The NBA recently claimed that switching over to a top-16 playoff team format would add about 40,000 miles to the current travel demand, standing at about 90,000 miles. Per the website, it means that the top-16 format would add about 2+ series worth of typical miles traveled every year. Without an explicit report corroborating the claim, there’s no way to judge methodology or to see exactly why the traveling is such an issue. Nonetheless, the added travel is considered a huge issue by teams.

Why is traveling even an issue for the league? Back in 1985, the league was so dominated by the Celtics-Lakers rivalry, that one of David Stern’s first acts was to institute a 2-3-2 Finals playoff format to alleviate the cross-country demand in the championship series. It makes sense because the teams play five games before their second flight, and save two flights if the series went to seven games. This format was in use until Adam Silver was instituted as NBA Commissioner, a noted proponent of the 2-2-1-1-1 Finals format.

Moving to 2-2-1-1-1 is more than reasonable since it definitely seems unfair for better teams to spend three out of those first five games on the road in a critical series. In 2013, the league moved from the 2-3-2 Finals format back to the 2-2-1-1-1 format, but competitive fairness wasn’t the only reason for the move. In fact Adam Silver himself said:

“It reached a crescendo where basketball people thought it was important and the business people stood down and said it was no longer necessary for the convenience of transportation or the media.”

Which is a little curious, and in fact, the owners in the league voted unanimously in favor for the change that is effectively adding miles traveled in the playoffs by increasing the number of flights to the series that finally unites a team from the west with a team from the east. This year, the Golden State Warriors faced the Cleveland Cavaliers, playing in cities about 2200 miles apart.

Again, without the NBA releasing its findings, we aren’t able to totally get on the same page in terms of travel. It sounds like the league will eventually get there, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t happen tomorrow.

Here, I’ll analyze what the 2018 NBA Playoffs would’ve looked like had the teams traveled the 2-3-2 format in every series for both current and the Top-16 formats. We’ll be able to see how drastic of a change in travel there’d be, and essentially review the state of travel in the NBA Playoffs.

The Method

I used the world atlas to calculate “air travel miles” from cities in each team’s name, meaning, these distances reflect “Toronto to Cleveland” and not Toronto Pearson International Airport to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. For example, here’s the breakdown on the Golden State Warriors:

On all road teams in the first round, distance was added to their first game. For example, since the San Antonio Spurs start in San Francisco, they first need to travel there to start the series, so I counted the distance. You’ll see that for the Warriors above, that distance wasn’t added.

From there, distance is calculated from a game-to-game basis, and I did my best to account for traveling nuances to help provide the best picture. Say towards the end of the series against the Pelicans, the Warriors had to travel from New Orleans to San Francisco, and then back to Houston. In a 2-3-2 format, the Warriors would’ve jumped over to Houston from New Orleans and saved miles and time. The 2-2-1-1-1 format takes a huge toll on teams.

Finally, because David Stern brought the NBA Finals to the 2-3-2 format, I think I’d honor that specific occasion by referring to this format as the STERN format.

Distance, and the Playoffs

This is the bracket from this years’ playoffs which serves as a reference point for the Top 16 seeded playoff presented further down the piece. Let’s look at the breakdown of travel by team from this year.

Keep in mind that, the more a team wins, the more they travel. The most telling thing on the graph is that the New Orleans Pelicans traveled more than the Cleveland Cavaliers while playing in two playoff series.

The San Antonio Spurs accumulated more miles in a gentleman’s sweep compared to that of the Milwaukee Bucks who played in one series that stretched to seven games.

The Portland Trail Blazers were swept having to travel to New Orleans, while the Indiana Pacers’ series in the first round went seven games.

The Utah Jazz ended up traveling more than the Boston Celtics, even with the relatively short distance to Oklahoma City. The Celtics had two out of three of series played reach seven games.

