NBA Finals Wrap-Up: Wither the Eastern Conference?

There is an argument that posits the dilution of the Post-Jordan NBA Eastern Conference, supported by the fact that from 1999-2006, the Western Conference took home the championship six out of eight times. What's interesting about this streak is that before this year's slaughter, only once did the West sweep the East in the Finals--the Lakers over the Nets in '02. And the West appears more dominant in the earlier half of their run than in recent years, again with the exception of 2007.

For teams in the East, the offseason period is often characterized by doom and gloom. Every year, prognosticators choose one or two sad-sack squads in the Eastern Conference as playoff dark horses simply because of the perception that playing basketball in the East is like playing basketball in the CYO. I even find myself subscribing to this theory, sometimes leaning on it to support my pronouncements of the Sixers' impending return to winning basketball. The problem is, I don't want to believe a theory that says my team is going to improve simply because the competition gets worse. So what's the dealio, yo?

After some consideration, 2007 is an aberration for three reasons:

1) I think our memories get overwhelmed by the incessant hyping of everything in the here and now. I was genuinely surprised when I was reminded that the 2005 Spurs-Pistons Finals went the full seven games before San Antonio's eventual triumph. And it wasn't too long ago that a healthy Dwayne Wade (with Shaq, but a "regression to the mean" Shaq, not the dominant Shaq of the Lakers three-peat) had people buzzing about an Eastern renaissance.

2) The traditional Eastern powerhouses--make that the Eastern powerhouse--showed signs of decline, but people were too reluctant to acknowledge it. The Pistons have been the standard-bearer for quality basketball in the East for the past three or four seasons. We're accustomed to Detroit gallantly riding in at the end of the season to provide the East with at least a fighting chance.

When the Cavs beat the Pistons in the conference finals, commentators made the assumption that there was a new Eastern elite. This couldn't be more wrong. The Eastern Conference Finals was a comedy of errors that showed just how flawed each team was in their current makeup. Cleveland's woeful finals performance after a supposedly significant series victory has a lot of people judging the track record of the East, specifically the 2004-2006 period, retroactively.

3) The potential quality of the Eastern half of the playoffs was damaged by events in the last two months of the season. The Chicago Bulls, perhaps the most complete team in the East, barely missed winning their division and as a result, tumbled to the fifth seed in the conference: Detroit had just enough left in the tank to defeat them. You play that series a round later and you will get a different result. The Washington Wizards looked like a threat until two of their three big stars, Gilbert Arenas and Caron Butler, went down with season-ending injuries. The Celtics and the Bucks were doing everything in their power to lose and increase their odds of landing a top-three draft pick, giving a boost to even the most mediocre of Eastern playoff contenders.

There are other ancillary reasons as well (younger teams, poorer coaching, etc.), but it doesn't change the fact that the Eastern Conference is a scapegoat for the lack of excitement in this year's finals. Fans howl about the competitive balance in the NBA being out of whack, but the NBA is digging its own grave here. Simmons has a point when he tries to think of ways to make the playoff structure better reflect who the best teams actually are in any given year. However, it does little to correct the competitive imbalance in the NBA that almost everyone seems to agree upon. A playoff tournament to gain entry to a playoff tournament? If anything, too many teams make the playoffs from either conference, thus magnifying the gap in quality between the best and worst teams.

I scoff at the notion that 2007 is the year the West Took Over...Again. 2007 is the year the East Was Unlucky.

And luck is a mighty fickle thing.

Time To Fix the NBA Playoffs [Bill Simmons]