This. We're horrible on the road but have only played 2 road games against eastern conference teams (as opposed to 6 road games against western conference teams). Of course we won the 2 road games played against the eastern conference but that's where small sample size comes in to play.
the 03-04 Rockets as well as the 06-07 team went 24-6 vs the Eastern Conference. look at how many times the Houston missed the playoffs in the last decade and were better than the 8th seed in the East.
The East still sucks, numerous lousy organizations who get an inflated opinion of how good they really are based on misleading records. Just because the Heat and Celtics have been legit recently doesn't mean the conference has gotten better. If we had been in the east during the francis years, we would have made the playoffs 3 times. Record wise we would have been 00-01 7th seed (missed in west) 02-03 6th seed (missed in west) 03-04 4th seed (8th in west) Our record would have been even better if we had gotten to play a full eastern conference schedule. Those francis teams were very average, the east was just that bad. During the Yao/Tmac era we would have had numerous deep playoff runs. I've always been in favor of a straight 30 team league with 16 team bracket.
