I was the one who said that. I did the same thing durvasa did, but earlier in the season and the results were flipped, with the west coming out with about 52% of the wins. Atlanta's recent 4-0 stretch against western playoff teams seems to have tilted the scale from even, into the east's favor.
actually the King's 14 wins are all against the Eastern Conference. They are 0-26 against western conference teams
52/48 doesn't really favor anything because it's too close. That was probably just 13 games to 12. I took from your post that the advantage was significant.
Guys, I screwed up on my last post here. I thought the numbers looked strange when I took a second look (the Rockets can't have played 16 games against those 8 East teams ... they still have a game against Orlando left), and sure enough I made a blunder when counting it up. I redid it, and hopefully it's right this time. Code: [B]team conf win loss[/B] atl E 7 7 bos E 8 7 chi E 7 8 cle E 10 4 det E 4 11 mia E 4 10 orl E 10 5 phi E 6 10 56 62 dal W 8 6 den W 8 8 hou W 9 6 lal W 8 5 no W 7 9 por W 9 6 sa W 7 6 uta W 6 10 62 56 The balance has suddenly shifted over to the West. They've won 62 of the 118 games played, or 53%. Sorry about that.
My answer was mentioned like the 5th post. About how the top halves of each conference are relatively even, maybe the top thirds. But the bottom halves (the part no one cares about), the West teams stink like poo.
Still, 53% is quite close ... not much of an edge. Nevertheless, I think the west is still stronger overall, when it comes to playoff picture. The way the west is stacked out currently 2-9 is really crazy, don't remember seeing anything like it this late into the season. Perhaps its due to the Rocket's success against Cleveland and Orlando, but I am not impressed with eastern teams outside of the Celtics. Looking at in terms of over/under .500 vs other-conference playoff teams: East : 3 positive, 4 negative, 1 even West : 5 positive, 2 negative, 1 even The bottom 4 in the east (of playoff teams) have been soundly beaten by western conference teams. The two teams in the west that are negative in W/L vs. east are Utah and NO ... I'd argue that the strength of Utah's team is not well-represented by this particular statistic.
This is probably one of the better statistics to use. The surprising numbers in here is how well Odrando has done vs how poorly Utah has fared.
the west is still better, and is way more competitive to a ridiculous extent. the east has caught up with the west and made it closer in the last couple of years.
We can say at a glance that the conferences simply got old. For some teams (DAL, PHX) it was too much, for others, they grew into their own (CLE, ORL, BOS) Different management and circumstances decide which team does what but good teams have a chance to decline and bad teams have a chance to improve Beyond that, cyclical? I won't look that far but it appears so. But why the imbalance in the first place? Might just be the nature of the founding teams.
I would now say the West is a little better than the East but not by much. 53%/47% among playoff contenders is very close.
