The story of the Eastern Conference’s early-season collapse begins with two teams who were meant to be contenders: the Milwaukee Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers. Currently 12th and 14th in the East, respectively, injuries and old age have made paupers of both rosters. While Giannis Antetokounmpo is playing MVP-level basketball yet again, it doesn’t quite matter if he’s doing it in a retirement home, which is maybe where Joel Embiid is headed earlier than expected, based on his rough beginning to the 2024-25 season—he’s shooting 27 percent in the two games he’s been healthy enough to play, rebounding like a guard, and flopping around even more than usual.
The plummet of these dual titans means that a conference that was going to be, at best, top-heavy in a dazzling way, now features sub-.500 teams vying for homecourt advantage in the playoffs. It’s even gotten hard to tank in the East—the Chicago Bulls, Charlotte Hornets, and Brooklyn Nets are all in postseason contention without probably aiming to be. There are a couple of good stories, though: the Detroit Pistons have finally gotten their young core on track under coach J.B. Bickerstaff, and the Orlando Magic have continued their ascension of last season despite the offensive hell they entered when losing Paolo Banchero to injury.
Forecasts of the conference being top-heavy were, I suppose, true, but in a more extreme way than anticipated. The Boston Celtics have been predictably dominant in the early part of their title-defense effort, no matter who’s been able to hit the floor in a given game. They’ve got their formula down. And the Cleveland Cavaliers, even more so, have looked like a nuclear winning organism, at an eye-popping 15-0. They have unlocked the best offense in the sport by relying less on Donovan Mitchell, and empowering Darius Garland and Evan Mobley as ball-handlers. Anyone could have told you that was a good idea, but few would’ve guessed that it would’ve produced an extra-special something; a selfless, supernatural understanding of where the ball needs to go on seemingly every possession—and, somewhat shockingly, the revelation that has been fifth-year guard Ty Jerome, a clear early favorite for Sixth Man of The Year.
Over in the West, the competitive bloodbath is overflowing. A winning record has been no guarantee of even a spot in the play-in bracket, for much of the year. The defending Western Conference champion Dallas Mavericks have more than a little griping to do about it, I’m sure. Sitting at 7-7 right now, they’ve got only a tie-breaker over the Los Angeles Clippers to thank for being No. 10 in the conference after a brutal early stretch against the crème of the sport. The return of the title-worthy Golden State Warriors, currently atop the conference, and rise of the 10-4 Houston Rockets have made an already loaded half of the league comically difficult to swim in.
The Warriors and Rockets aren’t the only West teams to improve a lot this season: the Memphis Grizzlies are again churning out wins despite their rotating door of injuries, relying on depth, variety, and spunk; the Phoenix Suns are a more streamlined machine with Mike Budenholzer coaching them and Tyus Jones managing possessions; the Los Angeles Lakers have been renewed by upping Anthony Davis’ usage, and because of instantly ready deep-shooting wonder Dalton Knecht. And the Denver Nuggets, after looking due for a fall-off to start the year, have found new aggression and inventiveness around Nikola Jokic’s improbable step into even higher levels of play.
It’s no exaggeration to say that there are a dozen Western Conference teams that could easily get into the East’s top five spots in the standings, and that the reverse is far from true. It’s been a lopsided situation for decades, owing to a lot of different factors; an uneven distribution of ambitious ownership, luck, and good weather are usually mentioned, but even that mix of explanations doesn’t quite tell the story, which has gotten too large to ignore. Sciences hard and soft won’t be enough to figure out what’s going on here—let’s get poetry, philosophy, and politics involved, too. We demand an answer. Why does the sport itself prefer to be played on the other side of the Mississippi River?
