good article by Marc Stein for the weekend dime talking about all the hoopla about the East rising...
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/dailydime?page=dime-080112-13
Call it one more New Year's resolution that I have no shot at keeping.
That promise to my editors to finally stop gorging on Leastern Conference jokes.
How can I resist? All summer we heard the preachings: The East is closing the gap! Guess again. The gulf between the conferences looks wider than ever as we approach the 41-game marker, with nine teams that can claim to be 20-game winners in the West -- NINE -- compared to just three teams in the Leastern.
Perhaps you've heard or read that the East is actually faring better than it has for some time in head-to-head matchups with the West. More misleading nonsense. The East indeed entered the weekend at 94-108 against Western teams, for a seemingly respectable winning percentage of .465, but that mark drops sharply to 55-91 when you exclude the Leastern's 39-17 fortunes against the four pushovers at the bottom of the West that are already making lottery plans: Clippers, Grizzlies, Sonics and Wolves.
Ten of the West's other 11 teams have winning records in head-to-head games, with Portland at 6-6. The Least is 55-91 against those 11 teams, for a success rate of .376. And you don't even want to see the numbers if we exclude the Celtics from the conversation, since Boston's spotless 10-0 mark against the West accounts for a healthy chunk of the Leastern's limited cross-conference joy.
"I'm very surprised," Pistons guard Chauncey Billups said. "Very surprised. After some of the moves that teams made, I thought that the East was going to be coming back."
Only at the top, as it turns out. Boston's resurrection seems to have re-energized Detroit, too, and who would really be surprised if either of those powerhouses wins it all? Especially since the West playoffs -- and maybe just getting to the West playoffs for presumed contenders like Utah and Houston -- will be so grueling.
But even a champion from Least, like Miami in 2006, isn't going to change how we look at 10 or 12 other teams in a sad-sack conference. It doesn't work that way, which is a reality that the Heat have slammed home.
Think about it. If you examine it objectively, Miami has played exactly one month of basketball at a West-worthy level since Pat Riley came back to coach the Heat in December 2006. One hot month, though, is all that was needed to claim the Least's berth in the NBA Finals for two seasons running, as Miami and then LeBron James' Cleveland Cavaliers proved.
That's the same James, incidentally, who disclosed last weekend why he's not too worried about the Cavs' indifferent start or the fact that two key teammates (Larry Hughes and Sasha Pavlovic) are shooting less than 35 percent from the floor: "The Eastern Conference is so bad right now."
LeBron was obviously referring to everyone chasing the Celtics and Pistons and, again, who can argue? The Cavs are one of just four perennial playoff teams that are underachieving significantly, along with New Jersey, Chicago and the aging, crumbling Heat. The Knicks and Bobcats were supposed to be playoff dark horses after their draft-night acquisitions of Zach Randolph and Jason Richardson, respectively, but their seasons are already over … unless you believe that Charlotte, with 26 of its final 41 games on the road and all 15 of its West road games still to come, has a second-half rally stored up.
The worst part? The gap should be closing.
Leastern teams were the big winners in the landscape-changing 2003 draft when LeBron, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh joined their ranks … and it could have been Carmelo Anthony as well if Detroit took Melo or Bosh over Darko Milicic. Orlando landed the Shaquille O'Neal-sized prize in the 2004 draft in Dwight Howard. Milwaukee and Atlanta had the top two picks when Deron Williams and Chris Paul were on the board in 2005; Toronto and Chicago had the first shots in the 2006 draft at two difference-making young Blazers: Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge.
After last summer's trade flurry, furthermore, how can denizens of the Least -- who welcomed in Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, Rashard Lewis, Randolph and Richardson last summer -- complain about personnel misfortune? In a league where small-market teams like San Antonio and Utah have thrived for ages, thanks to the field-leveling help they get from the salary cap and luxury tax, you can only conclude that Western Conference teams, in general, are simply managed better.
In general? They're better at team-building around their franchise guys in the West, judging by the seven teams on a 50-win pace as of Friday morning. There will actually be some merit this June to the recent advent of made-for-TV trophy ceremonies at the end of the conference finals, because you've got to win a championship of sorts just to get out of the West.
As one West personnel man says: "Why are San Antonio, Phoenix and Dallas so nervous? Portland was supposed to be rebuilding and you see what they're doing. And the Lakers are for real, I'm telling you."
Adds one Western Conference scout: "I really don't want to pile on, but it feels like I'm watching the junior varsity when I have to go to a game [in the East]. The teams are worse, the games are worse and some of the arenas are half-empty."
I'm sure commissioner Stern will gather us all in New Orleans for his annual All-Star Weekend address and tell us that the Least will rise again because everything in the NBA is "cyclical." Good thing I didn't even pretend to resolve to be less cynical in 2008, because I can't resist reminding him that Leastern teams, entering this season, were more than 500 games under .500 against the West since the start of the 2000-01 campaign. The Least's record in that span was 1275-1789, good for a winning percentage of .416, with the West winning five of seven championships.
Quite a cycle for the Leasterners, huh?
