West to East: The NBA’s Shift in Conference Power
It has been a rough era for the National Basketball Association’s Eastern Conference. The dominance of the Western Conference began in 1996 when Shaquille O’Neal went from the Orlando Magic to the Los Angeles Lakers. It was entirely solidified with Michael Jordan’s retirement from the Chicago Bulls in 1998.
Since then, the Western Conference has fielded nine of the last NBA Finals winning teams. Additionally, the West has won 10 of the past 11 annual inter-conference battles.
The East vs. West rivalry swung briefly in favour of the East in 2008-09, when the East won 51.3 percent of the games between the conferences, but last season the West resurged to win 54.7 percent of the games. A major part of that was the result of the salary-cap clearing New York Knicks and New Jersey Nets being in no shape to actually play competitive basketball.
This season’s highly anticipated free agent market was the final proof that the Eastern Conference is poised for actual competition with the West. Of the top eight free agents, seven ended up signing deals with Eastern Conferences. While LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, Paul Pierce, and Joe Johnson were already in the East, their signings have strong implications.
James, Bosh, and Wade are now all on the same Eastern team, the Miami Heat, and are immediate contenders for the NBA championship. Two of the top free agents, Carlos Boozer and Amare Stoudemire, helped the East’s goal for dominance by transferring from a Western team to an Eastern one. Boozer went from the Utah Jazz to the Chicago Bulls. Stoudemire went from the Phoenix Suns to the New York Knicks.
While the Bulls were already a solid team and the Knicks look likely to remain rather weak, their signings of Boozer and Stoudemire weaken two traditional Western powers. The Utah Jazz are now without a big man, and in general have been ravished by free agency. The Suns no longer have a main target for point guard Steve Nash.
The only top agent to remain in the West was Dallas Mavericks’ power forward Dirk Nowitzki.
People heavily involved in the NBA are also starting to notice this trend. Milwaukee Bucks general manager John Hammond described the situation to a reporter.
He said: “It looks like there’s a definite shift in power. You can say that the world championship is still in the West (with the Lakers) so that gives them the ultimate credibility.
"But I think it's obvious that you had two significant players [Stoudemire and Boozer] come from the West to the Eastern Conference and the other major free-agent players stayed in the East. And you had the first three picks in this year's draft out of the Eastern Conference [Wizards' John Wall, 76ers’ Evan Turner and Nets’ Derrick Favors]. I think time will tell, but it seems to me like a shift in power from West to East.''
Hammond himself has contributed to this shift by re-signing John Salmons and signing Los Angeles Clippers free agent Drew Gooden.
San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, whose Western Conference team has won four of the past 12 titles, also noted the shift.
"They're certainly a lot better in the East than they were five years ago," Popovich said. "From that sense, it definitely has changed and become more even because there was a time when there wasn't much going on in the East.”
This general competitiveness is nice on paper, but it will only matter if it translates to success in the NBA finals. Two-peat champions Los Angeles Lakers will be more than glad to beat up on a weaker Western Conference en route to a title, and in the end that title is all that matters in any professional sport.
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