Hoops

What would the 9-team finals format be?

#709271 Perth have a placeholder GM now, that's why they did nothing in January to address their slide. Compliments Gleeson well but a JvG type with more hair brained ideas would be even better.

There's also the fact that the playoffs come and go so quickly, and more playoff games would be a good thing. Expanding the league is the way to get there though, and I think you need at least 11 teams before moving to a top six.

The only thing stopping Sydney from turning into a juggernaut franchise is JVG. He is better for parity than any salary or points cap. Does he have a brother that Perth could hire? Gleeson alone is not quite enough.

"the parity in the league was amazing a couple of seasons ago but the longer we go under Larry's system of the rich get richer and the poor can get stuffed it is unlikely to ever be that close again"

It was still quite a tight league last year. And this year Cairns look like genuine top 4 contenders. Then you have Sydney coming up. The competition for top 4 spots will be hot this year.

"Shouldn't change. It's one extra team. We live in a bit of a "everyone gets a prize" era where you have to be seen to be exceedingly fair."

It's not all about fairness but keeping fans interested. Aussie fans don't like meaningless games so if you keep teams in the playoff hunt longer those fans are more likely to retain interest. Of course you need balance, because if it's too easy to make it then you have the same effect of meaningless games because everyone makes it.

Hence why 50% seems the right number. 5 would be the closest to that in a 9 team league.

the parity in the league was amazing a couple of seasons ago but the longer we go under Larry's system of the rich get richer and the poor can get stuffed it is unlikely to ever be that close again

Shouldn't change. It's one extra team. We live in a bit of a "everyone gets a prize" era where you have to be seen to be exceedingly fair. But no, we shouldn't need to come up with mathematical magic to shoehorn more teams into finals when we have a league of 9.

You guys have short memories. It was only a couple of a seasons ago that the majority of the league were within 1-2 games of each other at the end of the season.

There are more than 4 quality teams in most years.

IMO, increasing it to a top 5 is largely pointless unless the 5th placed team gets a home game out of it, therefore I wouldn't bother doing a one-off 4-vs-5 game. Who benefits from that?
(Personally I'd keep it a top 4 until there are 10 teams anyway)

Top 10 to be safe

4th vs. 5th play-in I like it. We need more playoff games.

Ok lets be honest here, an extra team still using the 2+2 home and away season games vs each team means we may eat into where the playoffs are maybe a week or 2 later so why fiddle with the 3 game series semis and 5 game grand final series.

Give us more games during regular season but keep playoffs as is... just play them on better days (Friday and Sunday instead of Thursday and Saturday) like we have had in the past.

There were a couple of disgraceful years where the NBL was top 8 out of an 11 team comp or something. There is a very small asterisk against the Wildcats’ 31 year finals streak as they benefitted from this in one of the years coming, if I recall correctly, 6th or 7th out of 11 teams, with a losing record.

With 4 of the top 8 currently in the finals, 50% of the field has a chance. Add another team and make it top 6, 66+% of the field are in the finals. Why? Let's talk again when we get to 10 teams...

6 out of 9? what next - honour certificates for the other 3 as well?
Keep it at a top 4 please. 5 absolute max. adding 1 team to the league but 2 teams to the playoffs would be ridiculous.

Yes, as long as there are no lucky loser shenanigans. Playoffs should be win or go home.

Top 5 with a single elimination game between 4/5 could work.

You would only go top 5 if the #1 team got a week off.

Week 1: 1: bye, 2 v 3 Qualifying; 4 v 5 Elimination
Week 2: 1 v Winner 2/3, Loser 2/3 v Winner 4/5, Loser 4/5 out
etc etc

You would only go top 5 if the #1 team got a week off.

Week 1: 1: bye, 2 v 3 Qualifying; 4 v 5 Elimination
Week 2: 1 v Winner 2/3, Loser 2/3 v Winner 4/5, Loser 4/5 out
etc etc

It was top four when there were nine teams in 2011 and 2012.

Skytrans Cairns Taipans will announce a player signing tomorrow. Can't wait to hear who it will be!
Go Taipans!#OrangeArmy