Column: The East sucks
March 11, 2008
The National League has not won an MLB All-Star Game since the 1996 season. The National Football Conference has only won two Super Bowl titles this millennium. Unequivocally the sport more lopsided than professional baseball and football is the NBA. Individual statistics and the occasional box score may assert that the Eastern and Western conferences are evenly dispersed with talent and competition, but in reality, the two are polar opposites.
A quick glance at the sports section and it is easy to believe that the Eastern Conference is respectable. The leading scorer in the entire league plays in the East, as does the leader in rebounds. In fact, the two best teams in the league are not part of the Western Conference. But beyond those three accolades, there is little for Eastern Conference fans to take pride in.
Only five teams in the East have a winning record. Considering that eight teams in each conference make the playoffs, three teams would currently make the playoffs with losing records, ranging from two games to ten games under .500. To put this in perspective, three teams who cannot even win more games than they lose can make the playoffs. At 23-40, the Milwaukee Bucks are only 3 1/2 games out of the playoffs with 19 games left to play. Only two teams in the conference cannot make the playoffs: the injury-plagued Miami Heat and the dysfunction-plagued New York Knicks, although neither has officially been eliminated from contention.
Enter stage right the Western Conference. Long removed from the Michael Jordan era, the West has won all but two championships since 1998. This year, the West has continued its “winning tradition” by providing an especially competitive pool of teams to contrast the uninspiring East.
Currently, the Golden State Warriors would be the eighth seed in the Western Conference playoffs with a 39-23 record. If the Warriors were in the East, they would be eying the third-seed and a home-court advantage. And the difference separating Golden State from the East’s top-seeded Los Angeles Lakers is only 4 1/2 games.
The ninth and tenth best teams in the West have wining records, meaning they too would be highly seeded in the Eastern Conference. Even the Sacramento Kings, the West’s 11th best team, would make the playoffs if based in a state bordering the Atlantic Ocean and not the Pacific.
When discussing Batman-Robin pairings, the West is also head and shoulders above its counterpart. While the Boston Celtics and Detroit Pistons harbor tremendous twosomes and threesomes, the West is most reminiscent of the 1990s, where star-studded rosters were commonplace. With the exception of the Phoenix Suns, the nine best teams in the West have at least two players averaging more than 19 points per games. And don’t pity the Suns, as they boast two-time Most Valuable Player, Steve Nash, four-time champion Shaquille O’Neal and former all-star Amare Stoudemire.
Some experts are begging for conference reconstruction. Some are urging to abolish conferences altogether, in hope of allowing the best overall teams to make for a more competitive NBA Playoffs. The success of an entire conference should not lie with only two teams. There is no easy solution, and until the East can regain some dignity in the form of championships, the critics will never be silenced.
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