East vs. West Assumptions

For several seasons the NBA's Western Conference has been clearly superior to the Eastern Conference. Many NBA writers and fans have bemoaned that the disparity unfairly disadvantages franchises in the West by excluding qualified teams from the playoffs and creating a tougher path to the finals.

The disparity has been significant enough in recent years that Dallas Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban, has added his voice to the calls for realignment. On the other side of the argument, journalists, coaches, and fans have countered that the inequality is cyclical in nature and eventually the Eastern teams will surpass the Western teams, making realignment an unnecessary nuisance.

The arguments for and against conference realignment have incorporated several assumptions that have been accepted as true, but have not been verified with historic data. Let's examine three of those assumptions and analyze, based solely on historic precedent, whether or not realignment is necessary.

Assumption #1: The conference imbalance is cyclical. Eventually the East will reign supreme.

Since 1979 NBA teams have played opponents from the opposite conference twice per season - once at home and once on the road. The regular season results from the inter-conference games provide a good general indicator of conference equality. Whichever conference has better teams should, usually, win more of the inter-conference regular season games. If the assumption that conference imbalance is cyclical is true, then the east should have won the majority of those games during several consecutive seasons in the recent past.

Here are two graphs of the number of wins by conference since 1984, the year the NBA adopted a 16-team playoff:

The West clearly dominates since 2000, with the East winning more inter-conference games only once (2008-2009). Further, the difference in wins was not close in any season, other than 2009. The East peaked with a winning percentage of 45.3 in 2010, the equivalent of a team finishing the regular season with a 37-45 record.

The 1990s were a better decade for the East, but the West still won the inter-conference battle in five of 11 seasons from 1989-90 to 1999-2000. The east peaked in 1996-97 and 1997-98 with win percentages of 57.9 and 57.6, respectively, but could never string together multiple years of 55+ percent wins like the West did in the 2000s.

The East did have a distinct advantage in the late 1980s, winning all five season series from 1984-85 to 1988-89. However, even during that span the West's winning percentage dropped into the low 40s only once, whereas the East has spent most of the 2000s with a winning percentage under 44.

The East has not been consistently competitive with the West since 1999, and has not been reliably superior to the West since before most of the current players were born. In a league where the majority of roster spots turn over every five seasons it is a long stretch to call a 30-year period "cyclical"; consider, for example, that the Portland Trail Blazers have gone through three significant re-toolings of their roster in the last 10 years. Further, even when the East was better, they could not match the dominance that the West has now shown for 15 years.

Verdict: Conference imbalance is not cyclical and conference equality is not inevitable. Realignment could be utilized to solve that problem temporarily, but if the conferences become imbalanced again future realignments may be necessary.

Assumption #2: It is significantly harder for teams in the West to make the playoffs

As seen in the graphs above, the disparity between the West and East has been significant in recent years. As a consequence of the NBA allotting playoff berths to the top eight teams in each conference rather than the top 16 teams overall, some teams in the West have missed the playoffs while teams from the East with fewer wins have made the playoffs. Last season, for example, the Oklahoma City Thunder finished No. 9 in the West with 45 wins and missed the playoffs, but the Brooklyn Nets made the playoffs in the East with 38 wins.

Examination of the standings reveals that since the 2000 14 teams from the West have missed the playoffs but would have made the postseason with straight 1-16 seeding. In 2008, 2004, and 2001 two teams from the West missed the playoffs while inferior teams from the East qualified for the postseason.

But the trend of deserving teams missing the playoffs pre-dates the West/East disparity of the 2000s. Seven teams, five from the East, missed the playoffs in the 1990s and four more missed from 1984-1989. Only nine times in the last 30 years (2012, 2007, 2002, 2000, 1994, 1991, 1990, 1987, and 1985) have the top 16 teams qualified for the postseason.

Notably, those instances are spread throughout the 2000s, 1990s, and 1980s, implying that teams have unfairly missed the playoffs even when the conferences were more evenly matched. Further, in only two seasons (Phoenix in 1986 and Golden State in 1984) did inferior teams from the losing regular season conference make the playoffs.

