Let's start with quality of opposition in the RS and Playoffs:
https://www.celticsblog.com/2020/5/17/21258281/what-if-the-celtics-and-lakers-had-switched-conferences-in-the-1980sExcerpt:
"How bad was the Western Conference back in the great 1980’s of the NBA? Well, the Los Angeles Lakers cruised to the West crown most of the eight times in 10 years, and the only two times they lost - 1981 and 1986 - were to Houston, both led by big frontlines who pounded LA on the boards.
In 1981, the Rockets team led by Moses Malone that upset the defending champion Lakers finished the season with a record of just 40-42! Heck, the average win percentage of the Laker playoff foes in the West in the 1980’s was barely over .500. In 1987, they played two sub-.500 teams and a 42-40 team to get to the NBA Finals. In the Western Conference Finals, they swept a sub-.500 Seattle team.
In the East in 1987, a severely crippled Celtics team fought through a young Michael Jordan and the Bulls in the first round, survived a seven-game thriller with the Bucks, and then persevered against the Bad Boy Pistons in a seven-game slugfest just to reach the Finals.
Despite having to run the gauntlet of a tough East each spring and play into June almost every year, shortening their off-season and recovery time, the Celtics of 1984-87 were the last team to make it to four consecutive NBA Finals for almost 30 years until this past decade, when the Heat did it in a weak East from 2011-14, and then the Cavaliers of 2015-18. Think about that.
A big part of the reason the Lakers are erroneously called the “Team of the 1980’s” is the fact the West was so much weaker than the East. The playoffs are a battle of attrition and until 1989, the Lakers did not face much competition or injury in the Western playoffs.
The Lakers never had a consistently good in-conference rival in the decade, unlike Boston, who faced the 76ers, Bucks, Pistons, and Hawks. Four of the top five aggregate records of the 1980’s were teams in the East. During their 2010’s dominance, one might say that Miami (and later Cleveland) resembled the Lakers of the 1980’s by ruling over a bad group of competitors, with LeBron James playing the Earvin Johnson role.
In fact, from 1981-88, LA never faced a team who won more than 53 games, and usually met teams with considerably fewer victories.
Conversely, Boston faced five teams (four 76ers clubs, one Bucks) just from 1980-86 who won 57-62 games. On top of that, serious injuries arguably cost Boston titles in 1982 and 1987, and possibly even in 1985.
By the time the Eastern representative fought its way to the championship series in the 1980’s, they were often worn out and beaten up, especially since not only was the competition better, the style of play was much more physical than the up-and-down, run-and-gun Western Conference was then.
I thought it might be fun to play a “What If” game and ask A) how things might have been different had Boston and LA switched places in the playoffs each year during the Bird era; and B) what would have happened had Boston and LA met every year in the Finals from 1980 to 1992?
Even though it seems like the Celtics and Lakers met constantly in the Finals during the Bird/Johnson era, they actually only met three times, with the Celtics severely hampered by injury in their ‘85 and ‘87 series losses.
Fans who had to wait until the end of their fifth seasons Bird and Johnson been in the NBA for them to meet again for the title they fought for in 1979 were finally satiated, and rewarded with a superb seven-game series that easily ranks as one of the best ever.
In the only championship series they met when the teams were similarly healthy, Boston won in a seven-game classic. Somehow, those Celtics had been cast as underdogs for that epic Finals: this despite having a much better record despite a tougher schedule (62 wins to 54), the homecourt advantage, and the Lakers having traded All-Star guard Norm Nixon for his oft-struggling rookie replacement, Byron Scott.
Plus, LA struggled mightily to barely beat the 41-41 Suns 4-2 in the WCF, and that came only after winning Game 6 99-97 by dodging a last-second Phoenix shot. On the other hand, Boston dispatched a strong 50-32 Milwaukee club handily in five games in the Eastern Conference Finals, with their four wins coming by an average of 13.5 ppg. Hmm. Underdogs?
Interestingly, despite playing a tougher schedule annually by virtue of two-thirds of its slate being confined to the tougher East, Boston still posted the best record in the NBA in six of the first seven seasons of the 1980’s.
