Go West! – Or should you?

The NBA's bipolar world

Millions of Easterners point their eyes jealously westwards. Only a small nomenklatura enjoys all the spoils of success while the vast majority peers longingly towards the land of hope; where victory and wealth have set up shop. The land in the west where the rich fight over who is the richest and poverty is but a word.

Alas, we’re not talking about the people of Minsk or Warsaw or Budapest directing their hopes and illusions towards the U.S. and Western Europe in the 1980s. Today’s paupers reside in Milwaukee and in Atlanta, they come from Miami and Charlotte and live in – of all places – in the symbol of American grandeur: New York.

The NBA in 2008 has recreated the iron curtain and it runs right through the country, from the Canadian border to Texas. The West has dominated the NBA landscape this millennium and this year its dominance has reached a new peak. Of the past nine NBA champions since Michael Jordan took his last shot as a Chicago Bull, seven have been from the Western Conference and only Detroit in 2004 and Miami two years ago were able to break through to the ultimate crown.

But looking at the very top still distorts the true extent of the gap between East and West. After all, the two teams with the best records – Detroit and Boston – are from the East and the Celtics just beat the reigning champs in San Antonio and then ended the Rockets’ historic 22-game winning streak on Houston’s homecourt. However, once you scroll down the standings in either conference, the gap is breathtaking. There are currently ten teams in the West with winning records – the East only sports five with Toronto just making the cut by a single game above .500.

The extent of the Eastern Conference’s weakness becomes even more impressive when you take into account that teams in the same conference face each other three or four times compared to only twice for opponents from the other conference. Thus, when the terrible New York Knicks face the god-awful Miami Heat there is still bound to be a winner from the Eastern Conference.

Now, you can ask yourself: Why bother? Good for the West and no need to rub it in for the poor fans of Eastern clubs. Over time things will surely even out again. That’s exactly how commissioner David Stern likes to portray the issue and it seems fair enough. Well, until you consider the NBA’s playoff system: the eight best teams from the East square off against each other to determine who is going to compete in the Finals against their counterpart from the West. And this is where it gets testy.

If the season ended today, the 40-27 Denver Nuggets who feature the duo of Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony and play a reckless and highly entertaining brand of run-and-gun basketball would be eliminated from the playoffs. In the East, the perennial bottom-feeders from Atlanta – a fun young team led by Joe Johnson’s steady play and the highlight reel called Josh Smith – would just scrape into eighth place and make the playoffs for the first time in a decade. At 29-38 or, in other words, 11 games behind Denver. With its current record, the Nuggets would be the fourth seed in the East – ahead of LeBron James’ Cavaliers. Even the Portland Trailblazers who, at 35-33, are virtually eliminated from playoff contention, would sit in fifth place in the East where they’d probably be lauded as this year’s Cinderella story: recovering from Greg Oden’s season-ending knee surgery and starting one of the youngest lineups in the league. Unfortunately for them, they are Portland, Oregon and not Portland, Maine.

At least for the Nuggets, the outlook is not all bleak as they are only 1 ½ games behind the Golden State Warriors for the eighth and final playoff spot. In fact, only six games separate the top nine teams – a stark contrast to the East where Boston, Detroit and Orlando have already clinched a playoff spot with about 15 games left to play and have plenty of time to prepare and rest their stars.

So, while the West’s brutal playoff race is one of the most haunting and entertaining in a generation and is sure to steal some spotlight from the NCAA’s March Madness, at least one Western team’s fans will wake up on April 17th with an empty feeling in their stomachs wondering what life would be like if their city lay a couple thousand miles further east.

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Created by: Ole