Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are putting
aside, you know, the day -to -day noise of the
trade deadlines and the all -star festivities,
and we're looking at something a bit more sinister.
Sinister is a strong word, but when you look
at the mechanics of what we are about to discuss,
it might be the only word that fits. And we're
talking about the NBA playoffs. But I want to
be clear right off the bat, if you are tuning
in expecting a simple who is going to win in
June prediction show, You are in the wrong place.
Not what this is. We aren't doing bracketology.
We are doing an autopsy of the system itself.
We are looking at this two -month -long torture
chamber that the league has constructed to break
teams down physically and mentally. It really
is a machine. We think of it as a tournament,
but it's actually a nutrition model. It is designed
to filter out the lucky, the frail, and the merely
good until only the absolute most adaptable organism
is left standing. And the timing for this conversation
couldn't be better. It is February 18th, 2026.
The all -star break is in the rearview mirror.
We are staring down the barrel of the 2026 postseason.
And quite frankly, I am still recovering from
the absolute insanity of last year. The 2025
playoffs. The 2025 playoffs broke my brain a
little bit. We saw things statistically that
shouldn't happen. We saw a 64 -win Cleveland
team meltdown. We saw the thunder finally ascend.
And it made me realize that I don't think we
talk enough about how the format dictates the
result. Right. We just watch the games. But the
rules of engagement, the literal math of the
bracket, change everything. It's the perfect
time to peel back the layers because the system
we are watching starting in April 2026, this
high stakes, globally televised, multi -platform
spectacle didn't just fall out of the sky. It
is a Frankenstein's monster of 80 years of tinkering.
It's the result of weird experiments in the 1950s,
massive controversies in the 2000s, and a constant
battle between fairness and entertainment. So
that is the mission. We are going to decode the
gauntlet. We're going to look at the hidden mechanics
of the bracket, the play -in era that has totally
changed the value of the regular season and the
history of the upsets that defied logic. And
we have to talk about the media shift because
starting in two months, the way you, I, and everyone
listening watches these games is changing fundamentally
with the new broadcast deal. Oh, absolutely.
The era of the regional sports network is officially
dead and buried. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Let's start with the structure. Section one,
the modern gauntlet. Let's do it. To the casual
observer, the NBA playoffs are just the best
teams playing basketball. Yeah. But when you
actually lay out the volume, it is staggering.
It is a war of attrition. You have 16 teams in
the main bracket. Eight from the East, eight
from the West. 16 teams. Four rounds. Every single
round is a best of seven series. That means to
hoist the Larry O 'Brien trophy, you have to
win 16 games against the highest level of competition
in the world. And you could play as many as 28
games to do it. Theoretically, yes. If every
series goes seven games, you are playing a third
of a regular season after the regular season
ends. Just think about that. After playing 82
games, you might have another 28 to go. The wear
and tear is just baked into the design. It's
the point of the design. Everyone knows it's
a best of seven. But I want to drill down on
the format of those seven games. Because this
is something the casual fan glosses over, but
the coaches obsess over. It's the 2 -2 -1 -1
-1 format. This is critical. For years, specifically
in the finals, the NBA used a 2 -3 -2 format
to save on travel. Right. I remember that. You'd
play two at home, then three on the road, then
two back at home if needed. But they scrapped
that in 2014 and went back to 2 -2 -1 -1 -1 for
everything. So what does that mean in plain English?
The higher seed hosts games one and two. The
lower seed hosts three and four. Then, if necessary,
it alternates. Game five at the higher seed,
game six at the lower, game seven back at the
higher. Why does this specific order matter so
much? Is it just about that game seven? Game
seven is the headline, sure. Everyone talks about
home court for game seven. But the real strategic
pivot point is game five. Game five, why? In
a best of seven series, when the series is tied
2 -2, the winner of game five wins the series
something like 82 % of the time. It's an insane
historical advantage. The pivot game. Exactly.
Under the old 2 -3 -2 format. The lower seed,
the worst team, was hosting that crucial game
five. It gave them a disproportionate advantage.
