Tag Archives: East vs West

Non-conference update: The West wins the most active week yet

2014 NBA Season, East vs West February 10, 2014 1 Comment

Two months ago, Basketball-Reference provided history of non-conference games in a really cool table, one that showed the West winning this year’s matchups at a frequency not seen in nearly 55 years, back when the league had “divisions”. A few weeks passed before I started a weekly update tracking the rest of the non-conference games.

The 15th week of the season featured the most active stretch of the East’s teams playing the West’s, 33 played total with each conference winning 10 at home. The West won eight on the road, though, while the East took just five. Below is the updated week-by-week breakdown:

The 45.5 percent win rate the East had last week would be solid over an entire season. That’s if they ever cared about non-conference statistics. It’s fine if they don’t, especially when the games have nowhere as much impact as they do for the West.

Indiana and Miami are still the only East teams to have 10 wins in non-conference play, but in Week 15 the conference as a whole blew some winnable games. The Cavs heard the thud that is rock-bottom after falling to the Lakers while the Heat sparked a search for a replacement to the term “coasting” after losing to Utah. Some suggestions: sailing, floating, drifting, and freewheeling. Heatwheeling?

As for the West, below is an updated breakdown of how many games each team has left against the East. It impacts both the playoff race and the lottery with the former benefiting from more non-conference games while the latter hopes for less. The more games the Jazz and Lakers play against West teams jousting for playoff seeding, the higher likelihood they’ll accumulate more lottery balls.

With DeMarcus Cousins, Rudy Gay and Isiah Thomas, it’s hard to believe Sacramento finishes as the worst team in the West. Recent injuries to the first two players hasn’t helped, but the Lakers are all sorts of banged up too. Utah’s wedged in between them with some nice pieces themselves.

As for the playoff teams and contenders, most are in that 9 to 12-game range against the East with Memphis and Golden State having some extras, which is huge when they’re both just trying to make the postseason versus deciding who they’d like to host in the first round. Meanwhile, the Clippers are running out of near-gimmes against the East but it’s right when Chris Paul is returning and Blake Griffin is making a case as the best power forward in the league. As usual, looking at non-conference games is helpful but remaining back-to-backs and home/away games are just as important too.

There’s also this thing called the trade deadline that’s creeping into front offices. Will a team out West grab Arron Afflalo? What about Greg Monroe, Josh Smith, or whatever else Detroit could look to trade? Cleveland’s another East team that could swap some players such as Dion Waiters or Anderson Varejao.

For the heck of it, though, below is Week 16’s non-conference schedule. There’s only three days of games but about as many will be played as any other random week:

The East has 10 home games compared to the West’s six. That’s also the amount of wins I think each conference could pull off, respectively, though a couple East teams always fail to win down the stretch.

Maybe this is the week they turn in a dominant performance, though slowly working towards a respectable winning percentage against the West is just as fine. It’s like I’ve felt that way all season about most of the East’s teams.

For the other non-conference posts, check this out.

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.