The Eastern Conference is splitting in two

[Village Idiot]

If Portland were in the East they'd be 4th. Houston would be 5th. Even lowly Sacramento at 21-24 would be 7th in the East. Talk about disparity.

Imagine if Portland or Houston get in the lottery and land a top 3 pick.

[Blazing_royale]

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well we did beat Dallas, San Antonio and Boston didn't we???

sure we beat them once, but lets not get over ourselves. Look at our record against legitimate team.

[mintsa]

I just hope it continues. No worse than 6th seed for the Raptors means avoiding Detroit and Boston in the 1st round.

I agree, if the trend continues we avoid Det/Bos in the first round and get a chance at an opening round victory, which is an improvement over last season.

[Carnage]

The Raptors are definitely too soft and that's why I want an enforcer on our team, either at SF or C. If JO weren't making $20M per season, I'd want him for sure. (Still might...) It'd just be nice to have that guy who gets in Anthony Johnson's face when he whacks Jose on the head, you know?

I totally agree. It would be acceptable for the our team to have a PF/C that are soft if only we had an enforcer on defense (see: Sacramento). Someone that will get in the face of opposing players if an opposing player knocks down Jose, TJ, etc. As much as I think Bosh is fantastic, he just doesn't have it in him to get in someone's face or give a hard foul. Bargnani is the same, if not more so than Bosh.

[FoDrizzle]

Let's get Charles Oakley and Reggie Slater out of retirement and sub them in after opposition technical fouls.

[mintsa]

Let's get Charles Oakley and Reggie Slater out of retirement and sub them in after opposition technical fouls.

Dont forget Tony Massenburg & John Thomas as well...loved those guys.

[magani]

This was mentioned on ESPN last year. To recapitulate, there should be no conferences since it's more competitive in the West than in the East so just take the top 16 teams in both conferences and match them up in the playoffs. So it would look like:

1- Boston
2- Detroit
3- Phoenix
4- New Orleans
5- Dallas
6- San Antonio
7- Lakers
8- Orlando
9- Utah
10- Golden State
11- Denver
12- Portland
13- Houston
14- Cleveland
15- Toronto
16- Washington

It would be fair for the West teams who deserve to make the playoffs that are better than the east teams like Atlanta and New Jersey. Currently, Houston and Portland are above 0.500 and aren't even in the playoffs if the season ended today. But this format would definitely suck for the Raps.

Trhe problem with your theory is that the schedules are unbalanced during the regular season. why should Boston get a higher seed in this format because they beat up on NY and all the bottom dwellers, whereas in the west you run into better teams more often. If this was the case then you need equal schedules and everyone plays everyone the same number of games.

[Kareem_Ajani]

If next year's draft is as strong as projected to be, it almost makes me wonder if teams are just taking a year off and acquire a high pick in next year's draft class, so they can somewhat start fresh with some new strong talent at low cost, and start the ball rolling again.

Hopefully BC can find us another Shaun Marion or Amare through drafting as he did with Phoenix. As long as it's not a shooter

[Tom Baker]

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Trhe problem with your theory is that the schedules are unbalanced during the regular season. why should Boston get a higher seed in this format because they beat up on NY and all the bottom dwellers, whereas in the west you run into better teams more often. If this was the case then you need equal schedules and everyone plays everyone the same number of games.

While I like the theory of opening up the playoffs to the best 16 teams, I agree with your point about unbalanced schedules. The opposite is also true for the lottery.

That's currently a huge problem with the disparity between the East and West. Since the East is so bad, you'd need to send the top picks East for a while to help build the talent base. But teams in the East play mostly against other teams in the East, so they manage to get a few more wins. Bad teams in the West mostly play against other Western teams, so get pushed down even farther, having it tough trying to eke out wins.

In the end, bad West teams have their records "artificially" lowered, so actually have a better change than normal of getting top lottery picks.

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However, having said all that, I think the original idea was presented as "getting rid of the conferences". If that were the case, I'd assume all teams would play each other roughly equal times, so both our worries would be resolved.

[Tom Baker]

This was mentioned on ESPN last year. To recapitulate, there should be no conferences since it's more competitive in the West than in the East so just take the top 16 teams in both conferences and match them up in the playoffs. So it would look like:

1- Boston
2- Detroit
3- Phoenix
4- New Orleans
5- Dallas
6- San Antonio
7- Lakers
8- Orlando
9- Utah
10- Golden State
11- Denver
12- Portland
13- Houston
14- Cleveland
15- Toronto
16- Washington

It would be fair for the West teams who deserve to make the playoffs that are better than the east teams like Atlanta and New Jersey. Currently, Houston and Portland are above 0.500 and aren't even in the playoffs if the season ended today. But this format would definitely suck for the Raps.

No, I don't think it would. It actually would put more pressure on the Raps to become more competitive, which is a good thing. Plus we're not winning in the 1st round anyway, most likely, so what difference does it really make?

[chsh22]

raptors can't beat legitimate teams.

Our problem generally seems to be playing to our opponent's level in one direction, and as best as we can do in the other. Playing against elite teams we do reasonably well with the odd blowout loss, but against non-elite teams we seem to play down to them and make them look like superstars.