With one very obvious exception, the first round of the NBA playoffs has been a two-week bore. There were a pair of six-game series that lacked any real drama, three sweeps and two other tidy five-game sets. Only the Spurs and Clippers provided the kind of drama and intensity that drive the postseason and turn us all into raving insomniacs.



For six games it played out like a conference final. Momentum was illusory, last stands were compulsory and even home court advantage was fleeting.



Rarely does a Game 7 live up to the previous six in a series this tight, but here again was the exception. There were 31 lead changes and 16 ties before Chris Paul went all Isiah Thomas circa 1988, draining a game-winner on one leg and one healthy hamstring. If you watch pro basketball every night from November to June, a night like this is what you live for: two teams, playing exceptional basketball and not a villain or a luckless loser in sight.



The Spurs made almost half their shots and 40 percent from three. The ageless Tim Duncan had 27 and 11 and there were times when he wasn’t even the best player on his own team (take a bow, Danny Green and Boris Diaw). San Antonio did all that, on the road, and the Clippers were still better. Paul was sublime, Matt Barnes had the game of his life and Blake Griffin recorded a 24-13-10 triple double that was somehow lost in the shuffle.



Game 7 was so perfect, even its imperfections had a noble quality to them. It surpassed anything that had come before it, and may live on as the ultimate contest this postseason has to offer. And therein lies the problem.

Why was this a first round series?



By most subjective measures, the Spurs and Clippers were among the four or five best teams in the league this season. By record, they were both in the top six. Even accounting for the outdated rules of conference alignment, they shouldn’t have been anywhere near each other in the first round of a tournament that takes more than two months to complete and prides itself on being the truest postseason test of all the major sports.



There is nothing random about the NBA playoffs except for the seeding system. Forget conference inequality for a moment, which makes the whole thing even more absurd. How do we account for a system that grants a division winner like Portland the fourth seed with the sixth-best conference record?



The NBA prides itself on its flexibility and adaptability, yet it clings to some odd traditions with nods to maintaining regional rivalries that no longer have any relevance. There is nothing historic about a division that includes teams from Portland, Minnesota and Oklahoma who were thrown together into some loose interpretation of geographical alignment because there was nowhere else to put them.



Following a Board of Governors meeting in mid-April, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver touched on divisions and the seeding issue.



"Depending who you asked in the room, the division rivalries mean something to some and not as much to others," Silver said. "Maybe it's those who've been around the league longer think more about what it means to win a division title. Some of the newer owners aren't as focused on what it means to be in a division. And that's something I've been thinking a lot about as well, whether those distinctions aren't as meaningful to fans as they once were."



They’re not. The reason we sit through 82 games and four rounds of playoffs is to narrow the field down to the very best, not to crown a half-dozen division winners. That everything came down to the final day of the season only magnified what had been a thrilling and chaotic regular season. The Spurs started the day in second place and finished in sixth, which left them at the mercy of the fates. For once, the Basketball Gods were against them.



No one will shed any tears for San Antonio, outside of its home base. The Spurs play the schedule game as much as any team in the league, resting players in certain situations and always keeping the bigger picture in mind. More often than not, that’s helped them excel in the postseason. This time it cost them.



Still, it’s hard to not think about what could have been. A straight seeding system would have had the Clippers playing the injury-depleted Blazers with the Spurs matched up against the Grizzlies. Yes, the latter series would have been tough and nasty, but it would have given us a truer picture of where these teams stood in relation to one another.



The Clips would likely be fresh and ready for Houston instead of banged up and exhausted, and it’s not going out on too much of a limb to suggest we’d have that Spurs-Warriors matchup we’ve all been dreaming about since March.



Instead we got this amazing series whose only drawback was its placement in the first round. There has to be a better way.