It has been the case for years that the East was an afterthought in the power struggle of the NBA. And, this offseason, it looked like the situation was not improving. But, it's now looking like the East has closed the gap some on the West, even if they haven't quite leveled the field. With improvement in Cleveland, Washington, Chicago and Orlando, they aren't looking too bad. The West has 5 teams over .600: Phoenix, San Antonio, Seattle, Sacramento, and Dallas; plus I can't believe Minn will continue to be this bad. The East now has 4: Miami, Detroit, Cleveland, and Washington (though I think Was is a paper tiger), plus Indiana will be good again once they recover from the suspensions. Last year, the West had 6 teams over .600: Minn, San Antonio, Dallas, Memphis, LAL, and Sacramento. The East had 2: Indiana and Detroit. At the mid-level, The East has improved considerably. Last year, I think they had 4 teams go to the playoffs with .500 or less. This year, they have 2 so far, but barely so: 17-18 Chi and 17-20 Phi. Percent-wise, Philly is only .067 behind Houston (currently in 8th). And, at the bottom, the East has few dogs. They have 4 teams at or under .400 -- Atlanta, Charlotte (expansion, after all), New Jersey, and Milwaukee -- and the West has 3 -- New Orleans, Golden State, and Utah. Last year, the East had 6 dogs: Orlando, Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, and Toronto. The West had 2 dogs: Clippers and Suns. The rise and fall of club fortunes has been interesting. In the West, gainers have been the Sonics and the Suns (plus kinda the Clips, but they still suck). Western teams losing ground from last year are: Timberwolves, Grizzlies, Nuggets, Jazz, and Lakers. In the East, the gainers are the Heat, Wizards, Magic, Cavs, and Bulls (and marginally the 76ers). Those losing ground are the Nets, Pacers (for now), Hornets, and Bucks. I don't know what it is that has caused the shift, which I didn't see coming (except in Orlando and Miami) in the offseason. The West has a number of teams that were geared up to be something special and just fizzled, namely Denver and Utah, plus a couple of others that are clinging to .500 like Minn and Memphis and Houston. And, after years of having a handful of powerhouses, the West looks wide-open after San Antonio and Phoenix, whereas, the East seems to have a solid rotation of contenders: Detroit, Indiana, Miami, Cleveland.
despite the fact the east has narrowed the gap, i still had to vote the west is far stronger. it's just that in the past the west was far far stronger to the point of being ridiculousness. with washington and cleveland surprising, and then being added to the detroit (finally back on track), miami (the only team that really scares me to beat the west in the finals), and indy (w/o artest won't be what they are) trio, the east finally has some real top teams to put forward. and with orlando, and apparently chicago, being decent, they have a little depth. and with some teams actually have better records against the west (orlando 11-5, a few other teams thrown in there), you can see the east at least catching up. but the suns and spurs are still the top dogs to me right now, and the kings and mavs are as good as anybody with the possible exception of miami right now. cleveland and washington just don't strike me as being as solid as their record. and then of course there is the horrible fact that 17-20 leads a division in the east. plus i think miami, the east's best team, has pretty much built their record against the east with a mediocre west record. but's it's nice to see the east not suck so horribly finally and see our barely .500 record actually keeping us in the 8th slot right now. of course, shaq is getting older and the west still has kobe, tmac, duncan, and garnett. i can't believe kobe, tmac, and garnett led teams will be down forever or that denver won't get better or that utah won't get better when AK47 returns, or that all of the east's surprise teams will keep on going as well as they are right now.
Overall, the West holds a 130-100 mark against the East this year, but the most telling isn't overall team records, but records against the conferences. Of all the East teams, only Orlando at 11-5 has a record against the West that is significantly above .500 (yet for some reason the Magic are under .500 against their own conference - Mobley and Steve struck again! ). As francis 4 prez pointed out, the Heat are a good example. Miami is 20-2 against the East ... one big reason I would put money on them to come out of the East playoffs (another being Shaq). However, they are 8-9 against the West. I do think the East gained some ... though a lot of that is because they sent the single worst team in the league from their conference to the West (who thought the old Charlotte would be worse than the new Charlotte?).
I think by the time the regular season is over the conferences will be a lot closer than we thought they would be this season. Indiana is finally recovering from its roster being depleted and Detroit is finally hitting its stride. The Suns should also fall back to the pack a bit. I am surprised that the Heat has done so poorly against the West. The thing about the West's recent dominance over the East is that it seemed like six teams could make the Finals the past few seasons and no Eastern Conference team would have a chance to beat them. Its not the records as much as there are now three teams that can likely compete for a championship in the East, Miami, Detroit, and Indiana. Plus the East has added depth, Washington, Orlando, and now it looks like Chicago. Its going to be really interesting to see how the latter three hold up and its going to be interesting to see how the Suns, Sonics, Kings, and Mavs finish. I believe the West has a lot of Wild Cards that can either solidify its dominance for another year or the gap maybe significantly narrowed by the end of the season.
I agree, West is still best. Baisically, I'll rehash what has been said. Maimi, the best team in the east, doesn't play all that well against the West, as idicated by thier record against Western Conference teams. The ironic thing is, as Clutch proved, Orlando has a winning record against the West, but a losing record in thier own division. I think that is just funny. Anyway, think this way, if the Cavs were in the west, would thier record be any better than say......the T'Wolves? Us (the Rockets)?? Grizzles? All these teams are hovering above the .500 mark, and in my opinion, are all better than the Cavs. Lastly, just look at the Atalntic Division. Seriously. A team with a sub .500 record is going to be the #3 seed in the playoffs out there. That is just disgusting (but hey, between NY, Philly, and Boston, is there really anything pretty about them?)
The West still has the best bigs, the East outside of the O'neals are nothing but guards and small forwards so until that changes the West will always be the best. Yao, Garnett, Dirk, Amare, Gasol, Odom, Duncan, Brand, Boozer, Randolph, Martin rule the West. Iverson, Francis, James, Arenas, Hill, Hughes, Jamison, Hinrich, Marbury, Pierce, Wade, Redd, Kidd, Carter run in the LEast.
Yeah, but that's just because the three division winners get the top three seeds. The other two divisions have three teams over .500.
i was going to take out charlotte and new orleans interconference records from the total interconference record but didn't b/c i was too lazy to get the total number. but since Clutch posted that it was 130-100 now we can just subtract new orleans 1-14 record against the east to get 129-86 and charlotte 4-8 record against the west to get 121-82. that's fairly close to .600 ball and it seems like whenever i've added it up in past seasons the west was usually playing around .600 ball against the east. so just going by last year's teams not a whole lot has changed. but new orleans and charlotte are both allowing the east to catch up big time, a combined 5-32 against the east. and i forgot to mention charlotte as another team along with orlando that plays the west better than the east. and is there a place that gives that 130-100 number or did you just add it up from the standings? considering all the stats there are all over the web it must be somewhere.
This factoid is overwrought. Without the seeding rules, they have the 8th best record in the Eastern Conference. They are 17-20 while the Rockets are 20-18. That's worse but not significantly worse.
