Interesting stat. 187 to 176 is the number of Eastern Confrence Wins to Western Confrence Wins. Now I understand that Boston and Cleveland make up a good chunk of that, but I am still suprised that the East is that far ahead of the west in terms of wins. Is the balance of power starting to change in the NBA?
Alot of people have moved around and draft picks go to the losers eventually the East would have to catch up. The east has more contenders for a playoffs spot now , but the west has 9 legit playoff contenders vying for playoff spots.
It was about time that the East started to compete again, since they were getting the majority of the higher draft picks. However, I don't think that the East will ever display the dominance that the West has over the last 10+ years, since teams like Minnesota and Memphis are really starting to come into their own MUCH earlier than teams like Atlanta, Charlotte, Philadephia, and New York. I expect the entire NBA to be on even ground for the next 5 years or so, and then the West start to display its dominance again.
Someone should also track stats about the West's playoff teams vs the East's playoff teams for this to be accurate, I have the feeling this year is the year some West teams just hit the bottom of the barrel (OKC, Minny, Sactown, Clippers, Golden State), which screws things up. I know the Rockets are 3-1 (wins against Orlando, Atlanta, Heat, loss against Boston)...I'm sure other elite Western teams are also taking their share of wins from the "East contenders".
Keep in mind too that some of the other teams that are normally at the top of the West have had rocky starts to the season because of injury (other than the Lakers) Utah - everyone, much like us Rockets - yeah yall know that situation Spurs - Manu and Parker Dallas is playing below their abilities and I expect the Nuggets to do well against the East as the season progresses. Though I do have to say that the East has improved... other than the Pistons... sigh.
Good veteran west teams are playing for the playoffs... East teams... They are just playing to play. SKEWED But logically the balance always stabilizes and evens out. Actually, the east is superior historically.
East has a few of the best teams. West has a few of the worst teams. That's why the East has a slightly better record. BUT, the second tier teams are concentrated in the West. The #8 East team is 3.5 games behind the #8 West team. That means that the playoffs in the West is still much more competitive than the East.
121 of the East wins have come against East teams. Between them, Sacto and OKC are 0-17 against the East. Golden State have also lost 10 games to East teams. So there's 27 more wins against West teams that, to be fair, are the bottom feeders. That's 148 wins. The remaining record for ALL East teams against West teams is 39 wins and 54 losses. And that's helped out by the fact that the Jazz have gone 3-9 against East teams. Doesn't seem to me that the East is stronger than the West - sure they've caught up a little bit, but it's still the weaker conference. There's 5 'inter-conference games' tonight - the Eastern team has the better record in 3 of them - let's see how they pan out!
I think the main thing this year is that a team's overall record might finally be a true reflection of their conference too. The terrible teams are terrible against both conferences, the bad teams are bad against both conferences, and so on and so on. In years past there would be teams at the end of the year who were like .500 overall but good against the East and bad against the West. Remember the Rockets who were great against the East and .500 in the West and ended up with almost 50 wins? So I hope this theory of overall records being true holds by the end of the year. I hate it when fake good teams make it far in the East and would not have been a playoff team in the West. That was the main injustice of the imbalance in my opinion. An Eastern team in years past would have 50+ wins by just destroying East teams and dying out West. But Orlando looks real this year. They've been competitive everywhere. I hope Atlanta can be like that too. Cleveland and Boston are great everywhere.
Like Orlando and every East team that finished below them last year? 38-14 v the East and 14-16 against the West. It's a damn shame that a good team like Golden State were deprived of a playoff position (28-24 v the West and 20-10 against the East) and we had to watch Orlando, Cleveland, Washington, Toronto, Philadelphia and Atlanta slug it out in the playoffs... And Cleveland (with 3 wins less than GSW) made the Eastern Conference finals???? At least Cleveland and Orlando have both improved this season - but Atlanta (currently 4th in the East) are 3-3 against the West... (a .500 record would place them 10th in the West. Conversely Chicago are 2 wins ahead of Memphis (!) and sitting 8th in the East at 11-13...
can't really compare total wins because the east is still weaker than the west. the west eats each other while the east is dominated by a few teams. gotta compare their own respective conference wins or how many wins the west has over east or east has over west.
The bottom of the west is worse than the bottom of the East this year. That's why the East has more wins.
There are only 5 teams in the East that are worthy of the playoffs. And there are 9 team in the West that are playoff worthy.
Yeah, I don't mind having non-worthy playoff teams in the East make the finals, so long as their records show a true reflection of their crappiness. Dr. Nuegebauer had some great examples from last season. So let's say a bunch of teams from the East make the playoffs with bad records (like around .500 and lower). That's okay with me if their East records and West records are somewhat similar. At least the truth will be extremely evident so that Stern and Eastern apologists will have a harder time spinning it like they have the last DECADE ("oh, well, many champions have come from the East"...dammit! STFU and think please!!). Atlanta might never get any fans so I don't feel so much hate for them when they receive undeserved praise. Sure, last season was a great 1st round playoff showing, and they matched up well vs the Celtics, but it's not like they've all of a sudden done everything right. I like their pieces and I hope they do well, but if they end up 56-26 with a sub .500 record vs. the West, then they'll be just another fake good team. Just go to this link and you can go back to any year since 02 I think to show conference record. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/standings?season=2008 I wish there was a site that had conference records before 02. The point is, I haven't looked at the link, but I can't think of any Western Playoff team that ever had a losing record vs the East, and every year there are many Eastern playoff teams that have losing records vs the West but winning records overall. That was a false record imo, that covered up the truth. I'm just very anti-misrepresentation and the misinformation it leads to.
My beef about the East is that the top two teams don't have to do much to reach the conference finals. In the West, you have to fight real hard in the regular season to just get a decent seed, and then fight in every round to advance. By the time you get to the Finals, you are exhausted physically and mentally. That's just not fair.
The Celtcs played 20 playoff games before reaching the Finals; the Lakers only played 15. Yet, the Celts still dominated the Finals even though they were more mentally and physically exhausted. Earlier round difficulties don't really matter. IMO, the 2nd best team in the playoffs was the Cavs (not the Lakers) and the Celts had to survive them. We may have the exact same scenario coming up where the ECFs are the real Finals. We'll see.
Boston beat Detroit in the Eastern Conference finals last season. They beat Cleveland in the second round.
Cleveland didn't bother me last year. They were 45-37 (28-24 vs the East and 20-13 vs the West). They had inconsistencies throughout the year but were talented enough to tough it out against Boston. They were similar to Golden State in my opinion 48-34 (20-10 vs the East and 28-24 vs the West). The biggest failure of the NBA playoff system wasn't that Cleveland made the playoffs; it was Golden State not making the playoffs while Philly, Washington, Toronto and Atlanta did.