So the team that fought all year for the better
record was actually at a disadvantage in the
most important game of the series. Precisely.
It was a flaw in the logic. By switching to 2
-2 -1 -1 -1, the league ensured that the team
with the better regular season record gets to
host the most important swing game of the series.
So it's an attempt to make the regular season
actually mean something. Because otherwise, if
you lose home court advantage effectively by
game five, why burn yourself out in March chasing
wins? Exactly. Home court advantage isn't just
about sleeping in your own bed, though that helps.
It's about the whistle. It's about your role
players shooting better at home and specifically
controlling the environment for game one, game
two, game five and game seven. You earn that.
But here's where it gets messy. We say higher
seed gets the advantage. That's usually determined
by record. But every April without fail. we end
up with a logjam. I feel like last year in the
West, specifically, there were three teams tied
with 50 wins on the final day. How do they actually
untangle that knot? It is a hierarchy of sorrow
for the team that loses the tiebreaker. It gets
very granular. Okay, walk me through it. The
first tiebreaker is simple, head -to -head winning
percentage. Which makes those random Tuesday
night games in November actually matter. They
matter immensely. If the Mavericks and the Suns
finish with the same record, but the Suns beat
the Mavs 3 -1 in the season series, Phoenix gets
the seed. This is why you see teams fighting
so hard in seemingly meaningless games late in
the year. They are securing the tiebreaker. Okay,
but what if they split the season series 2 -2?
That happens all the time. Then it goes to division
winner. If one team won their division and the
other didn't, the division winner gets the nod.
So winning the division still has some small
benefit, even if it doesn't guarantee you a top
seed anymore. A very small one, yes. A tiebreaker.
Now, if they're in the same division, it goes
to division record. Who had the better winning
percentage against their immediate neighbors?
Okay, so we're getting deeper. If that is tied,
we go to conference record. Who was better against
the West or against the East? Then winning percentage
against playoff teams in your own conference.
And then winning percentage against playoff teams
in the other conference. Wow. It just keeps going.
And then if we are truly in the twilight zone
and two teams are identical twins in every metric.
Don't tell me it's a coin flip. Please don't
tell me that. It is effectively a coin flip.
It's technically point differential total points
scored minus total points allowed across the
whole season. Okay. That's at least a skill -based
metric. It is. But if that is tied. Yes, they
draw lots. It comes down to a random drawing.
Can you imagine? 82 games, countless hours on
planes and gyms, and the difference between hosting
Game 7 or traveling for Game 7 coming down to
a name drawn out of a hat. It hasn't happened
for a major seed in the modern era, but the rule
is written in ink. It's the break glass in case
of emergency protocol. That is wild. Okay, so
that handles the one through six seeds. But we
have to talk about the appetizer. The play -in
tournament. The best thing the NBA has done in
20 years, hands down. You think so? Because I
still hear purists complaining that it devalues
the regular season. Why should a 7th seed who
won 45 games have to play for their life against
a 10th seed who won 35 games? The purists are
missing the forest for the trees. I get the argument.
I do. But look at what it replaced. What's that?
Before the play -in, what did teams seeded 9,
10, 11 do for the last month of the season? Tank.
They benched their starters and lost on purpose.
Exactly. They would lose on purpose to get a
better draft pick. You had unwatchable basketball
for a month. Now, the 10th seed has a pulse.
It keeps 20 teams competitive until the final
week of the season. The fan engagement is through
the roof. For the listener who maybe tunes out
until the finals, walk us through the mechanics
because it is a little confusing. It's a double
elimination bracket for the top tier and single
elimination for the bottom. Very simple. Seeds
seven and eight play each other. The winner is
the seventh seed. Boom. They are in. They get
to go home and rest. And the loser of that game.
The loser isn't out. They drop down. They get
a second chance. Meanwhile. The ninth seed plays
the tenth seed. And this is the danger zone.
This is the terrifying game. Loser goes home
immediately. Season over. No second chances.
The winner of that 9 -10 game then plays the
loser of the 78 game for the final spot, the
eighth seed. So if you are the seventh seed,
you have two chances to win one game. If you
are the tenth seed, you have to win two games
in a row on the road just to get the right to
be slaughtered by the first seed. Correct. But
slaughtered is a strong word because as we've
seen, these play -in teams are battle tested.
