It's really getting absurd that NBA is still keeping the old play-off structure. 9 teams in the east has a record lower than 50%, while there are only 5 such teams in the west. Note that western teams faces teams in the same conferences 4 times. If eastern teams were to face western teams 4 times per season, I wonder how their records would look like. I don't think this is fair and I think Stern should do some substantial stuff other than changing balls and changing it back. I want to see all deserving teams in the play-offs. Thoughts?
I was reading an article about this the other day... http://sports.aol.com/fanhouse/2008/02/04/the-east-will-ruin-our-playoffs/
I agree, a new format should be considered. I think instead of East and West, they should go like the NFL like a NFC and an AFC.
This would allow the East to get more lottery picks and hopefully make the teams better so they could enter into the top 16. I wish it was like this.
i used to agree with Stern that the conference parity IS cyclical, and things even out over time. but it's been pretty riduculous over the past decade. I think the western conference has proven its dominance. right now it seems like it would only make sense to seed the top teams regardless of conference. atlanta or the putrid bulls in the playoffs over possibly the rockets/warriors/nugs? come on...
^Exactly. The fact that solid teams in the West don't get in to the play-offs and bad teams in the East do just add to the disparity. Portland is a good team. They will be even better next year regardless. They're much better than the 7th and 8th seeds in the East. And they'll get a mid round draft pick while East's 7th and 8th seeds will draft after them and probably won't get a player as good. And when you think that the West has arguably 3 teams that will be left out but could easily make it in the East, it just gets worse and worse.
I don't see the rationale behind this. Why don't they just pick top 16 teams and let the rest of the teams get the lottery picks? Theoretically all the bottom teams will get stronger eventually, no matter where their teams are located. It's cyclic anyways. I mean, look at the NJ Nets, they went 2-8 and they still sitting at 8th spot in the East. That's not even funny when Rox went 8-2 and still not even in the play-off picture.
I think that's what he meant. If you listed all the teams in record order then the remaining teams after the 16 would get lotto balls. This season that would be mostly east teams, leveling things out a bit more after a couple of years.
Top 16 teams would require every team plays the same schedule, not the current 4 game aginist conference team and 2 game non-conference team. But this makes much more sense. On another note, the eastern first round playoff just doesnt mean anything. There are only two good teams in the East. We only lost 4 games to the east this year so far IIRC.
devil's advocate - since each conference plays it's own members more often, is a 50 - 32 west team more capable than a 55 - 27 east team? But the east team will get the playoff spot ... I think the league is stuck in the current playoff format because it's the closest you can get to comparing apples with apples, as far as schedule strength goes. Is there another format that will solve all the problems? Maybe, but someone else will have to come up with it, I don't think "put the best 16 records" like the article suggests is the answer. Otherwise, I agree that it would have sucked "watching" Atlanta play while the Rockets sit at home. The rockets will make the playoffs though, so thank God it won't come to that .
Then you could realigned the teams regardless of geographic location. East and West has connotations that you can't bypass. No one is going to believe Seattle is an NBA East team, but if you changed the name to something like the NFL or MLB does then you can put whatever teams you want in each division.
Someone explain to me why the fact that the East/West comparison being "cyclical" even matters in this debate? Does it matter which Conference is stronger than the other? You still have the matter of the unfair playoff picture. If in ten years, the situation was reversed, and the West was much weaker than the East, is it okay then to leave out stronger East teams in favor of weaker West teams?
If you change the schedule so you play each team 3 times (alternate who gets the extra home game each season) then it would make sense to have the top 16 teams. As it stands now, an Eastern team could edge out a Western team by virtue of playing an easier schedule, and you get a similar problem to the one you are trying to avoid.
