The top 10 team in the East will finish above .500
No matter what happens in the last day of the season. The last time that this happened was in the 2021⁄2022 season.
The ONLY time this happened was 2021-22
2015-16 the 10th seed was the 41-41 Wizards, and 1997-98 the 10th seed was the 41-41 Magic
Every other season the East 10th seed was below .500
And there’s a good chance the Hornets are the 10th seed both times.
Just our luck that the two seasons we aren’t complete shit are the same seasons the rest of the conference is really strong.
The difference is this year the Hornets can finish 10th and still win a championship!
Another championship*
We’ve already got 2⁄3 this season.
Yeah well tanking
Just goes to how shit the east has been for the past 20 years
West won 12 and east 8 rings and that includes Spurs big three winning 3 rings and Curry era of 4 rings…Those are dynastyes comparing to Jordan Bulls so doesn’t really show how shit just that west was only 4 titles ahead when they had those two dynasty..
Also how is the quality of the 10th seed meant to be indicative of overall strength?
It’s just battle Pistons,Celtics,Knicks,Nuggets,Spurs and Thunder…It’s those 6 teams that are top teams…The fk they expect that Raptors do to the Thunder..
What he say fuck me for?
Scottie Barnes is one of biggest jewels that NBA has given us,but sadly it’s not really basketball connected😅
That is not how it works lmao
Those spurs, lakers or warriors dinasties were beating some monster teams in the west too, lakers and spurs beat each other a bunch in the 00’s, sacramento, phoenix, dallas, okc, rockets et
I mean that sample still has the West as 33% more likely to win the title in any given season. That also only compares the top teams emerging from each conference and not the strength of teams eliminated prior to the finals.
I think this table showing the average record and counting stats of playoff teams in each conference by year helps to show this better. It has the East having a better average record among their playoff teams in 5 of the last 20 seasons. The East hasn’t ever really lacked at least 1-3 top tier contenders in any season, hence the competitive finals record, but they have a generally weaker table of playoff teams in the average season. Table for context:
https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/average-number-of-regular-season-wins-by-playoff-team-by-conference-in-the-last-20-seasons-by-season
I was also pissed when this happened because why did the entire east put it together right when we looked competent for a season
The Hornets have a chance to equal the best record for a 10 seed in play in history and since the 1960’s. They would be tying the 2021-2022 Charlotte Hornets.
The east always turns it on as soon as we are decent
Don’t forget the 1996-97 season - won a franchise-record 54 games, which was good enough for… sixth.
East was stacked that year.
And there’s a good chance it’s the Hornets both times.
Before 2022, you have to go back to the 2001 Seattle SuperSonics to find a 10th seed with at least 43 wins.
I wouldn’t say that the east turned it on this year but the Hornets just were really bad to start
LaMelo and Brandon Miller were both hurt for a large portion of that time
It was a surprisingly deeper conference than anyone predicted .
I thought my pacers would make the playoffs with about 38 wins. Obviously neither were realistic
They probably could have if they tried, they just didn’t
Oh they tried. They tried really hard till they were around thirty games under .500.
Their minute leader on the year is Pascal Siakam for a reason.
Yeah, I don’t think people realize how hard you all got bitten by the injury bug at the start of the year.
They’ve had 43 or so different starting lineups and 28 players on the roster…
Injuries were real, especially before the calendar turned.
They even had that stretch where they went 9-9 when guys got healthy at the same time.
The plan was not to tank until circumstances dictated it.
No way.
Not without Hali and Turner.
They beat OKC this year
Was it? Or did a bunch of teams tank and boosted the wins for the 10 teams trying?
The raptors are not a 5 seed in the west for example. They project more like an 11
I think it was much deeper. Tanking is a hit topic right now, it’s definitely not worse than before Wembanayama or Flagg entere d
There are more free win teams in the west than the east.
Which even further supports that top 10 in the east will be above .500. Did you think about what you said?
So your saying the conference that gets to play less bad teams, will have more teams above .500?
Wut. The 11 seed in both conferences is 10+ games behind the 10 seed. The drop off is huge. So many teams are tanking this year for a loaded draft. Those are easy wins for top 10 teams in both conferences
Every time we are slightly good, shit is so stupid
Shit, I know the feeling my guy.
As soon as we got good again all the young teams wanted to start showing up.
That also just means that in two weeks, three or four of those teams are going to be sick of being “in the middle” when their team gets bounced lol
Every year the old “the west is so much better than the east” discourse is way overblown.
There might be a higher concentration of high end all star talent in the west, and some years the west might have 2 or 3 of the best 4 teams record wise.
But when you look at the standings at the end of every year the win-loss records for seeds 3-10 are usually very close for both conferences (this year the records in the East are actually better).
And they both have garbage teams at the bottom of standings trying to tank.
how dare you accuse us of tanking; we started 5-0!
