The 9th seed in the West has the same record as the 4th seed in the East

The pacific division has 5 teams over .500. Lakers, clippers, suns, warriors, kings.

The entire Eastern conference has 4. Philly, Bucks, Nets, Celtics.

 

While East has gotten better over the years; I guess it is still true that West > East, even in a pandemic.

 

an allstar player in the east is perhaps only a sightly better player than an average starter in the west po team

 

West team vs East team head to head: 61-40 (.604)
[Edit] Updated: 73-44 (.624)

If an average team in the West played an average team in the East every game of the season, the West team would have a record good enough to be the 3rd seed in the East.

 

It’s a weird league this year. I believe we are seeing the effects of a shortened offseason/Covid weirdness.

Aside from the obvious elite teams the league is open.

I also think most teams plays the same style. Drive-Kick-3. So every game is a glorified 3pt contest. If a team is hot, they win. Doesn’t matter who you are.

 

As always every year, a number of bad teams will win more games than they should at the beginning of the season. As you get closer to the halfway point and on, things separate themselves and regress to how things really are

 

Why you think Harden wanted to go East so bad? He saw an inferior player in Jimmy Butler make the finals and get love.

 

This used to be tracked by some website (I forgot). It was like West over East (and sometimes way way way over) for 18 of 20 years or something. The cycle is generally bad East teams make the playoffs and get bad picks while good West teams miss the playoffs but get better picks. Add to that many bad Eastern GMs and you have a 20 year problem.

 

The playoffs format and the draft tied to the playoffs perpetuate the problem.

 

I was looking at records across the league the other day and it seemed like the entire league is basically a .500 or worse league with a few "good" teams above them. The East is comical because outside of 2 teams, the rest are .500 or suck.