Just pointing out that 7 or the 8 play-off teams out of the West will finish with 50 wins or more. Thats insane. Dallas and Memphis play tonight and the winner will finish in the 7th seed with 50 wins while the looser will finish in 8th seed with 49 wins. Toronto & Chicago currrently holds the 3rd & 4th seeds in the East with 48 wins and its very likely at least one if not both of those teams would miss the play-offs in the West. Which one of those teams are better than Memphis and Dallas, or even Phoenix? Neither I think and their records are in a significantly weeker conference is the proof. I thought this must be some kind of record for 7 of the 8 teams in the West finishing with 50 or more wins but in 2009/2010 all 8 of the Western Conference Play-off teams finished with 50 wins on the season. I remember when 50 wins was the mark of a truely great team, now if you don't have at least 50 wins there is a decent chance you don't even make the play-offs in the West. So much for parity, but I'm not complaining... just amazed at how good the West is.
East Teams have a combined 37% winning percentage against the West. That is basically saying the East plays the West slightly better than the Astros played the AL or NL the past couple of years.
I think the bigger problem is how weak the east is, it is not as bad as in 2003-2004 (http://www.nba.com/standings/2003/team_record_comparison/conferenceNew_Std_Cnf.html) but it is close. Since there are so many terrible teams in the east the west has to win more games.
Wow, Minnesota had best record in the West. I had forgotten that they had that good a record in regular season with Garnett.