The problem with the NBA's playoff allocation system is most likely not a result of the extreme dominance by the West, but rather it is a result of the existence of conferences. The extreme conference disparity of the 2000s has drawn more attention to the NBA's playoff seeding and it has been harder for Western Conference teams to make the playoffs since 2000, but postseason seeding inequity has existed at least since the NBA expanded to a 16-team playoff in 1984, regardless of how equal/unequal the East and West have been. Unless the conferences are completely balanced, a virtually impossibility, teams with better records will continue to be excluded from the playoffs. Thus the problem is likely an inevitable consequence of the seeding by conference criteria and will not disappear even if the inter-conference balance of power changes in the future.

Verdict: Conference realignment will not solve problems with playoff seeding. Historically, even small differences in record between the East and West have excluded otherwise qualified teams from the playoffs.

Assumption #3: The difficulty of the Western Conference playoff bracket is more fatiguing and disadvantages the West champion in the finals.

Despite the higher quality of the Western Conference, Eastern teams have won five of the last 12 NBA championships. It has been suggested that weaker Eastern Confrence teams continuing to win titles is a result of the West/East imbalance. Western Conference teams, supposedly, have faced more difficult opposition on their way to the finals and are more fatigued than their Eastern counterparts.

If the assumption that the path to the NBA Finals in the West is more fatiguing is true, then the Western Conference champions should have regularly played more games in the first three rounds of the playoffs than their Eastern counterparts. In other words, even though the Western Conference teams have more regular season wins, if the eventual champion dispatches their opponents as quickly as the Eastern champion, then the conference imbalance is not having a significant effect on pre-Finals fatigue.

Here is a table of the total games played in the preliminary rounds by conference champions for the last 16 season:

Perhaps surprisingly, the Eastern teams have needed more games to reach the finals in eight of the past 16 years, while the Western teams have needed more games in only three seasons. The conference champions tied in five seasons. The path to the Finals has not been more fatiguing for Western teams, even though they are generally playing higher quality teams.

Furthermore, the team that has played more games before the Finals has won six of 11 championships. The most games played by any team to reach the Finals was 20 by the 2008 Boston Celtics, one short of the maximum and they still prevailed in the championship round over the Lakers. Difficulty with the early rounds of the playoffs does not seem to prevent teams from winning championships.

Admittedly, this simple analysis does not address whether or not the higher level of competition in the West makes it more difficult for any given team to win the Western Conference. It only shows that the team that does eventually win is not necessarily at a disadvantage once they reach the finals. For example, the San Antonio Spurs would have benefited from different seeding rules last season as they were knocked out in the first round in the West, but would have been front-runners in the East. However, the Western Conference champion Golden State Warriors only needed one more game than the Cleveland Cavaliers to reach the Finals despite playing in a tougher bracket.

Verdict: Even though the Western Conference bracket is more challenging, the Western Conference champion is not more fatigued when they reach the finals than the Eastern Conference champion. Eastern teams have actually needed more games to get out of their conference in several seasons. Total games played to reach the Finals also does not correlate with success in the finals.

Summary:

The current superiority of the Western Conference has revealed that 1) the league cannot rely on the conference disparity to correct itself in the future, and 2) flaws exist in the playoff seeding system. Historic results suggest that these two flaws have always existed, but the extreme conference imbalance of recent years has drawn more attention to them. Conference realignment would only solve these problems if perpetual equality between conferences could be guaranteed. Since eternal parity is highly unlikely, the league would have to realign the conferences several times every decade if it hoped to maintain an East/West separation while also eliminating the problems outlined in this article.

On the surface, it would seem that the NBA should immediately consider abandoning conferences to correct these problems as a realignment or other change will be unlikely to solve them. But if the league values reduced travel time and additional home games for Eastern teams in the playoffs, they can justify maintaining the status quo by arguing that the quality of play in their marquee event, the NBA Finals, is not being affected. For the eventual conference champions, the number of games needed to make the Finals does not vary between the East and West despite the significant effect that conference imbalance has on lower playoff seeds.