Look at it from a slightly different angle, as of now the WC has 9 teams with better than 0.500 records, while the EC has only 5 teams of such. Also, as someone has pointed it out, you can pretty much thank the two outstanding outliers in the WC, Thunder and T-pups, for the discrepancy.
Well it depends...how many of those 187 wins come from teams in the West? How many of the 176 wins come from teams in the East? Those are the numbers that I would be looking at.
It would appear you're not looking at them too closely since they're ALREADY POSTED in this thread...
You must have confused this year's Cavs with last year's. Cleveland was no where near the good teams in the West last season. The Celtics let Atlanta force 7 games. That's a testimony of their weakness, not strength. The Lakers had to beat three good teams to get to the Finals. This year is different. Both Cleveland and Atlanta are better, not to mention Orlando. Boston probably has to beat two of these three teams to get out of the East. First round will still be easy though. In the West, every round will be tough. That's why TMac's "never-getting-out-of-the-first-round" thing is so dumb. There has not been an easy first round in the West for a few years now.
I'm not anti Cleveland making the playoffs - sure they were a halfway decent team which deserved to be a first round playoff team. The thing that is just plain ridiculous is that they were the 4th seed and had homecourt advantage in the first round WITH A WORSE RECORD overall than a team which wasn't even playing in the playoffs. Stupid. And the whole 'division winner' being no worse than 4th is also stupid (evidenced the last few years) - because although they don't get homecourt, they force 2 greater teams to battle it out in the first round, thus disadvantaging team 3 and (possibly) giving advantage to team 5. For example, last season team 4 (Houston) played team 6 (Utah) in the first round of the playoffs. while team 3 (San An) faced team 5 (Phx) - which is a harder match up for San An than for Houston - thus DISADVANTAGING the team which finished higher on the ladder. Stupid. (disclaimer: Houston had no Ming - thus lost the series - but that doesn't mean the system isn't stupid). Stern - take a look, there are 5 (five) teams in each division. Why bother with divisional winners at all? Just use the divisions as methods of working out the draw - ie: you play the teams in your division an extra time if neccessary - that's not ideal either, but at least it gives teams more 'local rivalries' and possibly better receipts from crowd attendance. And scrap the conferences too. Just have the top 16 teams (by overall record - fix the number of inter-conference games too) get invited to "the commissioners playoffs". Sacramento (38 wins) were better than Atlanta last year - and why should Portland (41-41) have missed the playoffs when Toronto (41-41) got the 6th seed in the East... Don't the owners get the revenue from extra ticket sales/ marketing that owning a playoff team brings?? No surprise that Memphis threw their team in the toilet and gave up their high salaries for nothing - they're looking to get a competitive team together in 3-4 years time when the West might not be quite so strong - and hoping that if they actually manage a winning record then they'll head to the post-season. Now 42 wins will equal 9th at best... The playoff system is stupid.
Did you watch the games? Who's confused? The Cavs/Celtics series wasn't even comparable to the Celts/Hawks. It was played at a MUCH higher level by both teams. The last few years, the Cavs are a better playoff team than regular season team, which "is a testimony" that their bump & grind, tenacious, defensive style of play works better in playoff series than during the regular season. Last year in the playoffs, to say the Cavs were "no where near the good teams in the West" is ridiculous. You also imply the Lakers had it tough during the first round while the Celts didn't. The gutless, heartless, uninspired, mail-it-in Nuggets of last year's playoffs were an inferior team to the spirited (but schizo) Hawks, who at least laid it on the line at home. In the upcoming playoffs, we have no idea how well the 7th/8th seeds will perform. The Nuggets proved a 50 win team can lay a big egg. Let's wait and see if every round will be tough. A lot can happen over the next 55 games.
Well, let's just say that the system is unfair. I think we all can agree to that. I'm sure the NBA and Stern does value fairness and more importantly, the appearance of fairness, but they also value other things...like $$$. They believe that rivalries create more $$$ and they believe that divisions and conferences help create those rivalries. They also believe that having the divisions and conferences helps cut down on travel costs. And then printing all those division t-shirts and memorabilia helps make $$$ and if the division champs didn't get a top 4 seed, then it would make it pointless. Anyhow, I think most of those beliefs make sense, and I don't run the NBA and while I don't agree with all their values, it's not my call and I don't have to worry about the Billion Dollar business side of things. So yeah, it's stupid. I agree. It's not completely fair. But at least it's not the BCS.
I took the time to compare head to head records of the current playoff teams in each conference, and currently the West leads at 24-21, hardly a significant advantage.
Awesome, now if you did that for every season since '02 (as far as ESPN keeps track of that stuff) then you get like a 65% advantage for the West. It's going to take a decade of East dominance (which hasn't happened yet) to make up for that. It's unfair and that's the way it is, but it could be worse. I think the more productive thing to do is help historically terrible East teams try to figure out how to right the ship...and the same goes for the West. Having the same terrible teams every year is not good for the league. It looks like New York is finally heading in a better direction.
Why is everyone bringing up Cleveland, of all EC teams, to complain about last year? Every time the playoffs come around people tell me how Cleveland wasn't good, just the competition was bad. The Celtics were slacking off in the Cleveland series, that's the only reason it went 7. Anyone remember how monumental a game Paul Pierce had to have in game 7? The Pistons were slacking off two years ago and let Cleveland win. Remember how they played 5 on 1 and still couldn't stop Lebron in game 5? Does everyone think Cleveland was a horrible team last year and are suddenly good today? Did Mo Williams make that big a difference? It's not as big a gap as some of you make it out to be.
Not horrible - just not that much better than GSW last year. Mo Williams has made a significant difference; but so did the late season trades they made!! Hence the team in the playoffs was better than the regular season indicated (slightly) - and adding another genuine scorer in Williams has made LeBron that much more effective and added a new dimension to the team.
Not really surprising, the bottom dwellers of the WC suck so bad. The East have many teams that are "middle of the pack". It's just that the West is very top heavy that's all.
Cleveland has earned my respect over the last few weeks. They are a much better team last year and last year they were still good enough to come a few plays away from going to the Finals. If I had to pick the team I favor to come out of the East I'm picking Cleveland right now. I know Boston looks phenomenal but the loss of James Posey is going to hurt them badly in the playoffs. Meanwhile, the Cavs added a guy who can get his own shot in Mo Williams and Lebron has made the leap to undisputed best player in the league. What is interesting to me is that if you did not have Cleveland or Boston in the East you could take any one of 4-5 Western Conference teams and put them in the East and almost be guaranteed to a trip to the Finals. The dropoff in real, playoff caliber teams falls off badly after the the Cavs and Celtics.
