The notoriously weak Eastern Conference, you mean the conference that won more games in head to head competition? The Western conference has more bad teams than the East, with 5 teams that won less than 25 games vs. only 1 in the East......
The Eastern conference is tougher and has more elite teams. Three teams in the East with 59 games or more. Only 1 in the West.
The better records in the other Western teams are a result of their playing the bottom teams in their conference 5 times each, that's a 25 game kicker.
LeBron did all that against the better conference.
You are still delusional rick. What about team power rankings (that YOU strongly support when Philly is in the top 10)...they show only 6 eastern teams in the top 15? Doesn't sound like the dominate conference to me?
Also if you eliminate the worse team from each conference then the west has a better winning percentage. In fact I could easily argue...and prove mathematically...that the East's winning more head to head games is the result of 1 team - Sacramento. And if the East was so much stronger...as well as the West having so many patsies...why did one of the eastern playoff teams have a losing record vs the west? And another only manage a .500 record? Whereas 9 (NINE) western teams had winning records against the stronger East?
You can analyze it any way you want to, but the East won more teams vs. the West. To me that means they are the better conference. If you drill down into how these teams do against quality teams you get a different picture, but that isn't the way to evaluate each conference relative to the other, you just look at the head to head totals and the East comes out on top. Further, even when looking at which conference has the champion, there is no advantage, with each conference winning in alternate years back to 2002.
Therefore it's absurd to say the East is notoriously weak. The conferences are about equal with a slight bias to the East. The years of WC dominance of the NBA are over. Further, because of injuries some of the Eastern teams that did not do well this season should come back with a vengence next season, like Washington. Phila. a top 10 team in the power rankings? More like 15 at this point. Just barely a playoff squad, with an injured perennial 20 and 10 guy, who used to play in the West.
If you want to talk injuries, let's talk some of the West teams:
Jazz: injuries to Boozer, Kirilenko, Okur, Williams, Harpring
San An: Parker, Ginobilli, Duncan
Mavericks: Howard
Suns: Stoudemire
Hornets: Stojakovic, Chandler
And that's just relevant teams. I'm not even going into Kevin Martin in Sacramento and Al Jefferson in Minnesota because those teams simply are not relevant.
The fact that the East is still sending "top 8 in the conference" teams with losing records to the playoffs, to me, says loads about the East. Yes, the top Eastern conference teams have better records than the top Western conference teams. But when you compare place by place - 1 vs. 1, 2 vs. 2, 3 vs. 3, it's not until you're down to 10 vs. 10 where you start to see a real drop-off in the West. LA vs. Cleveland? That's a toss-up that will likely be decided in the Finals. Boston vs. Denver? I'm not a big believer in Denver, so I'll give that to the Celts pretty easily. But San An vs. Orlando, Portland vs. Atlanta, Houston vs. Miami, Dallas vs. Philadelphia, New Orleans vs. Chicago, and Utah vs. Detroit all go to the West, along with Phoenix vs. whatever dregs actually got the number 9 spot in the East. (Does anyone know, without looking at the standings page?) For goodness sake, it came down to the final day of the season for the #6 seed in the East to secure a .500 record! And you think that that's the *STRONG* conference?
The East had 3 uber-elite records, whereas the West had 1. OF COURSE THEY DID. In the West, if you play against a 9 seed, you're playing against a winning team! Utah, the #8 in the West, would have had home court advantage in the first round if they had been playing in the EAST! Of the top 11 records in the league, 8 of the 11 and 9 of 13 are in the West. You claim it's weakness? I claim it's PARITY. 6 Games separate # 2 vs. # 8 in the West; 6 games separate #8 vs. # 13 in the East...and they're all losing records.
And finally, lets look at those wins in conference vs. conference. The order stacks down to this.
1 Cleveland 26
2 Orlando 22
3 LAL 21
4 Boston 21
5 Dallas 21
6 Denver 19
7 New Orleans 19
8 San An 18
9 Houston 18
10 Atlanta 17
11 Chicago 17
12 Philadelphia 16
13 Portland 16
14 Phoenix 16
15 Miami 15
16 Utah 15
17 Charlotte 15
18 Detroit 13
19 Indiana 13
20 Milwaukee 13
21 New Jersey 13
22 New York 12
23 Golden State 11
24 Toronto 11
25 Minnesota 11
26 Memphis 10
27 LA Clippers 9
28 Washington 9
29 Oklahoma City 8
30 Sacramento 1
For cross-conference tie-break, the list is sorted by head-to-head result, followed by margin of victory.
If you take the top 16 teams for the playoffs - lo and behold, 9 from the West, 7 from the East. If you take the top 8, 5 West, 3 East. Exactly the same as the standings, but in this case, you can't claim that the West made their records by playing against the Western lottery teams. Granted, this puts the East in a more favorable light, but still, more teams from the West in the playoff mix. Of course, if I were to take the argument that you did, rickortreat, the reason the East teams are so favorable in this is because they got to beat up on the dregs of the West...most notably, Sacramento.
By cross-conference record of the contending teams, the West is stronger by virtue of having MORE TEAMS in the top 16.
So, how about the in-conference records?
1 LAL 44
2 Bos 41
3 Clev 40
4 Orl 37
5 San An 36
6 Den 35
7 Hou 35
8 Utah 33
9 Port 32
10 Phoenix 30
11 Atlanta 30
12 NO 30
13 Dal 29
14 Miami 28
15 Det 26
16 Phil 25
17 Chic 24
18 Ind 23
19 NJ 23
20 Tor 22
21 Milw 21
22 Charl 20
23 NY 20
24 GS 18
25 Sac 16
26 OKC 15
27 Mem 14
28 Minn 13
29 LAC 10
30 Wash 10
Top 16 - again, the same 9 from the West, and 7 from the East with Detroit in and Chicago out. Top 8? 5 West, 3 East. The RELEVANT TEAMS are in the West.
What this says - between BOTH charts - is that there are 4 elite teams, 3 of which are in the East, that pretty much mop up on everybody, and there are two really scummy teams, one in each conference, but as a whole, the West's worst are worse. But of the REVELANT TEAMS - the would-be-playoff-teams regardless of which conference they're in - MORE ARE IN THE WEST THAN IN THE EAST.
