more weak East

[elindholm]

I know we comment all the time about how weak the Eastern Conference is, but here's a new one for you:

It's entirely possible that an Eastern team will finish the season at .500 or worse -- and get home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs! Right now the #4 seed is New Orleans at 37-36, and the #5 seed is Milwaukee at 36-37.

That's just awful.

 

[SweetD]

And just think next year New Orleans is in the West.

 

[newfan101]

Youre right. That's horrible. This, however, is almost worse: Both Denver and Utah are in the lottery as we speak, yet would not only make the playoffs in the east, but would have home court advantage.

Ugh ...

 

[elindholm]

newfan101 wrote:

Youre right. That's horrible. This, however, is almost worse: Both Denver and Utah are in the lottery as we speak, yet would not only make the playoffs in the east, but would have home court advantage.

--

Heh! I propose a new rule for the board: The term home-court advantage (with or without a hyphen) must henceforth always be put in Italics.

 

[Ryanwb]

To correct the balance of power of the conferences the NBA should restructure the playoffs into seeded brackets like the NCAA.

The best competitive games are played in the second and third rounds of the West Playoffs....no team in th east has the bank roll or personel to compete any more.

 

[George O'Brien]

I'm not sure really understand what has happened to the East except that it seems that many of their better players have drifted west. For example, four of the Kings key players were acquired from Eastern conference teams: Divac, Miller, Webber, and Christy. Still, I'm not sure that is enough to explain the difference.

During the 90's the Bulls were a great team, yet they had to play extremely well to win the East. In 1996-97 the Bulls won 69 games while Miami won 61 games and there were 9 teams with records of 500 or better. By contrast the Suns made the Playoffs and were in sixth place in the West with a record of 40-42.