So recently there's this popular thing to sit your stars for NBA teams for rest, and this to be seems to be one of those cases where statistics is misrepresented to say whatever you want. I'm not even talking about the entertainment concerns here. Yes, statistics show that if you rest more you'd be less likely to have a major injury or whatever later, though I'm not even sure why you'd need statistics to show something that should be self evident. However, sitting your best players usually causes you to lose the game. For example Cleveland is 0-6 when LeBron doesn't play. If you lose enough games your seeding tends to suffer, and it shouldn't take statistics to show that you're less likely to win overall when you don't have home court advantage or if you've a harder path due to a lower seed. Even in the East where most of the teams are weak playing 4/8 is presumably easier than playing the 3/7 before the final. The funny thing is that San Antonio is the team that made is popular, and the West had quite a few years where there are an odd number of strong teams. For example this year the #3 (Houston) is likely a lot stronger than whoever ends up in #4, and whoever ends up in #7 is likely a lot stronger than #8, so there's a pretty big difference between playing 4/8 versus 3/7 this year. I remember one year Spurs dropped to 6th seed and got knocked out the first round by the third seed that was only a game ahead of them or something, and Poppvich was complaining about how the divisional leader automatically getting the 4th seed screwed them because otherwise they'd be the 5th seed (the divisional winner probably had a worse record than they do). Well, if San Antonio isn't in the habit of forfeiting 5 years a year they probably wouldn't have to worry about dropping a game at the end of the season and fall to #6 instead of #2 or #3. Yes I know sometimes you try to play for seeding and you don't get it anyway, but it's not like you can possibly know this stuff until the very end of the season. There's a reason why great teams don't typically forfeit a bunch of games just to get into the playoff with the 8th seed because that tends to lower your chances of winning even if you're sure you're the best team out there.
I remember there's always these statistics that show say the #1 seed generally only has say a 30% chance of winning which is supposed to be support for not trying to get the best seeding, but I'll bet you that even in those cases there isn't another seed that wins more often than the #1. If for some reason the #3 seed ends up winning the event than the #1 over a statistically significant sample then maybe purposely losing some games is justified, but I'm not aware of any event this is true. Yes the #1 seed having the highest chance of winning is generally because they're the best team to begin with, but having home court (where relevant) + easier selection of opponent matters a lot too. I think this is almost a new excuse, like if you play all the time and LeBron breaks his leg it's clearly your fault for playing LeBron too much, but if Cleveland fell to #3 and then gets bounced before conference finals on the #2's home court on game 7, you'll just hear some generic like 'well true championship team need to win on the road and we didn't do it' and that'll probably fool most people even though it's actually pretty hard to see why any competent coach will somehow be unable to get the #1 seed in the East with LeBron. Yes, having the home court on game 7 doesn't guaranteed a win, but Las Vegas estimates home court as 2.5 points so that's a 5 point turn around and it's certainly a more tangible advantage than having a guy rested an extra day two months ago.
I remember there's always these statistics that show say the #1 seed generally only has say a 30% chance of winning which is supposed to be support for not trying to get the best seeding, but I'll bet you that even in those cases there isn't another seed that wins more often than the #1. If for some reason the #3 seed ends up winning the event than the #1 over a statistically significant sample then maybe purposely losing some games is justified, but I'm not aware of any event this is true. Yes the #1 seed having the highest chance of winning is generally because they're the best team to begin with, but having home court (where relevant) + easier selection of opponent matters a lot too. I think this is almost a new excuse, like if you play all the time and LeBron breaks his leg it's clearly your fault for playing LeBron too much, but if Cleveland fell to #3 and then gets bounced before conference finals on the #2's home court on game 7, you'll just hear some generic like 'well true championship team need to win on the road and we didn't do it' and that'll probably fool most people even though it's actually pretty hard to see why any competent coach will somehow be unable to get the #1 seed in the East with LeBron. Yes, having the home court on game 7 doesn't guaranteed a win, but Las Vegas estimates home court as 2.5 points so that's a 5 point turn around and it's certainly a more tangible advantage than having a guy rested an extra day two months ago.
