Crying for Change

The NBA playoffs are right around the corner and the howls of complaint are being heard across North America. Teams in the West are getting screwed, the East lets in bad teams, my team deserves to be in more then Atlanta, blah blah blah. Go get yourself a hankie kid, because I don't really care. So the East is a terrible conference, big deal. Instead of concerning yourself with that you should be more worried about your team being buried by the vastly superior talent in the West then being allowed to slip into the post-season with that nonsense "cross-conference" proposal people keep running up the flagpole.

Just for the record, as of this writing three teams in the West have equal or better records then the Easts' eighth place Atlanta Hawks. The argument is that since those teams have better records they should be moved into the East for the playoffs, or take the divisional winners for both conferences and have them play against the top twelve in descending order from the remaining teams. The rational behind this is that the best teams should get in and to bad for everyone else. It sounds good, but it really isn't.

You think teams mail it in late in the season now, just wait until the numbers get crunched in January and Team A realizes that even if it plays .600 the rest of the season it'll get bumped by Team B on the other side of the country. How much do you want to see half a conference just pack it in even before the All Star break, because that's what a proposal like this would do.

Those out west couldn't care less because at the moment it wouldn't affect them, but what if this proposal actually went through? What if five years from now the West has collapsed under the weight of all it's superstars and entire teams have been ripped apart by salary cap limits and the East suddenly swoops up the ladder? I can guarantee all those Portland and Golden State fans that are whining every night on sports radio about their team getting shafted would be crying about Atlanta or Indiana taking their spot.

Look we never had this kind of cry-fest back when the NFC was winning all but one Superbowl for nearly twenty years, or when the old Campbell Conference in the NHL was winning nearly every Stanley Cup? No, because things change, and right now things are finally changing in the East.

For the better part of this decade the East has been garbage. The Detroit Pistons have been the only team to consistently put a wining team on the court while teams like New Jersey, New York, Indiana and Philadelphia have had brief runs at greatness, but never anything long term. The reason for this is simple, teams rode hot players into the ground, got some short-term profits from the post-season and did little to build on it. The 76ers are a prime example of this, having Allen Iverson do most of the work and not building a unit around him. The players they brought in were mostly old or broken down(or in the case of Chris Weber both) and the train went off the tracks shortly after their appearance in the 2001 Finals. The team stumbled along for years, refusing to try and make long term improvements and instead looking for the quick fix.

New Jersey enjoyed back-to-back Finals appearances but have since been in free-fall, Toronto built a team around Vince Carter only to have him jerk the team over while the Knicks spent money on egotistical players with more style then substance. The Heat rode a red-hot Dwayne Wade and a revitalized Shaq to a ring then went in the tank while what looked like a strong Indiana team exploded one night in Detroit and hasn't been the same since.

Oddly enough similar things were happening in the West, just not on the same scale. L.A. gave in to Kobe Bryants demands and stumbled around at .500 for several years. Portland earned the moniker the Jailblazers, nobody could quite figure out what was going with Golden State or the Clippers and the Grizzlies.....forget it. One of the primary reasons the West is so dominant right now is the simple fact that the years of cellar dwelling allowed them to build a foundation of young, top ranked players that have all begun to mature around the same time.

So can this sort of thing happen in the East? Of course it can, and it is. Look at Dwight Howard, Chris Bosh, Andre Iguodala. Slowly but steadily the young players in the East are growing up, hell even Atlanta has a nice crop of players. It's highly unlikely that we'll see 10 teams with 40 or more wins in the East next year, but it certainly isn't impossible. So where would that leave us when it came down to playoff time? A big mess that's where.

Think about it, you're in 9th in the East fighting for a spot. You're neck in neck with number 10 and just a game behind 8 with two weeks to go. You think you've got control over your playoff lives in the finals days but then somebody looks over at the West and says WHOOPSIE!! Looks like all three of you have worse records then four teams over there. Sure it might just be one win, but too bad you're out and they're in. That's it, that's your whole season. No late season push, no surge from the fans, no emotional last week. Pack your bags and go, seasons over already.

That's not a fair system. It robs both teams and fans of the excitement and emotion of a late year push and the rush of watching a hot low seed push a top ranked team in the early rounds. It takes away from the fun and sheer un-predictable rush and correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the whole point of the playoffs to begin with?