The CBA's 7-Point System: A Modern Application

Do the WNBA playoffs look any different with this old standings format?

In addition to being a developmental league, the NBA G League, the official minor league of the NBA, often serves as a sort of petri dish for potential new rules and regulations. Coaches’ challenges came from the G League, as did the 14-second shot clock reset. Since 2019-20, the G League has used the One Free Throw Rule, under which fouled shooters take just one free throw worth all of the points for their shot—rather than two or three—outside of the last two minutes and overtime.

For a few decades before the NBA founded the now-G League, the independent Continental Basketball Association (CBA) served these purposes. Y’know how fouled three-point shooters get three free throws? It wasn’t always that way. Prior to 1994-95, they only got two. Then John Starks got fouled on a three while down three late in a Finals game and hit both free throws but still lost, and they changed the rule almost overnight. Meanwhile, the CBA had used this rule since 1984.¹ The breakaway rims that are now taken for granted in professional basketball were not a thing in the NBA until 1981, only implemented after the CBA tested their efficacy during the 1980-81 season.

One CBA quirk that hasn’t lived on is the way in which they determined their standings: the 7-Point System. Under this system, teams got three points for winning the game and one point for each individual quarter they won (with each team earning a half-point if a quarter ended in a tie). This system, which the league used from 1981-82 until it folded in 2009, resulted in a vastly different atmosphere at CBA games from the moment it was instituted. According to a Sports Illustrated feature on the system, games became closer and more hard-fought, and fan interest also rose, as all portions of every game suddenly became meaningful.

In practice, this didn’t make the standings deviate from standard win percentage all that much. With three quarter wins worth as much as one game win, teams would only see their standing change if they were notably proficient in winning quarters of games they lost or losing quarters of games they won—think of a team that jumps out to a big lead in the first quarter and then puts it in park for the rest of the game, or one that wins their first three quarters by a couple points each and then loses the fourth badly to drop the game. But every once in a while, you’d get a standings board that looked like this:

The 1984-85 CBA standings, as shown on Wikipedia.

The Tampa Bay Thrillers were the winningest team in the league, but it wasn’t even enough to win their own division because the Albany Patroons won so many more quarters.

I’ve wondered for a while how a system like this might be perceived in a true major league with a more noteworthy national following. The WNBA regular season just recently ended, and this season presents a good opportunity for me to run some numbers, for three reasons:

1. The WNBA in general is a good testing ground for this concept because there are only 240 total games in the regular season, resulting in fewer overall calculations and a higher chance for ties and near-ties in the standings.

2. The WNBA sends eight of its 12 teams to the playoffs, and there was a tight, three-team race for the 8-seed this year that came down to the final day.

3. I am a fan of the 2-seed Minnesota Lynx and I’m most afraid of the 3-seed Connecticut Sun, whom Minnesota will now face in the semifinals. Connecticut only beat out the 4-seed Las Vegas Aces by one game, so I’m curious as to whether some alternate standings system might have placed the Lynx and Sun on opposite sides of the bracket.

We here at The Low Major are no stranger to arbitrarily reseeding postseason brackets. In fact, I would consider it our favorite pastime.

So let’s apply the 7-Point System to this year’s WNBA standings and see what happens!

The Real Standings

First of all, here were the true regular season standings.

I mentioned earlier the 8-seed race that came down to the final day. Due to various head-to-head and three-team tiebreakers, any one of Atlanta, Washington, or Chicago could have ended up in the playoffs. Atlanta had the best shot—both because they began the day a game ahead of the other two and because their game was against New York, who had already clinched the 1-seed and had nothing to play for—and they’re the ones who ended up getting in.

Chicago’s chance was especially slim because of the other seeding race that had yet to be decided: the 3. Connecticut started the day a game ahead of Las Vegas, who beat them in all three head-to-head matchups on the season, so if they lost and Vegas won, the two teams would have switched places. Vegas did beat Dallas pretty handily, but Connecticut played Chicago and blew them out for good measure.

Indiana and Phoenix also both began the day a game apart for the 6-seed, but Indiana swept Phoenix head-to-head, so their games were meaningless.²

Of course, in the 7-Point System, the points could shake up any number of ways regardless of the more traditional tiebreakers. Would this system have resulted in a different 3-seed? 6-seed? 8-seed?

Let’s find out.

The 7-Point Standings

Here’s how the standings would have looked under the 7-Point System.

We have a new 8-seed! The Washington Mystics sneak into the playoff picture by the very slimmest of margins, edging out Atlanta and—more distantly—Chicago. Just imagine the discourse if this actually happened: a 14-win team (who, by the way, started the season 0-12) beating out a 15-win team on account of some seemingly arbitrary points system. I imagine it would be the WNBA’s analog to last year’s CFP committee selecting Alabama over Florida State, but at least in this case the powers that be would have something concrete to point to.

The 3-seed remains unchanged, as Connecticut is actually closer in points to 2-seed Minnesota than they are to 4-seed Las Vegas, and the 6-seed also stays with Indiana. So this wouldn’t have prevented this Lynx/Sun semifinal matchup I’m dreading or even given either team a different first round opponent. Drat.

My favorite thing about the above table is that it shows pretty clearly when each title contender tends to take their foot off the gas. Las Vegas and Seattle sputter out of the halftime break and conserve energy for crunch time, whereas Minnesota and Connecticut come out guns blazing in the third quarter and coast in the fourth. Meanwhile, New York just blitzes everybody from the jump.