That's a good point. They enter the first round
in rhythm, having just played two high stakes,
high intensity games. While the first seed has
been sitting on their couch for a week, getting
massages and maybe losing their edge. That's
the classic rust versus rest argument. And we
saw it perfectly last season. The 2024 -25 Miami
Heat. The zombie heat part two. You can't kill
them. They finished 10th. By all rights, a mediocre
season. They should have been booking tee times.
Instead, they go into the play -in. They beat
the Bulls, the ninth seed. Then they go to Atlanta
and beat the Hawks, the eighth seed, in overtime.
And suddenly they're in the playoffs. And not
just in, they were dangerous. They took the Celtics
to six games in the first round because they
were already in playoff mode. The Celtics were
still, you know, warming up. It changes the psychology.
It turns the end of the season into a desperate
scramble. But let's zoom out. Because this streamlined,
high -stakes machine we have in 2026, it is a
far cry from where we started. Oh, the early
days were the Wild West. It's almost unrecognizable.
Let's move to Section 2. From chaos to order.
Because I was reading up on the 1947 BAA playoffs,
the precursor to the NBA, and I genuinely thought
it was a typo. It reads like someone who doesn't
understand sports designed a tournament. It's
completely counterintuitive. So usually the whole
point of seeding a tournament is that you want
your two best teams to meet in the finals. Right.
You want the crescendo. Right. One versus two,
the clash of the titans, that's the dream matchup
for the league, for the fans, for TV. Explain
to me what they did in 1947. It defies logic.
They took the two division winners, the two best
teams in the league, the Washington Capitals
and the Chicago Stags, and they forced them to
play each other in the semifinals. Immediately.
Not the conference finals, the semifinals. Immediately.
A best of three series. So one of the two best
teams was guaranteed to go home early. It's like
having the Super Bowl in the divisional round.
Okay, that's bad. But what were the other teams
doing? This is the crazy part. The four runners
up. the second and third place teams from each
division were thrown into a separate runner's
up bracket. A loser's bracket. Sort of. They
played best of three series against each other.
So you had the mediocre teams playing a full
tournament on one side while the two best teams
killed each other on the other side. It was two
separate tournaments happening at the same time.
So the winner of the best team series then had
to play the survivor of the mediocre team bracket
for the title. Yes. And because the mediocre
bracket had more teams and more rounds, the winner
of the best team series had to sit around and
wait for days, losing their rhythm, getting cold.
That's unbelievable. The Philadelphia Warriors
came out of that runner's up bracket and won
the first championship. It was a system that
effectively punished you for being too good in
the regular season. They scrapped it pretty quickly,
as you can imagine. That is baffling. But then
they pivoted to something that might be even
worse in 1954. The round robin. The 1954 experiment.
This was the brainchild of a league that was
desperate for ticket sales. They were struggling.
They thought, hey, elimination games are scary
for fans. What if we just guarantee everyone
plays everyone? More games, more tickets. Like
a group stage in the World Cup? Exactly. Three
playoff teams in each division. They played a
double round robin. Everyone played everyone
else home and away. Four games guaranteed for
each team. The top two teams from the group advanced
to the conference finals. I mean, in theory,
that sounds fair. You get a good sample size,
you can't get bounced on one bad night. In theory,
yes. In practice, it was a disaster for integrity.
Danny Biasone, the owner of the Syracuse Nationals,
and the guy who eventually saved the league by
inventing the shot clock, hated this format.
He pointed out the obvious flaw, match fixing.
Oh. Think about it. If Team A has already won
enough games to clinch the hashtag one spot,
and they are playing Team B in the final game,
and Team B needs a win to knock out Team C, what
incentive does Team A have to try? None. They'd
rest their stars. They'd rest their stars. Or
worse, there were rumors of gentlemen's agreements
to manipulate who advanced. It created scenarios
where losing was actually beneficial. So you
could effectively handpick your opponent for
the next round. By losing on purpose. Exactly.