You don’t trade for Jaden Ivey if your tanking… I mean come on now!
Is this a quote that some Bulls fan said?
The west was better than the east for 2 decades bud
https://www.basketball-reference.com/friv/east_vs_west.html
The East has had three winning seasons head to head since the turn of the century
I wouldn’t say it’s overblown as an above .500 record in the east isn’t the same as the west, when schedules are skewed towards the conference you are in.
They’re not skewed anywhere as much as they used to be though.
For sure but take the wolves…1 out of like every 4.5 games for them is vs OKC/Nuggets/Hou/LAL/Spurs.
Yeh I’m not saying it’s perfect equilibrium but when take all factors into account (injuries, hot cold streaks, etc), it’s not too wild
Plus for your example in particular that was has more to do with the division the wolves play in
Or you could just look at the regular season record east vs west and see that the west is better this year and the years prior.
West is looked at as better because they usually have all of the contenders and win the championships and people act like championships all that matters.
99-11 West won 10 of 13 titles
12-26 Been closer but West still up 8-6 probably 9-6 after this season.
You just disproved your own argument. The last 14 years it’s been split pretty much down the middle, especially if you take out the 2 SC-KD warriors rings or the Bubble ring. You can’t assume any team is going to win the finals when we don’t know who’s playing in it.
2 of East finals was big 3 Heat too.
The 3 top contenders this season are the 3 top seeds in the West.
I’m saying that’s why people say the West is better they only looking at the top not the overall conference.
Outside Celtics any East team winning finals would be looked at as shocking.
I think East and West almost dead even and have been since at least 19 but West still typically favored.
This decade alone West is 4-2 over East. So it skews how people think
It really hasn’t been. Most years for the last two decades there’s been 1 really good east team and that’s it. For about 10 of those years it was whatever team LeBron was on. Probably 8 years of the Celtics and then we had 2019 where the raptors and 76ers were elite.
It’s not overblown
There isn’t a single team in the east as good as the nuggets spurs or Thunder
I think even the wolves if healthy are the best team in the east automatically
The Nuggets and Wolves aren’t better than the healthy Celtics imo..so no, the Wolves wouldn’t automatically be the top team in the east.
It is overblown. People like you remind me of old SEC fans.
Says the pistons fan who would be 6 seed in the west
The Pistons have a 21-9 record against the west, with a win rate of 0.700. That would be good for the 3 seed in the west.
So we’re just making stuff up now?
No dude you don’t get it, the Knicks would be 12-70 if they played in the west. No ball knowledge smh.
Your team is shit in a dress bro
Knicks are in the play-in in the west
Why I said some years they have 3 of the top 4 teams. Look last year when the east had 2 60 win teams, or a couple of years ago when the east had the 3 best records in the league.
Regular season success is very different from playoff success. Spurs lack playoff experience so I would actually take the Celtics over them in a Finals match up. I would want the Celtics over the wolves too. Thunder or Nuggets would be close series too. The wolves are very close the Cavs in terms of talent and accomplishments.
Regardless I’m talking about the conferences as a whole, not just the teams at the top
at least 3⁄4 of those teams in a series would be a coin toss vs. the knicks
A coin toss at what?
Knicks would be closer to getting swept than winning any of those series
Lets not get ahead of ourselves now. The Nuggets, Spurs, and Thunder would all win in 6 at the very least.
try watching games
I watch a lot of basketball. In fact I watched your team win 7 games in a row vs bottom 10 teams in the league, then immediately lose 3 games in a row vs playoff teams. Knicks aren’t making it out of the second round - let alone to the finals.
You watched your team barely beat any teams in the playoffs last year even though they were first seed. I don’t think you actually watch basketball
We won a ring didn’t we? We swept the Grizzlies. We beat the best offensive player in the league in 7. We beat the Timberwolves in the WCF in 5. We beat the Pacers (who beat the Knicks in 6 btw) in 7. A ring is a ring. I’ll enjoy watching my team going b2b this year.
Okay, but those aren’t good results compared to what was expected just like you’re using regular season examples against that other guy lmao
What lol? Winning a series in 4 and 5 games aren’t good results? Beating a contender in 7 isn’t a good result? Bro it’s the playoffs. Games mean so much more. If the Knicks aren’t beating contenders in the regular season, they’re absolutely not beating them when the playoff intensity ramps up.
Comments like this remind me why I shouldn’t waste time on this site. You guys just copy + paste whatever hot takes you see on Twitter and treat it as gospel.
yeah what are we doing lol
A lot of us were tanking
It’s amazing. You also have the gap year Pacers hanging around. I don’t quite think the ceiling in the east is higher than the west, but great to see the floor rising.
the east was honestly better than the west from 2021-2023 so i’m not surprised
teams
True my bad