36 days. 576 games. 72 teams entered at the beginning of July. Now we are into the month of August, and the field has been suitably narrowed.
We took eight groups of nine teams and have taken the top four out of each group. The next four from each group are all playing in the Consolation Bracket over the next couple of weeks. But before we get to a championship bracket reveal, I wanted to break down the field a little bit, kind of like we did last year.
I'm going to start with a look at a stat involving our newly invited guests for this year's tournament and see how the ABA champions handled themselves.
- NBA Teams: 30
- ABA Teams: 2
This was the stat I was most curious about coming in. I almost put all the ABA teams in their own group, but decided I didn't want to give them four automatic berths and shaft the NBA champions. Everyone had a, for all intents and purposes, equal shot at making the Elimination Stage.Kind of amazingly, our champion of the
ABA Preseeding Tournament wasn't one of the two teams that advanced. Our second place team, however, did, as did our fifth place team. The rest generally finished closer to the bottom.
Here's more of a fun look, and one I did last year of a decade by decade look at our advancing teams.
- 50's Teams: 0
- 60's Teams: 1
- 70's Teams: 6
- 80's Teams: 7
- 90's Teams: 5
- 00's Teams: 7
- 10's Teams: 6
This has been a continuing debate since I ran my first tournament back in 2013. My dad, a regular reader of Confessions of a Sportscaster, noted that after the first round of that tournament, roughly 75 percent of the more recent teams in each matchup wound up advancing. That pattern held firm for the rest of the tournament, and was a little further below that mark going into last year's Elimination Round, but not by a statistically significant margin. A majority of the field this year came from 1990 or later, with all but seven appearing from 1980 onward. That meets up with the rough halfway point in our timeline and maintains that 75 percent average.
This next look involves records that made the Elimination Stage.
- 16-0 Record: 0
- 15-1 Record: 0
- 14-2 Record: 3 (3 #1 seeds)
- 13-3 Record: 3 (2 #1 seeds, 1 #2 seed)
- 12-4 Record: 6 (3 #1 seeds, 2 #2 seeds, 1 #3 seed)
- 11-5 Record: 8 (4 #2 seeds, 3 #3 seeds, 1 #4 seed)
- 10-6 Record: 5 (1 #2 seed. 2 #3 seeds, 2 #4 seeds; 1 10-6 team eliminated)
- 9-7 Record: 4 (1 #3 seed, 3 #4 seeds; 1 9-7 team eliminated)
- 8-8 Record: 2 (1 #3 seed, 1 #4 seed; 7 8-8 teams eliminated)
- 7-9 Record: 1 (1 #4 seed; 7 7-9 teams eliminated)
The purpose here is twofold. First and foremost, this is to see a breakdown of how the seedings are getting distributed. This is also a dry run experiment for the upcoming CCIW basketball season, where with the addition of Carroll University there are nine teams now, and I have eight sample schedules to get a good glimpse at how many wins would be needed to break into the conference tournament and how many it would take to win the regular season conference title. Looking at the numbers, it went slighly unexpectedly. I figured the group winning records would be in the 12-4, 13-3, 14-2 neighborhood since the odds of running the table just aren't that likely. We had the one group where the top two teams both finished 13-3. The most jarring thing was having a group with five teams topping 10 wins. I figured 10-6 would be a lock to advance, and we had one team that didn't make it. I debated about doing an NHL-style postseason where the top three in each group would advance, followed by the next eight-best records. This would have resulted in pulling in our eliminated 10-6 and 9-7 teams to join a few of the fourth place teams, ending with an eight-way tie for the final two spots, which based on our established tiebreakers would have pulled an additional two eliminated teams into the field of 32.
Now, you'll notice that these seeds are only listed 1-4. I'm building the Elimination Stage bracket almost exactly the same way I did last year. Our 32 team bracket is being broken up into eight four-team pods, with each pod getting a first place, second place, third place, and fourth place team. Last year, I largely built the bracket randomly except for ordering the group winners to set up the bracket such that the top seeds would play in a normal seeded bracket order. This year, I'm changing that and ordering every team. All of the group winners will be ordered 1-8, then the #2 seeds, and so on to ultimately build a field seeded 1-32, but the only seeds that matter will be 1-4. This will determine home court advantage exclusively for the first two rounds, then be the primary factor for determining home court in the quarterfinals onward. In the event of a tie (e.g. two group winners playing each other), point differential will break the tie. That should settle them all, but in the event it doesn't, my third tiebreaker will be average seed of the three other teams from the group. I doubt I'll need it, but I'd rather have the tiebreaker.
So you've seen a bit of a preview of how the bracket is going to unfold, but here is our tournament field, followed by the bracket.
#1 Seeds: 2013 Miami Heat, 1990 Detroit Pistons, 2012 Miami Heat, 1997 Chicago Bulls, 1992 Chicago Bulls, 1984 Boston Celtics, 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers, 1991 Chicago Bulls
#2 Seeds: 2015 Golden State Warriors, 1987 Los Angeles Lakers, 2011 Dallas Mavericks, 1996 Chicago Bulls, 2008 Boston Celtics, 1971 Milwaukee Bucks, 1983 Philadelphia 76ers, 2001 Los Angeles Lakers
#3 Seeds: 1977 Portland Trail Blazers, 1972 Los Angeles Lakers, 2007 San Antonio Spurs, 2005 San Antonio Spurs, 1980 Los Angeles Lakers, 1976 New York Nets, 1989 Detroit Pistons, 1970 New York Knicks
#4 Seeds: 2014 San Antonio Spurs, 1982 Los Angeles Lakers, 2002 Los Angeles Lakers, 2009 Los Angeles Lakers, 2003 San Antonio Spurs, 1968 Boston Celtics, 1985 Los Angeles Lakers, 1975 Kentucky Colonels
To see the official bracket, click here.
Every matchup from here on out will go like every bracket matchup has gone in Tournament of Champions history: a best-of-seven series played in a 2-2-1-1-1 format. Will the 1996 Chicago Bulls defend their crown and pick up a threepeat? Or will someone else overthrow the dynasty and establish themselves as the greatest team of all time? We'll have the results over the next couple of months, starting next week when I simulate out the results of the first round.
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