Let’s look into the data some more.

Peripheral Stats

Here’s all 240 regular season games charted by how many points the winning team received in the standings.

This is pretty intuitive. A six-point game means that the winner won three individual quarters, which is pretty typical for a comfortable win, as basketball is a game of runs and it’s hard to keep an advantage over your opponent for all 40 minutes. A five-point game usually means that the winner won two individual quarters,³ which is pretty typical for a hard-fought game that somebody had to win. Combined, these two values account for nearly 75% of all results.

Then you’ve got the tweeners: the half-point values. Tied quarters were a little less common than I expected, and they almost never happened more than once a game; two games had two tied quarters and just one game had three (Atlanta at Los Angeles in the first game of the season for either team).

The most interesting results to me, and I assume also you, are the extremes: the four-point squeakers in which the winner only won one quarter and the seven-point blowouts in which they won all four.

There aren’t many of either, so I’ll just list them out.

The Fours

Here are the five 4-point games with the winners (and the quarter they won) bolded:

1. Phoenix (88) vs. Atlanta (85): May 18 | 24-15, 19-22, 22-23, 23-25

2. Connecticut (83) vs. Minnesota (82): May 23 | 14-23, 23-12, 15-16, 20-21 (won OT 11-10)

3. Washington (83) vs. Chicago (81): June 14 | 24-10, 23-26, 21-23, 15-22

4. Washington (82) at Los Angeles (80): July 2 | 18-22, 20-21, 14-21, 30-16

5. Seattle (83) at Dallas (81): September 13 | 19-28, 18-22, 34-13, 12-18

All of these were one-possession games—one of which required overtime—in which the winning team won their sole quarter by at least nine points. All four quarters were the blowout quarter at least once.

Washington’s two appearances here illustrate just how different these games can look. On June 14, they jumped out to a big lead against fellow 8-seed wannabe Chicago and nearly blew it. Then, on July 2, they struggled against the worst team in the league and needed a gigantic fourth quarter to avoid disaster.

The Sevens

No, we’re not talking rugby. Here are the nine 7-point games with the winners bolded:

1. Connecticut (70) vs. Phoenix (47): May 28 | 15-13, 23-12, 15-10, 17-12

2. New York (78) at Atlanta (61): June 6 | 15-12, 23-20, 17-16, 23-13

3. Washington (97) vs. Dallas (69): June 22 | 20-13, 31-21, 22-17, 24-18

4. Seattle (91) vs. Minnesota (63): July 12 | 25-22, 25-15, 22-19, 19-7

5. New York (103) at Los Angeles (68): August 15 | 29-10, 28-18, 25-20, 21-20

6. Las Vegas (83) vs. Atlanta (72): August 30 | 22-18, 22-20, 21-20, 18-14

7. Las Vegas (90) vs. Chicago (71): September 3 | 17-13, 30-18, 21-20, 22-20

8. Connecticut (87) vs. Chicago (54): September 19 | 20-15, 26-20, 23-6, 28-13

9. Los Angeles (68) at Minnesota (51): September 19 | 19-13, 19-17, 15-14, 15-7

Given that Minnesota only lost ten games all year, I did not expect two of those to be sevens, and I especially did not expect one of them to come at home to the worst team in the W, but they both make sense in context. League MVP runner-up Napheesa Collier was out with an injury in the Seattle game and the team was still figuring out how to adapt. And the Los Angeles game was on the last day of the season, by which point Minnesota was already locked into the 2-seed, so they precautionarily sat Collier and All-Star Kayla McBride because they had nothing to play for.

The last day of the season also gave us the aforementioned Connecticut blowout over Chicago that, in the real world, clinched the 3-seed for Connecticut and eliminated Chicago from the playoffs. In this fantasy land, Chicago and Atlanta getting seven’d twice each while Washington earned a seven of their own is exactly why the Mystics get to be the sacrificial lamb to New York as the Sky and Dream stay home.

Final thoughts

To be clear, I’m not really advocating for the WNBA or any league to adopt the 7-Point System. It’s more confusing than using team records and its rewards system is completely arbitrary, not to mention that the W thankfully isn’t having any problems drawing fans right now and doesn’t need to resort to silly gimmicks. I just enjoy digging into basketball history and crunching numbers. That’s just the kinda guy I am.

But also, the Mystics definitely should have made the playoffs. Going from throwing 30% of the season in the garbage to technically playing for a championship would have been amazing, even in the WNBA, where two-thirds of the league makes the playoffs. It’d be like if an NFL team started 0-5 and made the playoffs, which has literally never happened. I can’t believe the Dream ruined this for us.

Ah well. Maybe next year.

1. I dunno if this is a hot take or what, but I actually think this is a bad rule. Getting fouled on a three is the most efficient possession in basketball by a mile, and watching players try to bait defenders into fouling on the three-point line is really, really obnoxious. Just make it three shots in the last two minutes and overtime to prevent Starks 2.0 and we’re good.

2. In theory, they weren’t entirely meaningless. The second tiebreaker, after head-to-head record, is record vs. teams at .500 or better, and Phoenix’s last game decided whether results against them would be added to that total. But that tiebreaker would have only come into play for the 8-seed, and in that scenario, Phoenix’s results wouldn’t have mattered. Shoutout to Reddit user BAlpha90, whose post explains it very well.

3. In two cases, it meant that the winner won one quarter while two quarters ended in ties.