The lone time they failed to do so was 1982-83, when they still were 56-26, nine games behind eventual champion Philadelphia.
Only when age and injury started to catch up to Boston in 1987 did the Lakers finally start posting better records, even though their schedule was also easier. In their 25 Western Conference playoff series of the 1980’s, LA faced teams who totaled 1,116 wins, an average of 44.6 victories a season per opponent. The Lakers won 23 of those 25 Western series in the decade, losing only to Houston in 1981 and 1986. In fact, the two best playoff teams LA faced in the 1980’s out west came in the same season of 1980 when they defeated Phoenix (55-27) and Seattle (56-26), each in five tough games.
When the NBA suspiciously moved Milwaukee from the West where they had been ensconced since entering the league as an expansion team in 1968, to the East, the balance of power shifted dramatically. One can’t help but think that the league wanted to make sure its lone tradition-rich, major market, ratings-friendly and telegenic franchise in the wild weak west would get to the Finals.
Otherwise, why mess up the balance of power by shifting a team not even in the east geographically to the Eastern Conference? The move ensured that four of the top five franchises of the decade were in the East. LA would have no consistently strong threat in its considerably softened conference, partly because Seattle declined precipitously in 1981, falling from 56 to 34 wins, after the season-long holdout of Gus Williams and the mid-season injury to Paul Westphal, who had been obtained in the celebrated “changing of the guards” trade with Dennis Johnson.
Moved to the East, the young Bucks went on to win 60 games in the 1980-81 season, their first of six straight Central Division titles. But despite reaching the conference finals in ‘83, ‘84 and ‘86, they never got to the NBA Finals because they could never get past both the Celtics and 76ers in the same year.
The hard-luck Bucks lost to Philly four times out of six series in the decade, and the two times they got to the Eastern Conference Finals, Boston took them out in the 1984 and 1986. The one time Milwaukee beat Boston in 1983, the 76ers then eliminated them in five in the Eastern Conference Finals.
It is difficult to think that Milwaukee, had they stayed in the west, would not have made at least one or two championship series appearances. And when the Sixers and Bucks started to fade late in the decade, the Pistons and Hawks rose up to take their place as perennial 50-plus win contenders.
On the other hand, Boston’s 23 playoff opponents of the 1980’s in the East won an incredibly similar 1,115 games (but in two less series), an average of 48.5 wins a season. Additionally, the only year Boston was eliminated before the conference finals between 1980-88 came in 1983, when they would have played the 65-17 76ers had they gotten by the Bucks.
Including that series, the opponent’s average win total would be 49.2. Boston won 19 of those 23 Eastern series, losing three times in the conference final (twice to the 76ers and once to Detroit) and one time to the Bucks in the 1983 semis. That opponent record would be right at 50 wins per game if one adds that the 30-52 Chicago club Boston beat in 1986 was really about a 40-45 win team with a healthy Jordan. MJ missed 64 of 82 games that season (the Bulls were 9-9 with him, including 5-1 in games he played 30 or more minutes), making the Bulls much more formidable.
LA played eight playoff teams in the 1980’s who won less than 40 games, winning seven times. Boston played four playoff teams with less than 40 wins in that span, including those misleading 1986 Bulls. Boston’s average wins per season from 1980-88 - excluding 1988-89 when Bird played a mere six games due to injury and missed the playoffs - equal a superb 61.1 per year, or a total of 550-188.
LA averaged 59.3 wins per season from 1980-88, or 534-204. And that is with the advantage playing a schedule roughly 20 percent easier since the west was considerably softer from 1981-88.
Had the teams switched conferences, from 1980-88 Boston could well have projected to probably win 63-64 games a season and as many as six championships due to an easier, less taxing road to the Finals. Meanwhile, LA might have dropped to 56-57 victories a year in the East and won only two titles at most.
And thus Boston would be unequivocally considered the team of the 1980’s, not LA. Only in 1983 (Philly) and 1989 (Detroit) would someone else have won the crown other than the NBA’s two dominant franchises. At the very worst, the Celtics and Lakers should be seen as “Co-teams of the Decade,” followed by Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Detroit."