It stripped the competitive fire out of the games.
The fans hated it because there was no do -or
-die tension until the very end. The league scrapped
it after one year and never looked back. Thank
God. I can't imagine LeBron or Luka playing a
meaningless round -robin game in May. The discourse
would be unbearable. It would be unwatchable.
A total farce. So we move to brackets. But the
length of this series has always been a debate.
We are used to best of seven. It feels biblical.
But for a long time, the first round was a sprint.
It was a best of three for a while, which is
just chaos. Then it was a best of five for decades.
It wasn't until 2003 that the NBA finally made
the first round of best of seven series. Why
the change? Was it just money? More games equals
more TV revenue? I mean, we can't pretend money
wasn't 90 % of the reason. Of course it was.
An extra home game for at least eight teams is
a massive financial windfall. Right. But there
is a competitive argument, too. In a best -of
-five series, variance plays a huge role. If
a lower seed gets hot from three -point range
for two nights, or if the star of the higher
seed twists an ankle and misses three days, the
series is over. The upset happens. A whole season's
work is gone in a flash. So a best -of -seven...
stabilizes the result. It reduces the fluke factor.
Correct. It is much, much harder for a worse
team to beat a better team four times than two
or three times. It favors depth, coaching adjustments,
and endurance. It's a truer test of which team
is actually better. But sometimes the rules create
unfairness even with seven games. We have to
talk about 2006. This is the moment that broke
the seeding model. The Southwest Division disaster.
A perfect example of unintended consequences.
Set the scene for us. What was the rule that
caused the problem? Okay, so in 2006, the league
was set up so that if you won your division,
you were guaranteed a top three seed. It seemed
like a nice reward. Hang a banner, get a top
seed. Sure. Makes sense on the surface. But the
Southwest Division was historically good that
year. You had the San Antonio Spurs with Duncan
Parker Ginobili, and you had the Dallas Mavericks
with Dirk Nowitzki at his absolute peak. Both
of them won 60 plus games. They had the two best
records in the entire Western Conference. So
in a fair world, they are the one and the two
seeds. They meet in the conference finals. In
a fair world, yes. That's the matchup everyone
wanted to see. But they were in the same division.
And because San Antonio won the division by a
hair, they got the hashtag one seed. Dallas,
despite being the second best team in the league
by record, couldn't be the hashtag two or hashtag
three seed because the other division winners,
Phoenix and Denver. got those spots automatically,
even with worse records. So Dallas was forced
down to what, the hashtag four seed? Hashtag
four seed. And if you know how a bracket works,
one plays eight, four plays five, and then the
winners play one plays four in the second round.
They were on a collision course. Exactly. The
two titans of the West were on a collision course
for the semifinals. And that's exactly what happened.
Spurs versus Mavericks. It was arguably the greatest
series of the decade. I remember it. It was incredible
basketball. Game seven went into overtime. Dirk
Nowitzki making that legendary three -point play.
Manu Ginobili fouling him. It was legendary stuff.
But it happened a month too early. It happened
in the second round. It was the de facto Western
Conference Finals. The winner, Dallas, then had
to play the Phoenix Suns in the actual conference
finals, which felt anticlimactic by comparison.
The league realized they had punished excellence.
So they fixed it. By August of that year, they
changed the rules. seeding is now based strictly
on record regardless of division winning your
division is now just a tiebreaker that 2006 series
directly led to the system we have today it's
a great example of how the gauntlet isn't static
the league is constantly patching the software
when it crashes and usually the crash involves
a fan base being absolutely furious that's the
best motivator for change speaking of furious
fan bases let's pivot to section three the giant
slayers Because as much as the league tries to
engineer fairness with best of seven series,
sometimes the math doesn't work. Sometimes the
underdog just punches the giant in the mouth.
The upsets. This is why we watch. It's the hope
that the impossible can happen. I want to talk
about the psychology of the upset. Because we
always say defense wins championships. But when
an eighth seed beats a first seed. It's usually
not defense. It's chaos. It's variance. And it's
matchups. That is the key word. Sometimes a first
seed is built to beat the other top teams, but
they have a specific weakness. Maybe they are
small or they struggle against fast guards. And
the eighth seed just happens to be the one team
perfectly constructed to exploit that. It's not
about being the better team overall. It's about
being the better team for seven specific games.
That's it. It's a tactical nuke. Let's run through
the Hall of Fame of eight seeds. The teams that
shouldn't have won but did. Where do we start?
The grandfather of them all is the 1994 Denver
Nuggets. Dikembe Mutombo on the floor, clutching
the ball, crying. It's one of the most iconic
images in NBA history. That was back when the
first round was best of five. The Seattle Supersonics
had 63 wins. They were a juggernaut. Gary Payton,
Sean Kemp, they were supposed to walk to the
finals. And Denver. Denver was 42 -40. They barely
made the playoffs. Seattle went up 2 -0. It looked
over. The brooms were out. And? Denver won three
straight, game five in Seattle. Mutombo had eight
blocks in that game. It was the first time it
ever happened. It broke people's understanding
of the league. It proved that momentum is real.
Then you have the 1999 Knicks, the lockout year.
A weird season. 50 games. The Knicks were an
eight seed. They made it all the way to the finals
before losing to the Spurs. They were just a
tough veteran team that got hot at the right
time. But the big one for the modern era, the
first in a best of seven, is the, we believe,
Warriors. Right. 2007. This one feels special
because the Warriors were, frankly, a weird team.
They were a chaotic team. Baron Davis, Steven
Jackson, Matt Barnes, a bunch of guys other teams
didn't want, but they were coached by Don Nelson.
Deli ball. And who was the first seed they were
playing? The 67 -win Dallas Mavericks. Coached
by Avery Johnson. Don Nelson's former protege,
the drama. Exactly. Nelson knew exactly how to
beat the team he used to coach. He knew all their
plays, all their tendencies. He went small ball
before it was popular. He put small, quick defenders
on Dirk Nowitzki and just swarmed him, fronted
him, never let him get comfortable. And Dirk,
who was the MVP that year, had a miserable series.
One of the worst series of his career. The Warriors
ran them out of the gym. The crowd in Oakland
was so loud, it felt like the building was shaking.
That series taught a generation of basketball
fans that matchups matter more than record. Dallas
was the better team in a vacuum, but Golden State
was their kryptonite. Precisely. And then we
have to talk about the modern era, the zombie
heat of 2023. This is the ultimate proof of concept
for the play -in. Miami looked dead in the water.
They lost their first play -in game to the Hawks.
They were trailing the Bulls in the second one.
They barely scrape in as the eighth seed, and
they face the Milwaukee Bucks, the title favorites.
Giannis gets hurt in game one, which is a huge
part of it. You can't ignore that. True, but
he came back. He came back, but Jimmy Butler
had already turned into Michael Jordan. He averaged
37 points in that series, that 56 -point game.
Yeah. It was just an out -of -body experience.
It wasn't just him. The Heat shot the lights
out from three. Caleb Martin, Gabe Vincent, guys
you've barely heard of were playing like all
-stars. They won in five games. It wasn't a fluke.
They physically beat up the Bucs and out -executed
them. And that trend is continuing. The lower
seeds are getting more dangerous. We have to
talk about the 2025 playoffs just last year.
The 2025 Golden State Warriors. Another one.
It feels like history rhyming. You had an aging
Warriors core Steph Curry in his twilight entering
as a seventh seed. Everyone said they were too
old, too slow. The dynasty is dead. The legs
are gone. We heard it all year. They played the
Houston Rockets, the second seed. Young, athletic,
hungry. The up -and -coming team. Everyone picked
Houston. I picked Houston. It seemed like the
logical pick. The passing of the torque. Big
matter. The old guys dragged the young guys into
the mud. It went seven games. It was ugly. Grind
it out. Half -court basketball. But in game seven,
experience mattered. The Rockets panicked. They
started taking bad shots. The Warriors didn't.
