern Conference gets to continually exist. It’s a handicap where big market teams can lower their ambitions and still remain ‘in the hunt’, and yes I’m thinking about one team in particular that shares ownership with Major League Baseball’s team in a similarly-pathetic division.

Conferences should be eliminated for the betterment of the league. But that is too big of a #HoopIdea, I admit. What about at least making the play-in conference agnostic? Keep seeds 1-6 locked in their respective playoff bracket (can keep your ‘rivalries’ among the good teams that way), but then the next 4 spots are up for grabs across the majors and minors.

Here’s how it’d look with today’s standings:

Note we only kick out one minor league team, swapping out the shameful Hawks with the won-6-straight Rockets. But the incentives are changed, for the better. Now the clearly-a-class-above Warriors and Lakers have a chance to get in the top half of the bracket and both make the playoffs. The east teams in 7 and 8 have even more incentive to get to 6 as their play-in bracket wouldn’t be entirely made of crappy east teams.

And most important to our interests: the Bulls road to the playoffs would be, instead of hosting the Hawks, beating the Warriors on the road (AK burst in: “we did that, didn’t you notice?”) and then having to win another road game. This would be much harder, but a more accurate assessment of where this team is at.