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The Western Conference of the National Basketball Association is made up of fifteen teams, and organized in three divisions of five teams each. Since 2006, the three division winners and the non-division winner with the best record are seeded 1 through 4 for the playoffs in order of their record, with all remaining non-division winners seeded 5 through 8. This leaves open the possibility that...  MORE

The Western Conference of the National Basketball Association is made up of fifteen teams, and organized in three divisions of five teams each. Since 2006, the three division winners and the non-division winner with the best record are seeded 1 through 4 for the playoffs in order of their record, with all remaining non-division winners seeded 5 through 8. This leaves open the possibility that a #2 seed could be a non-division winner. Home-court advantage in a playoff series is decided by record, not by seeding, so if a #4 and #5 team met in a playoff series in which the #5 team had the better record, the #5 team would have home-court advantage. The reasoning behind this seeding arrangement is because a non-division winner could have a better record than the winners of the two divisions other than the one that produced the non-division winner in question. If the three division winners were seeded 1 through 3 for the playoffs in order of their record, and all non-division winners seeded 4 through 8, it would be possible for the two leading teams of the conference to meet in the Conference Semifinals. This actually happened in the 2006 NBA Playoffs when the two best teams in the Western Conference, the San Antonio Spurs and the Dallas Mavericks, both from the Southwest Division, faced one another in the Western Conference Semifinals while the 3rd seed, the Northwest Division-leading Denver Nuggets, had fewer wins than the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th seeds. The NBA proposed and approved of the current format to ensure that the best two teams of a conference can meet no earlier than the NBA Conference Finals. LESS