It took six months for the Oklahoma City Thunder and Cleveland Cavaliers to put together the dominant regular seasons that helped them gain home-court advantage throughout their respective conference playoffs.

And it took 48 minutes for each of them to lose it.

The 68-win Thunder were stunned Monday night when the Denver Nuggets rallied late for a 121-119 win in Game 1 of their conference semifinal series. Same goes for the 64-win Cavaliers against the Indiana Pacers on Sunday. Let's throw in 61-win Boston, the only other dominant regular-season team in either conference, which lost Game 1 to the visiting New York Knicks on Monday night.

Those should all serve as a warning to the higher-seeded and favored Wolves as they begin their series Tuesday night at Target Center against Golden State, which I talked about on the Daily Delivery podcast.

The three lower seeds who toppled more dominant foes in Game 1 were deemed to have "stolen" the home-court edge in each series, which is an apt description for something that hardly seems fair.

As we consider what happened these last couple days in the NBA playoffs and contemplate those results in tandem with a growing concern about teams coasting through an increasingly less meaningful regular season by resting players at strategic moments, a minor but essential tweak to the league's rules seems obvious:

The higher seed in all three rounds of the conference playoffs should get to play five home games in a seven-game series. They should play Games 1 and 2 at home, Games 3 and 4 on the road, then Games 5-7 (if necessary) at home.

The benefits:

  • Incentivizing regular-season excellence. The NBA season is a long 82-game grind. Veteran teams in particular have figured out when to hit cruise control and/or strategically rest players under the euphemism of "load management." This frustrates fans and many who love the game because it means the stars do not always play even when healthy. It's easy to justify when the reward for dominance over 82 games is primarily just one extra home game each round of the playoffs.
  • Rewarding the best teams. Oklahoma City and Cleveland were the best teams all season. They shouldn't be at a disadvantage after just one loss. The league should want its best teams to make the NBA Finals (where I would argue the current four home/three away split should be maintained for the higher seed).
  • Potentially cutting playoff travel in half. Teams have to travel up to four times in a seven-game series under the current 2-2-1-1-1 format (before Games 3, 5, 6 and 7). In a 2-2-3 format, there would be travel only before Games 3 and 5.

MLB already has things pointed in the right direction by giving the higher-seeded teams in the wild-card round all three home games in a best-of-three series. The NHL might benefit from a renewed format as well, but "load management" and regular-season coasting are not as much of an issue in that league.

The NBA playoffs are fantastic. But they could use a tweak to be even better and fairer to the elite teams.