They be gellin.
Good thing they play in the WEAK east so they will make the playoffs. In the west they would be battling for 10th place.
Or they'd be fattening up their record with a steady diet of Clippers, Sactown, Golden State and thus possibly become a playoff team.
You just don't get it.
Well, seeing that they are 1-1 vs GS, OKC and Minnesota I fail to see them "fattening" their records considerably. Then we could talk about the "slimming" of their record against SA, Hous, NO, Den, Utah, Port, etc.
But we could take another approach. Right now the Sixers are 16-14 (.533) vs the west and 21-19 (.525) vs the east. So using those winning % they would end up winning 28 (52*.533) conference games and 16 (30*.525) non-conference games. That is a total of 44 games. Not a playoff team in the west.
Except that if the Sixers were out West they'd be focused on strategies to beat the teams out there. You can bet they wouldn't be dropping games to Golden State if they were in the same conference. No one worries about scouting these teams when they play them twice a season.
Besides. You still don't get how much weaker the bottom of the West is. Try going to ESPN and looking up the odds for teams to make the playoffs or win the lottery. You will find that there are 6 teams in the West with a better than 2.5% chance of finishing with the worst record in the league. In the East there is ONE!
The West is the weaker conference, repeat after me, the West is the weaker conference.....
That's is what you don't understand. They have lower records because they get to play teams with .600 records 4 times each instead of a bunch of sub .500 teams that can't play consistent enough to win half their games. If the east is so strong why does it have to playoff teams with losing records? If the east was so strong then why do they have only 3 teams with 10+% chance of making the finals and the west has 5 (if you want to use the odds table as proof)?
Do you honestly believe a Cle/Atl/Philly/Det bracket is tougher than a LA/Den/NO/Dallas one?
Or that Orl/Bos/Miami/Chi is tougher than SA/Hous/Port/Utah?
I think that with Orlando, Boston, Miami, Chicago is significantly better than SA, Houston, Portland and Utah. Boston and Orlando are elite teams with win totals over 50 with 10 games left. None of the WC teams in that bracket have 50 wins now or a chance at 60 by the end of the season.
With the other bracket, I think LA an Cleveland are a wash, 1 and 1A by their records. Atlanta, Phila., and Detroit are less well regarded, but these are teams in transition, and old Championship team in decline and two young teams who haven't proven anything. In both instances, the 1 and 1A are heavily favored.
So you are saying the West teams with the bad records are being beaten up on by good teams, and that explains their records. That's one explanation. The other one is that these teams really SUCK! It is abnormal for so many teams to be so far below the level of competition in a Conference, but it can happen. Washington is the worst team in the East, but they've had serious injury problems. They will get better long before any of these WC dregs rise from the bottom. Sacramento is a dysfunctional franchise now and so are the Clippers. Memphis and OKC are new franchises that have to start building and Minnesota is retooling from the Garnett trade. Does anyone really think Golden State is a good franchise? Even the Knicks are better!
If the East playoff teams aren't comparable with their Western Counterparts, how does Phila. beat LA and Portland in their own buildings? And that's the 5th seed in the East we're talking about here, just a middling team that no one takes seriously as a contender.