Toronto-The National Basketball Association’s Eastern Conference is weaker than Chuck Norris jokes. Currently, Chicago is in eighth (the last playoff spot), despite the fact that the club is two games below .500. The fifth place Miami Heat is only one game above the break-even mark. Indeed, the drop-off after the first four seeds is stupefying.
This season’s measly East is not an anomaly. The last Eastern Conference eighth place team to finish with more wins than losses was the 2004-05 New Jets, which posted an unimpressive 42-40 record. Since 2003, only two Eastern Conference clubs, the Nets being one, have captured the final postseason position with an above-.500 winning percentage. In that span, five out of the seven seventh place squads have been below the even mark.
In the abovementioned stretch, the West has been staggeringly superior. Not one team has made the playoffs with a losing or .500 record. The 2007-08 Denver Nuggets, the eighth place finisher, won fifty games, thirteen greater than the East’s bottom postseason franchise that year.
The evidence of the East’s overall inferiority is copious. And, the time for change has arrived.
The San Antonio Spurs is a model organization. Since joining the NBA in 1976, San Antonio has missed the playoffs only four times. The Black, White, and Silver has not been eliminated in the regular season since 1996.
The Dallas Mavericks is also an outstanding franchise. The Mavs has not missed the postseason since 2000. Dallas has won at least fifty games, including three sixty-plus victory campaigns, in each season from the 2000-01 season onward. With twenty-six wins this campaign, that trend is likely to continue.
In contrast to the Mavericks and Spurs, the Milwaukee Bucks has been abysmal for many years. The organization has not been eligible for “the big dance” since 2006, when they finished with a sub-.500 record and squeaked into the eighth spot.
These three franchises are located in the Central Standard Time (CST) Zone. CST is one hour behind Eastern Standard Time. As such, a conference switch is feasible. The Bucks would move to the West, while the Spurs or Mavericks would join the not-so-beastly East.
While this would not be a panacea for the conferential inequality, it would certainly bolster the pathetic Eastern Conference.
Even without San Antonio or Dallas, the eighth place team in the West would have a winning record this year. In fact, nine teams in the East, compared to four Western Conference squads, are not above .500 at this juncture.
The discrepancy is too significant for the NBA to ignore.
Is there a way you can filter out comments that just don’t make sense. Such as the one previously sent?
Roth: Yes. But, I believe in freedom of speech within reasonable limits.
Putting a team from California like the Spurs or Mavericks just makes no sense.
Roth: Since when are Dallas and San Antonio governed by Arnold?
Hey Jake, glad to see the website is back up.
For one of the teams from Texas to be placed in the Eastern Conference may be, in terms of transportation, tough to accomplish. Milwaukee is in the East because of its closer proximity to teams such as Detroit and Indiana in their division. A team like Dallas or San Antonio would have longer trips to visit Eastern Conference teams.
Roth: You are correct. But, I don’t think that the added travel is a sufficient reason to allow my suggestion to fall.
Jake – another way to look at this situation is for the wealthy Raptors to spend and build their roster which could then dominate the weaker teams in the East.
Roth: I’m not sure where you are going with that.