Now that we are at the end of the regular season, I thought it would be a fun exercise to work out how the playoffs would look under my preferred system.

I have written about it before, but the core ideas are that the top 16 teams make it regardless of conference and the top half of teams can choose their opponents among the bottom half, selecting in order of record. That system provides a ton of incentive to keep fighting hard until the end of the season and removes the arbitrary and unfair luck that pervades the current system. Plus, there would be instant intense rivalries as teams get called out on a national stage.

While the different system would have changed incentives for the end of the season, here is how the playoffs would look (my first tiebreaker was head-to-head and the second was point differential):

"Host" Teams

1. Golden State Warriors

2. Atlanta Hawks

3. Los Angeles Clippers

4. Houston Rockets

5. Memphis Grizzlies

6. San Antonio Spurs

7. Cleveland Cavaliers

8. Portland Trail Blazers

Remaining Playoff teams

9. Chicago Bulls

10. Dallas Mavericks

11. Toronto Raptors

12. Washington Wizards

13. New Orleans Pelicans

14. Oklahoma City Thunder

15. Milwaukee Bucks

16. Boston Celtics

Here, both teams battling for the 8 seed out West make the postseason with the Thunder replacing the Nets and the Suns likely outpace the Celtics with a playoff berth still possible. That said, I will play out the brackets with the teams that made it.

From here, the Warriors would take their pick of the eight lower teams and I expect they would choose the Celtics. Boston made it in with a late run but they would not have the horses to compete with Golden State.

The Hawks would have the next choice and they would choose Milwaukee. The Bucks had a nice season but do not have the offensive talent to make Atlanta sweat out a series and Milwaukee’s defense would have trouble with Atlanta’s ball movement.

In the third spot, the Clippers have a tough choice between Western Conference foes. While OKC and New Orleans had worse records over the full season, the Clippers choose the Wizards because they can neutralize Washington’s strengths and face an unimaginative offense that reduces the risk of exposing their defensive flaws.

After them, the Rockets can choose between the Mavs, Pelicans and Thunder or trust the strength of the West and choose the Raptors. Without Patrick Beverley, facing the Thunder gets substantially scarier for Houston so they turn to the team they are facing in real life: Dallas.

Moving to the second half of the host teams, Memphis actually gets a worse set of options than their opponents in the current system. Considering Mike Conley’s injury, I think they duck OKC and Westbrook in an early round to take on Anthony Davis and the upstart Pelicans.

Next, the Spurs get the Raptors or Thunder and roll the dice on a hurting OKC team they beat by 25 and 39 in the last month.

With only two options left, Cleveland can take either the Raptors or Bulls and make the easy choice to stay away from Chicago.

Finally, the Blazers would have to face the Bulls in a brutal series.

That would produce some compelling first round matchups and also apply in subsequent rounds, leading to some legitimately hard choices and tough series later on.