This NBA pushback against open playoff seeding -- taking the 16 best teams regardless of conference and seeding them appropriately -- is making me mad not simply because it’s happening but because the excuses are pretty lame.

The league says playoff miles travel would increase more than 40 percent, and there would on average be two or more playoff series between teams separated by at least three time zones before the Finals, with a 90% of at least one such pairing every year.

Guess what? We already see big distance playoff series. They just happen to exclusively exist in the Western Conference.

Thirteen of the 15 Eastern Conference teams are in the Eastern time zone, with the other two in the Central time zone. So there simply cannot be huge playoff series distance latitudinally speaking. A 3-hour Miami to Toronto flight is about the worst you’ll get in the East under current orientation.

The Western Conference is way more spread out, with seven teams in the Central time zone, two in the Mountain time zone, and five in the Pacific time zone. So necessarily their travel burden will be greater.

If travel burden is the real reason NBA franchise owners won’t approve open seeding, then they are clearly fine maintaining the deeply unequal travel burden on Western Conference teams. The Central time zone Pelicans had to open playoff series on the Pacific seaboard in two straight rounds this year.

But hey, no one in the Eastern Conference had to cross the Mississippi before the Finals, so the system works ... for half the league.

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Top remaining free agents

I ranked up the top 13 remaining unrestricted free agents remaining on Thursday. Of course, Nemanja Bjelica almost immediately signed with the Sixers. So now there are 12 on the list. Isaiah Thomas and Brook Lopez are the biggest impact players still on the board, with lots of veterans also kicking around.

Isaiah keeps having to prove himself over and over and over and over again.

Links Galore

Great point by Paul Flannery: the Pacers, already pretty darn good, got better while everyone else chased superstars.

Amar’e Stoudemire explains how NBA teams should scout high school kids.

Zach Lowe on how LeBron’s decision changes the Kawhi Leonard situation and the Spurs’ leverage.

Jaren Jackson Jr. hype is building in Memphis. But the Grizzlies’ Scrabble promo for 3J was an absolute mess.

Speaking of Bluff City: an argument the Grizzlies should rebuild now.

Close observer Scott Sargent on where it all went wrong for the Cavaliers.

Donovan Mitchell crashes Salt Lake BBQs a year after Gordon Hayward broke SLC hearts on July 4th. Build the damn statue.

ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne and Brian Windhorst on the intentionality of the Lakers’ seemingly weird post-LeBron signings.

Did firing David Griffin cost the Cavaliers LeBron? Well, it didn’t help.

This video explains the absolutely wild and absolutely true fact that the NBA essentially decided the fate of the league through the 1980s via coin flip. (NBA history and coin flips are deeply intertwined.)

Full-on Summer League is here.

For the first time maybe ever, Michael Porter is an underdog.

Ethan Strauss on the dissonance between the wails of ruination directed at the NBA regarding the Warriors and the NBA’s booming popularity.

The early skirmishes between Kobe cult members and Lakers fans ultra-excited for LeBron are fun to follow.

The Sixers have some roster decisions ahead.

A stupid man’s guide to running with the bulls in Pamplona.

And finally: AIRPLANE MOOoooOOODE!

Be excellent to each other.