They just kept running their sets. It was the
first time a seventh seed beat a second seed
since... Well, since the Lakers did it two years
prior in 2023. It really feels like the seed
number next to the name matters less now than
it ever has. Is that fair to say? That is the
big shift. The talent gap between the hashtag
one seed and the hashtag eight seed used to be
an ocean. Now, with the way talent is distributed
around the league, it's a creek. If the hashtag
one seed sleeps for five minutes, the hashtag
eight seed will drown them. But if we were talking
about the hardest road, the team that truly defied
the gauntlet. It has to be the 1995 Houston Rockets.
The lowest seed to ever win it all. It's the
gold standard for underdog runs. They were a
sixth seed. A sixth seed. Think about what that
means. They did not have home court advantage
in any series. Not the first round, not the second,
not the conference finals, not the NBA finals.
They started every single series on the road.
That sounds exhausting, just saying it. You start
every series needing to steal a game on the road
just to survive. And look at who they beat. It
wasn't like they had an easy path. In the first
round, they beat the Utah Jazz with Stockton
and Malone, a 60 -win team. In the second round,
they went down 3 -1 to the Phoenix Suns with
Charles Barkley, a 59 -win team. They came back
and won. Unbelievable. In the conference finals,
they played the San Antonio Spurs, a 62 -win
team, with the league MVP David Robinson. And
Hakeem Olajuwon just destroyed him. He put on
one of the most dominant performances in playoff
history. And then the finals. Then they swept
the Orlando Magic, a 57 -win team, with a young
Shaquille O 'Neal and Penny Hardaway. They beat
four 50 -plus win teams in a row, three of them
with 59 wins or more. It is statistically the
hardest championship run in the history of North
American sports. It gave us the famous Rudy Tomjanovich
quote after they won. Don't ever underestimate
the heart of a champion. It makes you wonder
if we'll ever see a team replicate that. A sixth
seed or lower winning it all. With the parity
we have now and the play in creating these battle
hardened low seeds, I wouldn't bet against it.
We came close with the heat in 23. Before we
leave the topic of oddities. Has a bad team ever
made the finals? I mean, a team with a losing
record? It's happened, but mostly in the black
and white TV era when there were like eight teams
in the league. Right, the sample size was tiny.
The 1957 St. Louis Hawks and the 1959 Lakers
both made the finals with losing records. The
league was just different. Participation trophies.
Basically. But the modern example, the one that
people still talk about, is the 1981 Rockets.
They went 40 -42. A losing record. How does a
losing team even make the playoffs? The West
was very weak that year, but the real reason
was Moses Malone. He was an absolute monster.
He just decided he wasn't going to lose. He dragged
that team kicking and screaming all the way to
the finals before losing to Larry Bird and the
Celtics. It gives hope to every .500 team out
there. Maybe we're just the 81 Rockets in disguise.
Usually you are just a bad team, but hope is
a powerful drug. Flip the coin. Section 4. The
agony of excellence. Because for every Cinderella
story, there is a giant that tripped on its own
shoelaces. The tragedy of expectations. This
is where legacies are broken. We mentioned the
2007 Mavs. 67 wins. MVP season for Dirk. Lost
in the first round. That franchise had to carry
that shame for four years until they finally
won in 2011. It haunts you. It defines you until
you overcome it. You look at the 2016 San Antonio
Spurs. They won 67 games, a historically great
team. Coy Leonard's first DPOY, I think. Right.
In any other year, they are the greatest team
in history and the talk of the league. But that
was the year the Warriors won 73. So the Spurs
were quietly historically great. overshadowed
and they didn't even make the conference finals
they ran into the oklahoma city thunder in the
second round with kevin durant and russell westbrook
the thunder were big long and athletic they just
overwhelmed the spurs 67 wins and you're watching
the rest of the playoffs from cancun and we have
to acknowledge the pain from last year the 2025
graveyard it was a bloodbath for the top teams
2025 was brutal for the top seeds. You had the
Cleveland Cavaliers, 64 wins. They looked unstoppable.
Evan Mowgli was the defensive player of the year.