Marc Stein is the senior NBA writer for ESPN.com. To e-mail him, click here.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/dailydime?page=dime-080112-13
Call it one more New Year's resolution that I have no shot at keeping.
That promise to my editors to finally stop gorging on Leastern Conference jokes.
How can I resist? All summer we heard the preachings: The East is closing the gap! Guess again. The gulf between the conferences looks wider than ever as we approach the 41-game marker, with nine teams that can claim to be 20-game winners in the West -- NINE -- compared to just three teams in the Leastern.
Perhaps you've heard or read that the East is actually faring better than it has for some time in head-to-head matchups with the West. More misleading nonsense. The East indeed entered the weekend at 94-108 against Western teams, for a seemingly respectable winning percentage of .465, but that mark drops sharply to 55-91 when you exclude the Leastern's 39-17 fortunes against the four pushovers at the bottom of the West that are already making lottery plans: Clippers, Grizzlies, Sonics and Wolves.
Ten of the West's other 11 teams have winning records in head-to-head games, with Portland at 6-6. The Least is 55-91 against those 11 teams, for a success rate of .376. And you don't even want to see the numbers if we exclude the Celtics from the conversation, since Boston's spotless 10-0 mark against the West accounts for a healthy chunk of the Leastern's limited cross-conference joy.
"I'm very surprised," Pistons guard Chauncey Billups said. "Very surprised. After some of the moves that teams made, I thought that the East was going to be coming back."
Only at the top, as it turns out. Boston's resurrection seems to have re-energized Detroit, too, and who would really be surprised if either of those powerhouses wins it all? Especially since the West playoffs -- and maybe just getting to the West playoffs for presumed contenders like Utah and Houston -- will be so grueling.
But even a champion from Least, like Miami in 2006, isn't going to change how we look at 10 or 12 other teams in a sad-sack conference. It doesn't work that way, which is a reality that the Heat have slammed home.
Think about it. If you examine it objectively, Miami has played exactly one month of basketball at a West-worthy level since Pat Riley came back to coach the Heat in December 2006. One hot month, though, is all that was needed to claim the Least's berth in the NBA Finals for two seasons running, as Miami and then LeBron James' Cleveland Cavaliers proved.
That's the same James, incidentally, who disclosed last weekend why he's not too worried about the Cavs' indifferent start or the fact that two key teammates (Larry Hughes and Sasha Pavlovic) are shooting less than 35 percent from the floor: "The Eastern Conference is so bad right now."
LeBron was obviously referring to everyone chasing the Celtics and Pistons and, again, who can argue? The Cavs are one of just four perennial playoff teams that are underachieving significantly, along with New Jersey, Chicago and the aging, crumbling Heat. The Knicks and Bobcats were supposed to be playoff dark horses after their draft-night acquisitions of Zach Randolph and Jason Richardson, respectively, but their seasons are already over … unless you believe that Charlotte, with 26 of its final 41 games on the road and all 15 of its West road games still to come, has a second-half rally stored up.
The worst part? The gap should be closing.
Leastern teams were the big winners in the landscape-changing 2003 draft when LeBron, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh joined their ranks … and it could have been Carmelo Anthony as well if Detroit took Melo or Bosh over Darko Milicic. Orlando landed the Shaquille O'Neal-sized prize in the 2004 draft in Dwight Howard. Milwaukee and Atlanta had the top two picks when Deron Williams and Chris Paul were on the board in 2005; Toronto and Chicago had the first shots in the 2006 draft at two difference-making young Blazers: Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge.
After last summer's trade flurry, furthermore, how can denizens of the Least -- who welcomed in Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, Rashard Lewis, Randolph and Richardson last summer -- complain about personnel misfortune? In a league where small-market teams like San Antonio and Utah have thrived for ages, thanks to the field-leveling help they get from the salary cap and luxury tax, you can only conclude that Western Conference teams, in general, are simply managed better.
In general? They're better at team-building around their franchise guys in the West, judging by the seven teams on a 50-win pace as of Friday morning. There will actually be some merit this June to the recent advent of made-for-TV trophy ceremonies at the end of the conference finals, because you've got to win a championship of sorts just to get out of the West.
As one West personnel man says: "Why are San Antonio, Phoenix and Dallas so nervous? Portland was supposed to be rebuilding and you see what they're doing. And the Lakers are for real, I'm telling you."
Adds one Western Conference scout: "I really don't want to pile on, but it feels like I'm watching the junior varsity when I have to go to a game [in the East]. The teams are worse, the games are worse and some of the arenas are half-empty."
I'm sure commissioner Stern will gather us all in New Orleans for his annual All-Star Weekend address and tell us that the Least will rise again because everything in the NBA is "cyclical." Good thing I didn't even pretend to resolve to be less cynical in 2008, because I can't resist reminding him that Leastern teams, entering this season, were more than 500 games under .500 against the West since the start of the 2000-01 campaign. The Least's record in that span was 1275-1789, good for a winning percentage of .416, with the West winning five of seven championships.
Quite a cycle for the Leasterners, huh?
Marc Stein is the senior NBA writer for ESPN.com. To e-mail him, click here.
