East vs. West

So I'm in an NBA mode right now and was checking out the standings when I realized truly how horrendous the Eastern Conference is. The East has only five teams that are .500 or above, while the Western Conference has eleven teams that are .500 or above.

What contributes to the bi-polarity in the East? Is it because the few good teams in the East are outstanding (Cleveland, Boston, Orlando, Atlanta) and they pulverize the other teams in the East? Or can the West just be that good?

I don't have the statistics to prove either but by looking at the record and getting a feel for how many conference wins the .500+ teams have, the better percentage of the wins came against the East. Of course everything might get averaged out if one were to eliminate the Nets as a franchise, but since that's impossible--but even the Nets have beaten the Knicks and the Bulls this year. And if the Nets are in the Eastern Conference, then surely, it's a free game for whoever is scheduled to verse them (predominantly are Eastern Conference squads). Again, one would think that the Nets would help the overall record of the other sub-.500 teams--but they haven't made much of an impact.

The teams in the East are just that bad. Even the teams that were the most dominant in the past decade like the Pistons are trying to break their thirteen game losing streak (11-25 record). Indiana used to have playoff runs every year and have evaporated into a 12-25 team. Iverson is back in 76ers but haven't made a dent in their record as they too are 12-25.

But of course it all dwindles back down to the pathetic Nets who are 3-34. A winning percentage of .081! Every time I check their last ten games it's either (1-9 or 0-10). If they don't win the first pick of the 2010 draft, we;re in for the Apocalypse.

In the West, we have a completely different situation--the worst team in the Southwest division (Memphis) has a better record than 2/3 of our conference.

Now realistically speaking, the top 16 teams will not make the playoffs because eleven of them are in the Western Conference. But what is the NBA to do of the disproportion of Conference strengths?

Either one of two methods should be implemented; create an alternative playoff system system or terminate inter-conference play to neutralize the wins in each Conference.

The first is not as plausible as the second method, so I shall briefly focus on the latter.

The Western Conference is strong, and unless the teams in the West are versing LeBron, D-Howard, Joe Johnson, Garnett or D-Wade in the East, the West has one more guaranteed victory under their belt. Through all these wins that have accumulated over the not-so-strong squads of the East, the West is saturated with victories (a sufficient amount over the East teams). If each Conference is restricted to versing themselves--the NBA Finals receives extra hype as it would be the only time that the East versus the West (gives a feeling of taboo games). With that being said, the wins will only circulate each respective Conference--creating a .500, .500 overall conference average.

At this point the Conference average record is 16.93-19.73 for the East and 19.86-17.06 for the West. Trust me, I did the math. That shows that inter-conference season games give the West an upper hand over the East. Eliminate that, and suddenly the West doesn't appear as dominant as they used to.