Donovan Mitchell was an MVP candidate. They had
it all. And they ran into the Indiana Pacers
in round two. A team they should have beaten,
a team they handled in the regular season. But
the Pacers played at a pace, no pun intended,
that Cleveland couldn't handle. They ran them
off the floor. Tyrese Halliburton was unguardable.
And Boston. The Celtics won 61 games. Looked
like the class of the East. Lost to the Knicks
in the second round. Jalen Brunson just put the
team on his back. It just reinforces that the
regular season is a marathon and the playoffs
are a cage match. Being a good marathon runner
doesn't help you in a cage match. Let's talk
about the royalty. The teams that actually survived
the gauntlet repeatedly. Who owns the history
books? It's still the big two. The Boston Celtics
with 18 titles. The Lakers right behind them
with 17. There is a massive drop off after that.
It's basically two franchises and then everyone
else. It is. The Warriors have seven. The Bulls
have six. And that's pretty much it for the big
dynasties. The Bulls stat always blows my mind.
The Jordan Bulls. The Six for Six. They are the
only franchise. With multiple finals appearances
to never lose in the finals. Yeah. Sick, sick.
It's the Jordan mystique. Once they got there,
they were inevitable. Most teams, even the dynasties,
have scars. The Lakers have lost in the finals
15 times. The Celtics have lost five or six times.
The Bulls never felt that pain on the biggest
stage. It's a perfect record. Speaking of inevitable,
we have to mention the 2017 Warriors. The peak
of the mountain. Kevin Durant joins a 73 -win
team. It was just... They went 16 -1 in the playoffs.
They almost went undefeated. They won their first
15 games. They swept the first round, swept the
second round, swept the conference finals against
the Spurs, took a 3 -0 lead in the finals against
LeBron's Cavs. They almost ran the table. That
level of dominance is almost boring. It's like
watching a movie when you already know the ending.
It was, but it was brilliant, ruthless efficiency.
That's a different kind of gauntlet survival.
And the other end of the spectrum. The sadness.
The droughts. The teams that can't even get into
the gauntlet. The Sacramento Kings held the record
for a long time, 16 years without a playoff appearance.
From 2007 to 2022, kids were born, learned to
drive, and graduated high school without seeing
the Kings in the playoffs. They finally broke
it in 2023 with that Light the Beam team. So
who holds the crown of sadness now in 2026? As
we speak, the Charlotte Hornets have the longest
active drought. They haven't been in the postseason
since 2016. It's been a decade of rebuilding
bad draft picks and just bad luck. Ouch. Sorry
to any Hornets fans listening. Maybe with the
new lottery odds. Well, let's not give false
hope. It's not. It's a tough road. Okay, let's
move to the final piece of the puzzle. Section
5, the business of basketball. Because the gauntlet
isn't just a physical test anymore. It's a content
engine. And in 2026, the engine is getting an
upgrade. A massive upgrade or a massive complication,
depending on how many subscriptions you have.
We are entering the first year of the new 11
-year media rights deal. It kicks in specifically
with these upcoming playoffs. So if you turn
on your TV in April expecting to see the game
on the usual channel. you might be looking at
static. Right. So the big players are changing.
You still have Disney, ABC, and ESPN. They aren't
going anywhere. ABC has aired every NBA final
since 2003, and they will continue to do so.
That tradition holds. The biggest games are still
on free, over -the -air TV. Okay, so the finals
are safe on broadcast TV. That's good. What's
new? NBC is back. For fans who grew up in the
90s, this is huge. Are we getting round ball
rock? The John Tesh theme song? I need to know.
Reportedly, yes. They paid for the rights. It's
coming back. NBC Universal is a major partner
now. They, along with their streaming service
Peacock, will be carrying a significant chunk
of the early rounds and some conference finals.
And then there's the elephant in the room. Or
the smiling box in the room. Amazon Prime Video.
For the first time, we have a purely streaming
partner for the NBA playoffs. Not a channel that
also has a streaming app. A streamer, period.
