East vs. West (and a Few Picks Thrown in too)

February 13th, 2009 | Editorials, Predictions | by Jason

East vs. West So here are my arguments for the East, and problems with other’s arguments against the East. First the problems, as there really is only one, and that is injuries. This year it seems like every elite West team can claim injuries at every major position and yet still win so many games. Here’s my problem with that, the East has had just as many injuries to key players, on pretty much every team.

Shawn Marion has missed 7 games for the Heat, Elton Brand 18 for the 76ers. Tony Allen has miss 13 for the Celtics, and Cleveland has had injuries to Delonte West and Big Z, 6 and 15 respectively). Mickael Pietrus has missed 21 for Orlando, and Josh Smith and Al Horford have each missed 12 for Atlanta. Out in Milwaukee only Richard Jefferson and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute have played in all 48 games, and it’s looking like Redd will be out again. In Charlotte Jason Richardson, Boris Diaw, and Raja Bell have combined to play in 53 games this season, mind you we’re almost 50 games into the season now. Kirk Hinrich has only seen time in 15 games for the Bulls this season, and in Toronto Jose Calderon has missed 12, and Jermaine O’Neal has missed 14 games. These are only the major injuries That we probably all knew about, and I’m sure there have been others. Each one of these players either starts, or is in the main rotation for their team, and thus have big impacts on their respective team’s results. So please, don’t tell me the West can even claim more victories on injury alone, because the East can make the same claim.

Okay, argument rant out of the way, now for the more rational arguments for the East being at least equal with the West this year. First up, the most shot down argument, is the head to head record (unless of course the West held the head to head edge, then it’d be legit of course). This right now stands at 146-125 in favor of the East. I’ll touch on the arguments against this in a second, as they’re attached to my second argument. Just a quick bit of info, the East was 4-1 against the West last night, the only loss was the Bobcats to the Trail Blazers, pretty much balanced by the 76ers beating the Rockets.

So the argument against this is that a lot of these victories would be coming against the bottom of the West, and the East is still struggling against the top. I don’t have the new numbers to say this is no longer true, but how nice is it for the top of the West to face the bottom of the West more often than the East as a whole does? Which leads to my second argument, the fact that the West’s top 9 is stronger then everyone in the East but their top 3. I’ve had the pleasure of obsessing over the NBA this season, and have noticed a few things. One, the bottom of the West really sucks. Beyond that “Top 9” sits 16-38 Minnesota, a record that would sit them right above last place in the East, ahead of 9-36 Washington, but behind 18-28 Iniana, who is second to last in the East. It gets worse from there, dropping off into 4 teams in the West with 11 or fewer wins. This ties into fact two I’ve noticed, the elite of the West has been inconsistent at best, and, like I said, no use of injuries as an excuse as the East has had just as many, and it’s been really lucky for them that nobody beyond that top 9 has been remotely good enough to challenge even an injury ravaged team. San Antonio just joined L.A. Lakers as the second team in the west at 30 wins, so I’m upgrading this to 34 or more wins at this point in the season, which the East has three of, not much fun for the rest of the East mind you. The East also has 14 teams with 15 or more wins, the West only has 10.

The reason I initially decided to write this up was because a lot of ESPN writers expressed a desire I know neither I, nor any of my NBA loving friends, has any desire to see, a mass seeded playoff system, where only record is taken into account, which would clearly favor the West. Early this season it would have done so much more, but the way it stands now, only Milwaukee would be on the outside looking in from the East. I also took a quick glance at a few records of the top 9 of each conference and things looks like this. The overall record for the top 9 East against Western conference teams as a whole stands at 101-66, top 9 West against all of the east is 98-64, so still an edge there. Now I’m not going to look at each individual head to head, as that would take far too much time (and you can if you’re really interested), but I did look into one stat I know contributes to how well a team plays, and that’s home court advantage….or rather, in this case, the lack thereof. This requires a look at not only the road record, but just in general how many road games have been played by these 18 teams. First up, the records, for the East it stands at 107-100 (really dragged down by Milwaukee’s 9-19 record), and for the West 100-93 (slightly less dragged down by Utah’s 8-15 road record). An identical 7 games over the .500 mark, with the East having played 14 more road games than the West, and it has to be assumed a few of those were West coast games. Really that confirmed what I felt had happened the first half of the season, seemed like a good chunk of the East-West games were starting past 9pm EST.

The only thing most experts will admit is that the top of the East is way better than the top of the West, all I’m saying is look at the whole picture. With the East having a better overall record against the West, having played more road games, and more West coast games, also while facing much tougher competition night in and night out, with the only respite coming against the Wizards, and the dredges of the West, which they out West of course benefit from on almost a nightly basis. The gap between the East and West is closing fast, and might be already shut. Even with their recent stumbling against the East, the Orlando Magic still have had the magic touch against the West, and I feel confident in including them with the Cavaliers and the Celtics as the three teams from the East that can beat anyone from the West. I’d also say that Atlanta, Miami, Detroit, and Philly, with good matchups, and staying healthy, could beat anyone past the Lakers from the West, and could give the top of the East a fun for their money (as Atlanta did last year to the Celtics). Let’s be honest, Houston on down in the West, would struggle to have a winning record against anyone but the Wizards in the East (proving my point on that was the 21-22 76ers from the East beating said 28-18 Houston team by 2 tonight).

I’m also going to include my pre all-star break predictions just for fun. I see the East finishing thusly: