Category Archives: East vs West

Non-conference update: The West wins another week, plus a look at their non-conference games left

2014 NBA Season, East vs West February 3, 2014 1 Comment

It was another winning week for the West, going 15-8 against the lowly Eastern Conference where only Indiana and Miami have more than 10 wins in non-conference play. The West has won 12 of the season’s 14 weeks so far with 12 to go.

Here’s the updated week-by-week breakdown:

Last week, Milwaukee continued to struggle in non-conference play as they went 0-3 and are now 1-16 for the season. It also didn’t help for the East that Indiana and Miami, the only two teams to have a non-conference record over .500, both lost games against the West on their home courts. It’s a good thing the Pacers won’t match up with Goran Dragic and the Suns in the playoffs. Miami and Oklahoma City, on the other hand…

The Milwaukee of the West is looking to be the Lakers, who are getting beat up by the East lately when just about every other Western team uses non-conference games as a standings-padder. Only Sacramento comes close to having as bad of a non-conference record, who are 5-9 while the Lakers are 7-13. It’s unlikely Sacramento stays that bad when they can play six more games against the East.

Speaking of games left against the East, in my opinion it’s a decent argument to use when looking at which West teams will make the playoffs. Here’s a breakdown of that too:

I thought about including a table for the East, but Miami and Indiana are on a crash course to meet in the Conference Finals. The first round matchups for them should be snoozers.

Of course, non-conference games don’t say everything about the rest of the NBA schedule. Back-to-backs, home vs road games, and the strength of the remaining games are all key too. As you can see though, even without Mike Conley the Grizzlies should tread water just fine when they play five more non-conference games than Dallas. Meanwhile, the Chris Paul-less Clippers might regress after capitalizing on an East-heavy schedule the last few weeks.

Of course, teams with extra non-conference games still have to play and win them versus just giving them the W, but so far the West has had a historical upper hand this season.

Update on non-conference play: The West still dominates

2014 NBA Season, East vs West January 28, 2014 Leave a comment

Five weeks ago, I wrote about the Eastern Conference finally finishing a week above .500 in non-conference play.

Well, the West has finished with the upper hand every week since and 11 out of 13 total. I’ve kept a week-by-week win and loss total and I thought I’d share it:

Note: Weeks are counted as Monday through Sunday. 

Going into last weekend, the East was actually 9-7. Then Paul George and Indiana struggled in Denver, Washington fell to Utah, and Anthony Davis dominated Orlando with a line of 22-19-3-2-7, among other games the East could’ve won. Four wins against the Lakers wasn’t enough, partly because the other team from Los Angeles went 3-1 and partly because the East is nowhere near as talented across the board.

Non-conference play hasn’t been this lopsided since 1960 when there were eight teams in the league. If we take out every season up to the NBA’s expansion in the late-80s, it hasn’t been this bad since 2004. With Memphis getting Marc Gasol back, Golden State back to their “#FullSquad”, and several experiments out East either still struggling or dealing with injuries, I’m not sure this season can keep itself from being historically askew.

But I’ll continue updating in case anything changes. This week, the West is 4-0.

Non-conference play and its importance to the West

East vs West January 15, 2014 Comments: 2

It was nearly a month ago when Mark Jackson was on the hot seat. Golden State had fallen to 14-13, losing to a short-handed San Antonio Spurs on national television. Championship expectations by fans were replaced with hope to just make the playoffs. The Warriors were in ninth place in the West, grouped with the mediocrity of the Denver Nuggets and Los Angeles Lakers, among other teams.

Then Golden State beat both of those teams, rattled off home wins against the Clips and Suns, and went on a seven-game road trip out East where they finished 6-1. Their best stretch of the season was topped off with a win at home against Boston. 14-13 became 25-14. Title-contention was back to being realistic, though still a long shot in the loaded West.

The road trip out East helped the Warriors arguably the most in their quest to outdo last season’s exit in the Western Conference Semifinals. (Those hopes may have gotten a little higher today, thanks to a three-way trade to acquire Jordan Crawford and MarShon Brooks.)

All but one Western Conference playoff contender has used road trips out East – and games against the lowly conference in general – to beef up their win total. That one, singled-out contender is Phoenix who’s .500 in non-conference play.

Beating up on the East has been key for Western Conference playoff contenders since 2000, when the West took the upper hand in non-conference play, but it’s at its highest importance this season. That all might be obvious, but it’s nonetheless important to note that over the last 14 seasons just five Western Conference squads made the playoffs while finishing under .500 against the East:

Team vs East Record Seed  Finish
2000 Seattle SuperSonics 14-16 45-37 7 Lost First Round
2004 Denver Nuggets 14-16 43-39 8 Lost First Round
2006 Sacramento Kings 14-16 44-38 8 Lost First Round
2007 Golden State Warriors 14-16 42-40 8 Lost Semifinals
2007 Los Angeles Lakers 14-16 42-40 7 Lost First Round

The East just doesn’t have the same urge to win their battles against Western foes, able to stay in contention if they stumble during a road trip on Pacific coast, for example. Over the same seasons, they’ve had 50 teams in the playoffs with non-conference records below .500. Only one team, the 2012 Boston Celtics, has done that and made it all the way to the Conference Finals, but they needed some injury luck to get there. There’s always a chance they upset a top-seeded Bulls squad with a healthy Derrick Rose, but it’s an unlikely one.

Again, it might seem obvious about teams out West need to beat those out West to do well over 82 games. Related to the first table, below are the playoff teams with the second-worst non-conference records in those same seasons:

Team vs East Record Seed Finish
2000 Minnesota Timberwolves 18-12 50-32 6 Lost First Round
2004 Dallas Mavericks 19-11 52-30 5 Lost First Round
2006 Memphis Grizzlies 18-12 49-33 5 Lost First Round
2006 Los Angeles Lakers 18-12 45-37 7 Lost First Round
2007 Denver Nuggets 18-12 45-47 6 Lost First Round

The teams in the first table gave up, at the very least, four games to fellow playoff contenders. That worked out fine for the 2007 Golden State Warriors, but every other team missed out on the possibility of improving their seeding by one to three spots.

Of course, another (and more frequent) way of moving up in the standings is by winning games against contenders in the same conference, but some teams have gotten by with cherry picking — winning a good chunk of their games against the East. Here are some of the most egregious instances. For one squad, it wasn’t enough to make the postseason:

Team vs East vs West Record Seed Finish
2001 Houston Rockets 25-5 20-32 45-37 9 Missed Playoffs
2004 Houston Rockets 24-6 21-31 45-37 7 Lost First Round
2012 Denver Nuggets 16-2 22-26 38-28 6 Lost First Round
2013 Houston Rockets 21-9 24-28 45-37 8 Lost First Round

This season’s Minnesota Timberwolves, currently 11-5 versus the East but 7-14 against the West, might join the few and not-so-proud of that grouping.

Every 82-game season requires 30 non-conference games, though, and every one of those count given how stacked the West is this season. It’s also not any team’s fault for winning games they’re supposed to. Minnesota (and Denver and Memphis, for that matter) are hanging around with the help of that one edge available for about one-third of the season, but it would certainly help if they beat a few teams currently in the playoff seeds they’re trying to overtake.

For more posts about the East-West battles, check this out.

Eastern Conference ends six-week drought, finishes last week over .500 against the West

2014 NBA Season, East vs West December 23, 2013 Comments: 3
via Wikipedia

via Wikipedia

We all know the Eastern Conference has been weaker this season than it usually is. Every night, a few games out in the west coast will make us excited about a future playoff matchup like last night’s back-and-forth between the Clippers and Timberwolves. Meanwhile, it seems like the Bobcats and the Bucks are playing against each other every night out east. Please, let Indiana and Miami be at full strength come May!

It doesn’t help when the matchups in non-conference play have been historically lopsided this season, though last week finally provided some relief for the East. It was the first time since November 4 to November 10 that they went over .500 against the West. Here’s a week by week breakdown:

Week Weekly West wins-East wins West-East wins through listed week Winning % through listed week
October 29 to November 3 7-2  7-2 77.8%
November 4 to November 10 7-8 14-10 58.3%
November 11 to November 17 17-6 31-16 66.0%
November 18 to November 24 13-1 44-17 72.1%
November 25 to December 1 13-6 57-23 71.3%
December 2 to December 8 10-8 67-31 67.0%
December 9 to December 15 16-2 83-33 71.6
December 16 to December 22 8-10 91-43 67.9

As you can see, the West started laying the smackdown on Week 3. That’s pretty much when the jokes about the East started to surface. It only got worse as the West went 26-7 over the following two weeks against its “toothless Eastern cousin”, as netw3rk dubbed them. Last night, they needed Toronto to beat Kevin Durant and Oklahoma City AT OKLAHOMA CITY, WHERE THE THUNDER WERE UNDEFEATED, just to finish over .500 against the West. Somehow, Toronto came through.

Who knows what the All-Star Game will be like? Hopefully five years from now we won’t look back on a Jamaal Magloire or Mo Williams kind of all-star, but is Jordan Crawford that bad of a fit alongside LeBron James and Paul George? 

Maybe the conference won’t be so bad by mid-February. Up until last week, it couldn’t have been much worse. 

Weeks in this post were defined as Monday through Sunday, instead of Sunday through Saturday.