11/21/24
December 02, 2014
Searching for Balance: The NBA’s Lopsided Conference Problem: Grantland's Zach Lowe breaks down the pros and cons of various ideas for restructuring the NBA's schedule and playoff system in order to find some parity between the East and West.
posted by Ufez Jones to basketball at 10:54 AM - 2 comments
I don't really get what the restructuring will do - there's a salary cap in place, and a bunch of big money team in the East who seemed plagued by front-office incompetence. That won't last forever - well, for the Knicks, maybe it will.
In the West, the last two decades have involved foundational players - Kobe, Dirk, Duncan/Ginobli/Parker, Durant/Westbrook, etc - who stayed in one place and were a foundation to build on. In the East, for whatever reasons, players seem more fluid - LeBron, Bosh, Howard, etc. There are obvious exceptions, but the teams who've been good in the West for a while have been stable, and there haven't been a lot of stable Eastern teams recently, with the exception of the big 3 on the Celtics, the Pacers to some extent, and the dream team Heat.
posted by dfleming at 07:23 AM on December 03, 2014
I don't want the league to reformat the playoffs or conferences. The East is bad, real bad, and there will be some lousy playoff teams in the East and some team out west is going to win 50 games and miss the playoffs and I'm fine with that. I don't need everything to be 100% fair. I can see why the West owners and even the fans can get riled up about how bad the East is but I don't think it helps the league that much to rearrange everything.