So we aren't just talking about simulcasting,
where the game is on ESPN and also on the ESPN
app. We're talking about games that are only
on Amazon. Correct. Approximately a third of
the first and second round games will be exclusive
to Prime Video. If you don't have the app, you
don't watch the game. The days of being able
to watch every game with just a basic cable package
are over. That is a huge barrier for the older
demographic. This is just where the world is
going. But there is a silver lining for the local
fan, right? Something about blackouts. Yes. The
death of the blackout. This is a huge win for
fans. Explain that. Because nothing makes fans
angrier than blackouts. In the old days, the
first round was weird. It was aired on national
TV, like ESPN or TNT. But it was also aired on
your local regional sports network, like Bally
Sports or NBC Sports Boston. If you lived in
the local market, the national feed was often
blacked out to protect the local channel. So
you'd pay for cable, you'd see the game listed
on TNT, you'd turn to TNT and get a this game
is not available in your area message. Exactly.
Infuriating. Under the new deal, the playoffs
are fully nationalized. The local RSNs are cut
out completely. If the game is on Peacock, it's
on Peacock for everyone in the country. If it's
on Amazon, it's on Amazon for everyone. No more
blackouts. It streamlines the access, but it
fragments a payment. You need cable for ESPN,
a Peacock subscription for NBC. And a Prime subscription
for Amazon. It's the bundle 2 .0. Instead of
one big cable bill, you have three or four smaller
streaming bills. And the conference finals are
changing, too. Remember, it used to be a strict
rotation. East on TNT one year, west on ESPN,
then flip. The rotation is getting wider. ABC
-SPN will always have one conference final. That's
locked in. But the other conference final will
now rotate annually between NBC and Amazon Prime
Video. Wait, so in a couple of years, the Western
Conference Finals, one of the biggest sporting
events of the year, could be exclusively on a
streaming app. That is the plan. In 2027, for
example, the Eastern Conference Finals might
be on Amazon Prime. It is a brave new world.
It reflects the fact that the NBA knows its audience
is young. cord cutting and digital first they
are betting the farm on streaming it's gonna
be fascinating to see the ratings will grandpas
in ohio figure out how to cast prime to their
tv to watch the calves they will if they want
to see the game fandom is a powerful motivator
necessity is the mother of invention true So
we've covered a lot. We've gone from the 1947
BAA chaos to the 1995 rockets miracle to the
2025 upsets and now to the 2026 streaming wars.
It's a lot to digest. The whole system has been
in constant motion for 80 years. When you look
at this entire machine. The gauntlet. What is
the one thing that sticks with you? What is the
big takeaway? You know, I keep thinking about
that 1995 Rockets team, the sixth seed. And I
connect it to what we saw with the eighth seed
Heat making the finals and what we saw last year
with the Warriors winning as a seventh seed.
I think we are seeing a fundamental shift in
the soul of the NBA. How so? What's the shift?
For 50 years, the narrative we told fans was
the regular season matters. You need a top seed.
You need home court. And statistically, that's
still true. The higher seed still wins most of
the time. But. But spiritually, I think that's
dead. Dead. That's a strong word. I think the
regular season has become a qualifier. It's just
about getting a ticket to the dance because the
gauntlet is so specific, so grueling and so matchup
dependent that once you are in, I truly believe
the 10th seed that fought its way in is just
as dangerous as the first seed if they are healthy
and clicking at the right time. So you're saying
the best team isn't necessarily the one with
the best record anymore. The best team is just
the one that survives the attrition. Exactly.
The gauntlet doesn't care what you did in November.
It doesn't care about your 15 game win streak
in January. It asks one question. Can you beat
this specific team with their specific style
four times in two weeks right now? And more and
more, the answer from the lower seeds is yes.
That is a terrifying thought for the Celtics
and Thunder fans out there who are cruising to
a top seed and a beautiful thought for everyone
else. Chaos is beautiful. It makes it all worth
watching. Well, the 2026 playoffs are starting
in April. I encourage you to watch them differently
this year. Don't just watch the ball. Watch the
format. Watch the coaching adjustments after
a Game 3 loss. Watch the desperation in the play
-in game. And realize that you are watching a
machine designed to break these humans down.
And see who is left standing at the end. Thanks
for listening to The Deep Dive. See you on the
court.