If travel is such a concern for the NBA, then the STERN format would do wonders in saving time and money, while also being a significantly greener option for the environment. It’s even more interesting when the STERN format doesn’t really help with travel in sweeps and five-game series, as told by the Warriors distance table above. Let’s see what this season could’ve looked like with Top-16 seeding:

I’d tried to stick as closely to seeding rules as possible given this season’s overall regular season standings, but even the NBA has mentioned that if the playoffs were to change seeding format, then the regular season would have to change schedule as well. Depending on how such a feat is laid out, the standings could look a lot different. You’ll notice that there was actually one team change, in that the Denver Nuggets reserved a spot in the playoffs over the Washington Wizards.

Instead of conferences, in the graphs below you’ll see that the side consisting of the Rockets is noted as the “A” conference, and the Raptors’ side is noted as the “B” conference.

I stuck as closely as possible to real playoff results and then referred to regular season results to determine outcomes. The bracket isn’t unreasonable, outside of the fact that the Toronto Raptors would’ve probably made it further under realistic circumstances, but as far as distance is concerned:

In the top 16 format, we see both top Western Conference teams being separated in a way that has them meeting for the NBA Finals. For Houston, this seeding had added a ton of miles for their traveling but consider that they’d played one additional series while still having to play the Warriors in the Finals.

You can see that teams from the former Eastern and Western Conferences start meeting each other earlier in the playoffs, and considering how early the Cavaliers have to exit, it’s no wonder Lebron isn’t a fan of reseeding.

Teams in the South seem to really be the ones suffering in terms of air travel no matter the format, especially the Pelicans and the Rockets. The set of teams in a particular region that aren’t paired with the likes of one another would suffer the most in regards to air travel. Specifically, teams like the Rockets, Spurs and to a lesser extent the Mavericks and Pelicans, would acquire the most miles year over year. This is because the density of NBA teams in the area is low since most teams are located on the coasts. Also, the four teams aren’t all likely to take up a quarter of playoff spots every single year, so they’re pretty much guaranteed not to get paired with a geographically close opponent in each other every year. Therefore, forget about west vs. east travel. Will somebody think about the South?

To further this point, especially with Portland’s early exit, the Warriors also became isolated and were forced to travel quite a bit. However, should the Blazers make it again next year alongside an improved Los Angeles Lakers, then the Warriors would get a higher chance at alleviating travel. Still, this might be somewhat of an outlier in terms of distance traveled since there are a bunch of teams on the west coast bound to start making the playoffs a bunch again, right?

At this point, it’s probably best to get a breakdown of distance traveled in each situation. I’ve displayed the graphs below on top of each other for better comparison. A reminder on the second graph, that not all teams in “A” or “B” conference are all Western or Eastern Conference teams.

For this particular year, top 16 seeding adds about 13,304 extra miles traveled playing under 2-2-1-1-1 format. This result totally undershot the NBA’s estimate of 40,000 added miles during the playoffs in this format, which is why it’s imperative we understand where they’re coming from. I predict that it’s an extreme estimate where it assumes the Lakers making it, Cavaliers dropping out, and then adding another coastal team into the mix. Or this could be accounting for a type of doomsday scenario where all coastal teams get into the playoffs, causing travel stress.

What we also now know is how little teams in the Eastern Conference are traveling during the playoffs, and the new seeding would equalize distance traveled for all teams. In other words, teams in the Eastern Conference seriously need to pick up the slack with travel.

The STERN format placates all travel worries. On competition, it might not even matter all that much since playing in STERN obviously offers the same number of home and away games. While the better team ends up at a disadvantage in the first five games, the series could end up going longer on average. At the end of the day, don’t fans and owners want longer series amongst the top teams in the NBA?

Playing in a STERN format for a top 16 seeding playoff is the best solution in terms of reducing total distance travel and competitive fairness. If the greatest concern is meeting the demands of fans’ desire to truly see the top 16 teams play in the playoffs while also dampening the stresses or costs of increased travel, then the league should consider a STERN top-16 Playoff format. This option gives the fans the top 16 teams for playoff competition, while actually helping owners reducers travel from the current format.