The Eastern vs. Western Conference narrative in the NBA has recently swung wildly. The West has dominated for a long time, always possessing the wealth of strong teams in the NBA. While the NBA Championship has gone back and forth between conferences, the West has still won 11 of the last 16 titles, dating back to the year 2000. Although the Los Angeles Lakers have faded out of the picture, the West has still reigned supreme.
However, this season, the narrative began to switch throughout the opening half of games. A strong start by the East had people claiming the Eastern Conference had finally begun its resurgence, with eleven teams owning records over .500 at one point. At the time of writing, there are now eight teams with +.500 records. In comparison, the West has seven.
No NBA Eastern Conference Team Can Win the Title
Despite the East’s superior depth, the very top of the conferences is what really counts. Nobody plays just to make playoffs. Every team is aiming for the NBA Finals and beyond – even Sam Hinkie’s Philadelphia 76ers. And at the end of the day, that’s all that matters. The Golden State Warriors have set the pace since last season, and have risen to even more historic heights this season. After their obliteration of the league, and the Cavaliers in particular, last week, one thing has become abundantly clear: whilst the East finally has strength in the middle tier (and perhaps currently more than the West), no Eastern Conference team will challenge the West, and the winner of the latter conference will take home the title this season.
It sounds awfully dismissive to say this just more than halfway into the season, but things are starting to sort themselves out at this point. The Warriors and San Antonio Spurs are battling it out for the supremacy at the top of the West, though the Warriors dominated their first meeting of the season. The Oklahoma City Thunder are not far behind, and may have been the best team in the league in any other season, but this is not just any season. The Thunder are chasing two historically great teams, and need to find another level if they hope to beat the two juggernauts come playoff time.
Many will argue that the Cleveland Cavaliers have just as good a shot to overcome the top two teams as the Thunder do. However, the Warriors picked apart Cleveland on the Cavs’ home floor, practically running them out of the building. As a result, Cavaliers head coach David Blatt has been fired, and one must ask whether or not the Cavaliers can win a title, as currently constructed. It might seem ridiculous, given their vast array of talent, but the problem is bringing all of that talent together.
Why pay Kevin Love, Tristan Thompson, Anderson Varejao, and Timofey Mozgov close to $49 million (per Basketball Reference) combined this season, when only one can be on the court at any time, in the modern NBA? Love has been awful against the Warriors; he is practically reduced to a role player, at most, against them in a potential Finals meeting. The Cavs also vastly overpaid for Thompson, while Mozgov is being shopped around now, thanks to an underwhelming season from him.
They simply don’t have the wing talent to match up with the Warriors’ depth, and James’ steady decline as a player means he cannot be relied on in the same way that he has been in previous years. Concerns about the fit of James and Love were detailed in a piece by Kirk Goldsberry soon after Cleveland acquired the former Minnesota Timberwolves star. Both players love the left block, meaning someone’s role was going to have to change. The loser was never going to be LeBron James.
The problem is quite simply that their skill sets don’t mesh, or simply don’t want to do so. Love’s defense is so poor that it doesn’t justify the spot up shooting role that Cleveland is paying him $19.5 million this season to fill. Barring a big trade, such as one for Markieff Morris, that could move the needle a bit for Cleveland without giving up too much, it’s hard to see the Cavaliers elevating to the level of the Spurs, Warriors or even Thunder.
Beyond Cleveland, there is simply nobody else to make a run to the Finals. The Celtics are a nice team, but they don’t have the star power to push into the upper echelon, and they need to use some of their assets to improve. Detroit and Indiana are simply not ready, and are both still in stages of semi-transition. Atlanta and Chicago show the potential in flashes, but have proved too many times that they cannot be expected, night to night, to be anything more than just good teams.
Toronto might be the wildcard here, however. They’ve won eight games in a row, and have looked like a different team lately. DeMar DeRozan has taken a leap this season, and has really improved as a ball handling guard and on-ball defender. He’s also shown vast improvement as an efficient scorer. It’s worth noting that before this eight game winning streak, the Raptors were whipped by the Cavaliers 122-100, and they likely join the rest of the East as teams who might be able to push Cleveland on any given night, but not in a seven game series.
There is no shame in the struggles of these Eastern Conference teams. They are competing with teams that will go down as historically great – teams that are very difficult to compete with. However, as much as some like to claim that there is more parity in the NBA, there’s no doubting that the elite teams of the West currently reign supreme. As a result, the NBA title will belong to whoever makes it through the Western Conference playoff bracket and into the NBA Finals.
