League either needs to have teams switch conferences or...

[canoner]

Another advantage is that teams may have less incentive to insist on trading star players out of their own conference, giving them more flexibility to improve themselves.

[GJense4181]

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then NO team from that division makes the playoff. None of them deserves to.

Then you would have to scrap divisions, which would eventually lead to the doing-away of conferences, because it'd be difficult to perform a seeding tiebreaker between teams from different conferences otherwise.
The regular season would likely veer away from an 82-game schedule as a consequence. Each team would have to play each other team the same amount of times. 29*3=87 games? Which is hardly a round number.
and then we'd see playoff formats change completely. 2-3-2 would be the norm in order to avoid traveling complications. This would make home-court MUCH more important in the early rounds.
and this new era of basketball would make nearly ALL statistics prior obsolete.

[GJense4181]

Another advantage is that teams may have less incentive to insist on trading star players out of their own conference, giving them more flexibility to improve themselves.

THIS I can agree with.
It's a pain, on this board especially, to have a mancrush on a player in teh same conference or division that is nearly impossible to attain for that reason.

[richboy]

I do it just for the matchups. Imagine a Detroit vs San Antonio second round series.

[sule]

Basic observation of what's been happening... The west has good teams that don't make the playoffs year after year... and therefore are lottery bound year after year... once those draft picks mature they become playoffbound... and at times these good teams stay out of playoffs with tremendous young talent emerging, so is just a viscious cycle basically...

hmm...so its autocatalytic, you say o_O

[cdubbz]

Yeah the East is pathetic and its going to take atleast a decade to change powers again. In a decade iverson, duncan, nash, kobe, and all them will retire.

[Showtime:Part2]

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Detroit played a 7 game series against NJ team that had been to the previous two NBA finals, then a tough fought 6 game series against the Indiana Pacers which had 60+ wins and the best record in the NBA.

That's not exactly a cupcake.

that nj team was a joke. it got swept in the finals twice. the pacers team was legit, that's the only thing I will give you. so you've faced one good team in the past few years? detroit is overrated, they couldn't even beat the cavs who were SWEPT by the spurs.

[farzi]

Yeah the East is pathetic and its going to take atleast a decade to change powers again. In a decade iverson, duncan, nash, kobe, and all them will retire.

It'd be pretty hard to predict what will happen a decade from now, unless we've resorted to scouting 7-8 year old prospects.

[Showtime:Part2]

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Revisionist history is crazy, Bstein already did the Pistons in 04. In 2006 The Heat played as many games as Dallas going into the final, including two 6 game series, one against the two time defending finalists and the team with the best record in the league Detroit.

that means nothing. the spurs and suns are much tougher opponents than anything the heat faced. half the people on this board consider that title a fluke given the reffing anyway, including many detroit fans.

[d-will8]

People keep talking about how it's a cyclical thing and how everything will work out eventually. However, a new system where the best 16 teams make the playoffs would be great regardless of whether one conference was vastly superior to the other or both were relatively equal. It wouldn't matter what point the league was at in the cycle. There's no reason not to change the system, especially cause right now it seems like it's gonna be a long, long time until the East is even remotely comparable to the West (just to name a few, the Lakers, Blazers, Jazz and Hornets are all young teams with very bright futures.)

[Muzzleshot]

7 out of the 10 largest metro areas (All have NBA teams) are located in the Eastern Conference. Having an east/west Finals gives the NBA a better chance of having one of the larger markets involved.

Advantage: East of the Mississippi.
http://www.geolytics.com/images/lf-map.gif

This thread topic comes up every week. It's simply not going to change and from the NBA's standpoint there are plenty of good reasons to keep the status quo.

[G35]

The West is still going to be good way after Kobe/Duncan/Iverson

Carmelo
Durant
Oden
Bynum
Paul
D.Will
Gay
Roy
Jefferson
Amare
Kmart


It's not cyclical. The West just has better management skills. Deal with it.......

[Dtown84]

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that nj team was a joke. it got swept in the finals twice. the pacers team was legit, that's the only thing I will give you. so you've faced one good team in the past few years? detroit is overrated, they couldn't even beat the cavs who were SWEPT by the spurs.