Here is an interesting article from ESPN's Mark Stein about the imbalance. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/dailydime?page=dime-080112-13 Have You Heard The One About The East? Stein By Marc Stein ESPN.com (Archive) Call it one more New Year's resolution that I have no shot at keeping. That promise to my editors to finally stop gorging on Leastern Conference jokes. How can I resist? All summer we heard the preachings: The East is closing the gap! Guess again. The gulf between the conferences looks wider than ever as we approach the 41-game marker, with nine teams that can claim to be 20-game winners in the West -- NINE -- compared to just three teams in the Leastern. Perhaps you've heard or read that the East is actually faring better than it has for some time in head-to-head matchups with the West. More misleading nonsense. The East indeed entered the weekend at 94-108 against Western teams, for a seemingly respectable winning percentage of .465, but that mark drops sharply to 55-91 when you exclude the Leastern's 39-17 fortunes against the four pushovers at the bottom of the West that are already making lottery plans: Clippers, Grizzlies, Sonics and Wolves. Ten of the West's other 11 teams have winning records in head-to-head games, with Portland at 6-6. The Least is 55-91 against those 11 teams, for a success rate of .376. And you don't even want to see the numbers if we exclude the Celtics from the conversation, since Boston's spotless 10-0 mark against the West accounts for a healthy chunk of the Leastern's limited cross-conference joy. "I'm very surprised," Pistons guard Chauncey Billups said. "Very surprised. After some of the moves that teams made, I thought that the East was going to be coming back." Only at the top, as it turns out. Boston's resurrection seems to have re-energized Detroit, too, and who would really be surprised if either of those powerhouses wins it all? Especially since the West playoffs -- and maybe just getting to the West playoffs for presumed contenders like Utah and Houston -- will be so grueling. That's a big, big deal after so many lopsided, anti-climatic NBA Finals matchups already this century. But even a champion from Least, like Miami in 2006, isn't going to change how we look at 10 or 12 other teams in a sad-sack conference. It doesn't work that way, which is a reality that the Heat have slammed home. Think about it. If you examine it objectively, Miami has played exactly one month of basketball at a West-worthy level since Pat Riley came back to coach the Heat in December 2006. One hot month, though, is all that was needed to claim the Least's berth in the NBA Finals for two seasons running, as Miami and then LeBron James' Cleveland Cavaliers proved. That's the same James, incidentally, who disclosed last weekend why he's not too worried about the Cavs' indifferent start or the fact that two key teammates (Larry Hughes and Sasha Pavlovic) are shooting less than 35 percent from the floor: "The Eastern Conference is so bad right now." LeBron was obviously referring to everyone chasing the Celtics and Pistons and, again, who can argue? The Cavs are one of just four perennial playoff teams that are underachieving significantly, along with New Jersey, Chicago and the unraveling Heat. The Knicks and Bobcats were supposed to be playoff dark horses after their draft-night acquisitions of Zach Randolph and Jason Richardson, respectively, but their seasons are already over … unless you believe that Charlotte, with 26 of its final 41 games on the road and all 15 of its West road games still to come, has a second-half rally stored up. The worst part? The gap should be closing. Leastern teams were the big winners in the landscape-changing 2003 draft when LeBron, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh joined their ranks … and it could have been Carmelo Anthony as well if Detroit took Melo or Bosh over Darko Milicic. Orlando landed the Shaquille O'Neal-sized prize in the 2004 draft in Dwight Howard. Milwaukee and Atlanta had the top two picks when Deron Williams and Chris Paul were on the board in 2005; Toronto and Chicago had the first shots in the 2006 draft at two difference-making young Blazers: Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge. After last summer's trade flurry, furthermore, how can denizens of the Least -- who welcomed in Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, Rashard Lewis, Randolph and Richardson last summer -- complain about personnel misfortune? In a league where small-market teams like San Antonio and Utah have thrived for ages, thanks to the field-leveling help they get from the salary cap and luxury tax, you can only conclude that Western Conference teams, in general, are simply managed better. In general? They're better at team-building around their franchise guys in the West, judging by the seven teams on a 50-win pace as of Friday morning. There will actually be some merit this June to the recent advent of made-for-TV trophy ceremonies at the end of the conference finals, because you've got to win a championship of sorts just to get out of the West. As one West personnel man says: "Why are San Antonio, Phoenix and Dallas so nervous? Portland was supposed to be rebuilding and you see what they're doing. And the Lakers are for real, I'm telling you." Adds one Western Conference scout: "I really don't want to pile on, but it feels like I'm watching the junior varsity when I have to go to a game [in the East]. The teams are worse, the games are worse and some of the arenas are half-empty." I'm sure David Stern will gather us all in New Orleans for his annual All-Star Weekend address and tell us that the Least will rise again because everything in the NBA is "cyclical." Good thing I didn't even pretend to resolve to be less cynical in 2008, because I can't resist reminding him that Leastern teams, entering this season, were more than 500 games under .500 against the West since the start of the 2000-01 campaign. The Least's record in that span was 1,275-1,789, good for a winning percentage of .416, with the West winning five of seven championships. Quite a cycle for the Leasterners, huh?
Before you can change the playoff system to a top 16, you have to change the regular season games to be balanced so you have to play everybody 3-5 times which wouldn't be too bad. Would be nice to see the eastern teams more often.
The AFC was originally comprised of the original AFL teams. To this day that's what mostly they still have. That's why teams like the Texans (ok, its really the Titans) and Cowboys are in different conferences. Too many rivalries and tradition for all out geographical realignment which I think they tried to do when some of the new teams came in. In MLB, the AL was created because the original NL wanted to shrink the size of the league way back in our grandparents days, so the AL created teams where the NL abandoned. Then the AL adopted the DH rule and that became the distinct difference for the 2 leagues. In the NBA, the ABA only had 4 teams that were merged with the NBA when they did merged, not enough for a separate conference. That is the distinct difference between the NBA and the NFL and MLB, their conferences are separated because of an upstart league taking on the traditional league, the NBA doesn't have that luxury of separating teams other then geographical purposes. The East suck because they have more mismanaged teams there, it's that simple. There are as many big market teams in the East as in the West. There is no sensible way to realign the NBA now to even the so called odds, East teams just needs to fire a bunch of people and stop making dumb personnel decisions. I'm kinda for the Sweet 16 idea, but why even have divisions if we do that...conferences can be there just for All-Star team designation I guess.
At the current pace, a 47-win team (Blazers) and a 48-win team (Rockets) are scheduled to receive lotto picks-- and a chance for a top-3 pick of the things play out right. On the other hand, there are a couple of well-under-.500 teams in the East that are schedule to not receive lotto picks, and have no shot at top 3 picks. This can only perpetuate the disparity.
