I think when healthy, the West's top 3 teams of Lakers/Spurs/Rockets are better than Cleveland/Boston/Orlando. Without McGrady and Ginobili, though, I'd agree with you.
i dont agree, the east teams still have chances to make playoff not becus their better then the west, because they face each other i think 4 times where they face the west 2 times, and the same way around, having that said, the west will crush any team in the bottom. were the east are kinda equaled beside the first three.
The league experienced this phenomenon in the mid to late nineties as well. The West tends to be a conference of the Haves and the Have Nots, whereas the East tends to have more middle of the road teams. At least on paper. It gets a lot more complicated when you try to analyze the parity in the leagues, though, especially since they don't play each other in equal amounts head to head. But, for example, the Celtics record last year was definitely inflated versus the best teams in the West (or historical team records, for that matter) due to all of the bottom feeding they did.
Boston was 25-5 against the West last year. Their record was not inflated due to games against bottom feeders.
This fact has been posted at least a dozen times and people still don't get it. In contrast, this year's dominant team in the West, the Lakers, are 37-7 against the West and only 17-7 against the East. That is a huge disparity in the opposite direction. So who's cashed in on the bottom feeders in their own conference?
I always look at this from the Rockets perspective. The last couple years, the Rockets dominated the East. This year, they're only 17-12 against the East. So, I'll say the balance of power shifted ... but it happened this season.
West is still the most competitive Just because 3 of the top 4 are in the East does not make them the more powerful conference. It just means that those 3 teams feasted on the lesser powers of their conference. Whereas in the West, you'd be lucky to face a chump more than twice in four games.
The Rockets are a bad example because they've struggled much more against poor teams than they have against good teams. By this measure, Memphis is better than Denver.
The alternative would be inter-conference record, and the East wins on that. It might be interesting to see the inter-conference record, discarding any games involving non-playoff teams.
you're actually making the point for the east being the better conference. as you said, 3 of the top 4 are in the east. and since 6 of the worst 8 teams are in the west, it seems the top western teams have been doing some feasting of their own.
It's seems to be cyclical. Teams that were considered to be elite (Suns, Mavs, Pistons) have dropped off considerably while other teams like the Lakers, Celtics, and Cavs have taken their place. I wouldn't put much thought into conference power. It's not as if the Rockets can decide if they want to stay in the west or move to the east. It's like downplaying the Astros' postseason runs because they played in a weak division with the Brewers, Reds, and Pirates.
Alright, I counted it up, and here are the inter-conference win-loss records only for games where a Western playoff team is matched up with an Eastern playoff team (as of today's standings): Code: team Conf win loss atl E 7 7 bos E 8 7 chi E 7 8 cle E 10 4 det E 8 6 mia E 8 8 orl E 4 11 phi E 9 6 61 57 dal W 8 5 den W 4 10 hou W 7 9 lal W 10 5 no W 6 10 por W 9 6 sa W 7 6 uta W 6 10 57 61 Based on this measure, the East still won 61 of the 118 matchups (52%). I'm surprised that Orlando does so poorly against the Western playoff teams, considering their overall record. EDIT: I messed up! Ignore these numbers above, they're wrong. I redid it in post #45 in this thread. Sorry.
I'll bite. Injuries and situations . You can make a case for the Jazz to be better, but on the other hand, they still sucked after getting healthy. But I really like Durvasa chart. To me, it doesn't say that it's clearly one way or the other this year amongst Playoff teams. That's a bigger factor for me this year, toughness of playoffs. You can't say 61-57 for the East amongst playoff teams is CLEARLY favoring the East. The year is not over and this means they two sides are pretty balanced out to me. Finally, A3PO, how long have you felt this way about the East? Because I do agree that while it's not fair to say the West is clearly better this year, every year over the last decade has been a terrible year to argue that the East is better and just because this year is different doesn't mean you should come out and be championing the "I was right all along" card. But I do get your case for this year. It's even to me, because legitimate arguments can be made for both sides and because of the playoff team inter-games.
The West has been better until this year; now it's close to even. If one HAS to choose, I might give a teeny-tiny edge to the East. Let me be clear: I've been poking at this issue since mid-season and it's only been about this season. I know good and well the East has been a joke for a while. I guess some of the resistance to giving credit to the East this season is because most people here don't watch (or pay attention to) Eastern conference games unless it's the top 2-3 teams. Two examples: One person in this thread said the playoff team matchups earlier this season "definitely favored the West". durvasa blew that away. Another said the Hawks probably wouldn't even make the playoffs in the West. The Hawks just completed a 7-0 homestand and beat 4 West playoff teams in the process. Say what? If you exclude the Rockets, I watch just as many East games as West and have no problem seeing the conference is just as good. A lot of assumptions are made about the East with nothing to back it up.
Great job, thanks for doing this. BTW, LA and Cle w/ the two best records. Coincidence? According to quite a few around here... DEFINITELY! WESTSYYYYDE FOR LIFE!
It's the rampant Barkley style analysis that too many people subscribe too, which is making generalizations about today's games based on information from years past. I give the Hawks much props for helping out the Rockets lately. The Hawks have been so up and down this year, alternating between being terrible and great for much of the season. They're young, talented, and inconsistent.
Code: Cleveland1c 55 13 Boston2a 51 18 Orlando3x 50 18 Atlanta4 41 28 Miami5 36 31 Philadelphia6 34 32 Detroit7 33 34 Chicago8 32 37 332 211 = 0.611 L.A. Lakers1p 54 14 San Antonio2 45 22 Houston3 45 25 Denver4 44 25 New Orleans5 42 25 Portland6 43 26 Utah7 42 26 Dallas8 41 28 356 191 = 0.651 The west is sending in a competitive lineup of teams into the playoffs, can't say the same for the east. Power and talent is still in the west