Four years later and you still need to make excuses for your Laker team.

Okay number 1, NJ did not get swept in the finals twice, the year before they took the Spurs to 6, learn your history. I know it was a boring finals, but that shouldn't stop you from a quick NBA.com search.

Number 2, The Lakers beat a legit Spurs team that year, who happened to lose it's heart after game five, and an injured T-wolves team. Of course they were too tired to avoid losing 3 games by double digits in the finals.

Back on topic, people are starting to win me over with the 16 team format though yeah the schedule would have to be worked over some.

[Dtown84]

The West is still going to be good way after Kobe/Duncan/Iverson

Carmelo
Durant
Oden
Bynum
Paul
D.Will
Gay
Roy
Jefferson
Amare
Kmart


It's not cyclical. The West just has better management skills. Deal with it.......

Okay while I agree the west has better management skills, how is getting high lottery picks an indication of that? With a few exceptions on that list most were the obvious pick, that's great luck not skill.

[JordansBulls]

I wrote this in a thread I started before.

Here is a quote many tend to use all the time.

How can you possibly compare the Eastern Conference to the West?

You have to take into account the strength of each respective conference and which teams so and so had to play against in their respective playoff series

I really don't see the point when people use this argument.

I mean seriously lets take for example the Lakers and Celtics in the 80's. I don't ever hear anyone complaining about how much easier it was for the Lakers to get to the finals than the Celtics.

Who did the Lakers ever have to worry about out West? Only team they lost to were the Rockets and both times they shouldn't have lost to them. I mean come on, they lost to the Rockets in 1981 when the Rockets were under .500. They lost to them again in 1986 when they should have won the series as they were right in the middle of their titles and they had won 11 more games than the Rockets that season as well. Every other year the Lakers had a cakewalk to the finals.

The Celtics on the other hand had multiple teams they had to deal with. Not only the Sixers who were an elite team, but they also had to deal with the Bucks and Pistons later on.

Point being, why does everyone try to downplay certain players and teams making it to the finals by saying how weak the conference is at the time, when in fact, I never here anyone downplay what the Lakers had in their respective conference in the 80's?

It doesn't take anything away from what either team has done. The finals is the finals, no matter what conference you come out of. You can't have it both ways. If posters are going to downplay the East now then you have to downplay how the easy the west was in the 80's for the Lakers and how much easier it was to make the finals.

[Optimism Prime]

Difference between 1 and 9 seed in the west: 5 games.
Difference between 1 and 9 seed in the east: 19 games.

[antonik]

Difference between 1 and 9 seed in the west: 5 games.
Difference between 1 and 9 seed in the east: 19 games.

Thats a big gap.

[Dtown84]

The 19 games, isn't too odd that happens every year.

It's the five games that's crazy

[GJense4181]

The West is still going to be good way after Kobe/Duncan/Iverson

Carmelo
Durant
Oden
Bynum
Paul
D.Will
Gay
Roy
Jefferson
Amare
Kmart


It's not cyclical. The West just has better management skills. Deal with it.......

and how many of those players could be traded out of conference or sign elsewhere as a free agent? Durant might not want to stay with the Sonics after they move to Oklahoma City. Rudy Gay could leave the mess that is Memphis for more cash. If Amare at PF doesn't work, they could consider trading him like they had been for the past two seasons. Andrew Bynum was on the block and if the Bryant/Odom/Gasol experiment doesn't work perhaps Bynum would be moved to improve the PG or SG position and move Odom to PF and Gasol to C.
and so on.
There's young talent in the East, too.

[MrCheerios]

Something has to be done. It shouldn't matter if the balance of power is cyclical, that only insures more injustice in the future. It was wrong for the clippers to make the playoffs over the cavs in the 90's, and it's wrong for the hawks/nets to make the playoffs over the rockets/blazers now. The idea that eastern teams will get cheated in the future is no consolation.

The whole point of a regular season is find out who the best teams are and give them a shot at the title. You can't tell me the nets have earned that shot. And if you're looking for entertainment, I can assure you that even the lower seeded teams in the west give you far better basketball than most playoff teams in the east.

Even out the regular schedule and get rid of conference matchups. Once that's done we never have to worry about things being cyclical.