Talk:2008 NBA playoffs

Untitled

Matchups if the 2008 NBA playoffs began on April 16, 2008:

Teams in bold italics have home court advantage.

	First Round					Conference Semifinals					Conference Finals					NBA Finals
	1	Boston
	8	Atlanta
	4	Cleveland
	5	Washington
	Eastern Conference
	2	Detroit
	7	Philadelphia
	3	Orlando
	6	Toronto
	1	L.A. Lakers
	8	Denver
	4	Utah
	5	Houston
	Western Conference
	2	New Orleans
	7	Dallas
	3	San Antonio
	6	Phoenix

Split?

How about a separate 2008 NBA Eastern Conference Playoffs/2008 NBA Western Conference Playoffs or 2008 NBA Playoffs First Round/2008 NBA Conference Semifinals/2008 NBA Conference Finals/2008 NBA Finals? Other sports (particularly European ones) use this so I don't think why we shouldn't do that here. --Howard the Duck 15:04, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the need to do a split since the article won't be so large. If implemented, that means we will have to create many new articles for all the past NBA playoffs. Too much hassle. Chris! _ct 05:41, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

We really don't need to make separate articles for all the others (they do not look identical anyway - some have game summaries, some only have brackets, etc.). Besides, last year the article size was 51 kilobytes and that's a lot. If articles are to be split, the main article will only contain the bare essentials (end-game scores w/o summaries) while the others can include both summaries and stats. --Howard the Duck 15:53, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I still prefer the way it is now. Let's wait and see what others want before making any changes. Chris! _ct 19:58, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

One advantage is that we can keep off the per-second updaters and place them to the subarticles and leave the playoffs article alone. --Howard the Duck 15:40, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Anyway, here's a mockup of a separate page for the stats. --Howard the Duck 08:30, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone think this is now a good idea? The article is now 38kb. --Howard the Duck 03:56, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

No. If it's too big, maybe the wording needs to be trimmed. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 06:40, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

The series summaries are too long, too. --Howard the Duck 06:42, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Therein lies the culprit. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 06:46, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

How about 2007? It's 52kb long. Also I don't think cutting down the summaries is a good idea at all times. I suggest keeping the BOS-ATL series at its current length since it's the defining series of the first round, same with 2007 for the DAL-GS, PHX-SA and DET-CLE. --Howard the Duck 06:51, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

The real culprit is the template that is currently really efficient considering the multiple entering of the team names, locations, arenas, etc. It would be quite wise to check out the New Playoffs Template Proposal|section below about a new complete template for each of the series. I'm still working on the template, and any suggestions would be welcome. The template would assist in reducing the size of the page quite significantly. —Sukh17 ^Talk 07:00, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I suspect the proposed template uses switches. I blamed those switches for the ballooning of the 2007 NHL Playoffs article to over 100kb last year until they settled on the prior version. (See this 81kb revision. I got too lazy to look for the revision it reached 100kb.) --Howard the Duck 07:41, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

This is a completely different template compared to that. Additionally, the reason the 2007 Stanley Cup Playoffs ballooned to 100kb was because there was such a heavy amount of detail inserted into the template. Editors were inputing information regarding every single goal and assist. That alone will result in an enormously large article, especially when every name was a piped link in the format of [[First Last|F. Last]]. Obviously if you communicate that much information in this template, you would also result in such a large size, but that is not what is going to happen. Similarly, a slightly different template (although appearing very similar to last year's) is now in use on the 2008 Stanley Cup Playoffs page, and the article is well below that 100kb size. —Sukh17 ^Talk 22:34, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Either way, the proposed template is hideous -- some series will wrap since the stadium name is lot longer and there's an unneeded gap between the team names. And it doesn't use {{basketballbox}} which is now being used everywhere, from the NBA to the FIBA tourneys to the Russian league. --Howard the Duck 03:18, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Goofy NBA Format necessitates change, or no?

Most of the time, I don't think the bracket really needs to visually demonstrate home advantage, since for the most part it's clear. In MLB, NFL, NHL, and even the NCAA Tournament, the "home" team is clear from the seedings. In the limited situations where it isn't (usually in or near the last round of the tournament), it seems fine to me not to worry about it. However, in a tournament with a pervasively unusual format like the NBA, where the playoff positioning has nothing to do with home advantage, should we do something to indicate how home advantage is assigned? For example, we could put the number of games each team won in parentheses after its name in the current round; that way you can tell who would have home advantage in the next round in a hypothetical matchup. It's just a thought, and normally I don't think it's something to worry about, but the NBA uses such a goofy format I thought I'd bring it up. MrArticleOne (talk) 18:06, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

The team with home court advantage in every matchup is italicized here. --Howard the Duck 22:38, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, but my point was that doesn't help you figure out who would have home advantage in the next round. I know that in the NHL context because it's high-seed, and the bracket table contains the seedings. But, if (say) Phoenix and New Orleans advance to play each other, I can't tell from looking at the table who would have home advantage. It's questionable whether the table should be concerned with expressing that, but I just thought I'd toss it out there. MrArticleOne (talk) 23:15, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

The list above the bracket will help (same also with the NHL). Not everything has to be in the bracket. There should only be three entries per team: seed, team name and games won. Plus with the current format the higher seed usually gets the home court advantage except in the first round for some 4 vs. 5 matchups and in the finals. --Howard the Duck 23:18, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

In unusual circumstances, a 6th seed could have home court advantage over a 3-seed as well. For example, if 1 Division had the top 4 teams in the Conference, the top two of them would be seeded 1 and 2, but the next two would be seeded 5th and 6th; both the 5th and 6th seeded teams would enjoy HCA over any other opponent. MrArticleOne (talk) 17:36, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

The user would consult the info at the top of the bracket, that's why the figures are appended to their seedings. --Howard the Duck 02:25, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

New Playoffs Template Proposal

Hello all, I have created the following new template, located at Template:NBAbox. My main goal was creating a simpler format to enter in the information and perhaps reduce the space necessitated for each series, and I believe I have achieved both of these criteria. Here is an example of how it would look for the first round:

	April 23	Game 2:	Recap	Atlanta Hawks 77					Boston Celtics 96								TD Banknorth Garden, Boston, Massachusetts		TNT
Scoring Breakdown: 20-24, 22-28, 16-24, 19-20

Boston leads series 2 – 1

April 28

Game 4:

8:00PM

Boston Celtics

vs.

Atlanta Hawks

Philips Arena, Atlanta, Georgia

TNT

Have a nice day! --Sukh17 ^{T • C • E} 13:08, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

There is also a "tryout" at User:Howard the Duck/Template. --Howard the Duck 13:16, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

An even newer format has been created (not by me). I have used it on this particular series, but I don't have the time to do that on all of these games in the 08 Playoffs. Would anyone like to help? TheBestZebra 5:58, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Home Team wins, Boston vs. Atlanta

Is this the first time where each team won all their home games but lost all their away games as happened with the 2-2-1-1-1 series of the Celtics vs. the Hawks? If so it should be in the article but I'm not totally sure this is the first time. Valley2city 21:02, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the Heat/Hornets series in 2004 was the last time I remember it happening. Would have to dig to find others. Kuru ^talk 21:59, 4 May 2008 (UTC)