Honestly, I think it’s just as much about the memory of the past~30 years that’s causing people to think it as much as the focus on specific star players.

If we only did post season teams i bet it’s even closer. Our stinker teams were worse than theirs.

One could argue the east was so easy the Knicks came out of it fully rested, whereas the Spurs went through a gauntlet in the West and might not have the gas left.

I wouldn’t make that argument… but one could…

The NBA playoffs has become a game of matchups moreso than just “team a is better than team b”. Some teams have answers to specific players. for this series, KAT has shown an ability to guard high level bigs straight up between Wemby and Jokic. Whereas, OKC’s big strength, multiple aggressive defensive guards, can be neutralized by the Spurs having 3 high level guards, and Shai’s midrange game is impacted by Wemby’s length. Meanwhile, the Knicks stretch it out to 3 so Wemby isn’t as big or a factor (though obviously still a huge factor).

So, posts decrying public perception being wrong are kind of missing the point. You can’t say the Knicks would body OKC just because they are succeeding against the Spurs. That’s just not how it works anymore.

I definitely still think the west is overall stronger but it’s just more top heavy and whereas the east’s bottom teams look a lot worse than the wests. But I think they are almost equal when looking at the top teams in each conference.

I said it in another thread. The Eastern Conference is judged by Nets and Wizards, the Western Conference is judged by Wemby, Luka, Jokic, SGA.

I absolutely agree that if you take the top 10 players in the league, the Western Conference has more. However that’s not the point. The playoffs aren’t a conference by conference tournament. The Eastern Representative does not have to face Denver, OKC and SAS. They only have to play one. Hell, even the Western rep doesn’t have to face all the elite teams in the conference.

West has traditionally been better since Jordan retired, but fans have gone too far and treat the West with a halo effect. Matchups matter in basketball, and the top of the east performed very well vs the top of the West this season.

Pacers last year were supposed to get killed by the Thunder and were one unlucky injury away from taking it

I do not understand these posts.

The east has been over .500 against the west 3 times in the last 25 years.

That doesn’t mean the east can’t have strong teams at the top. The Knicks are clearly a very good team and likely will win the title. That doesn’t mean the east hasn’t continued to be the inferior conference like it has since MJ retired from the Bulls basically.

The east has had some strong champions - who cares if the dregs of the east are worse or whatever?

Is accumulated fatigue not a factor for the finals?

How long have you had this one in the oven for bud?

All of this to lose to the Cavs

“The gap exists, but it’s probably smaller than fans make it out to be.Good post with actual context. “

I mean the Knicks just proved how weak the East is by running through them so easily.

What do the warriors have to do with anything? Curry was hurt a lot this year and our $50mm starter was lost to a season ending injury

The West was overrated largely because people were like Oh there’s 5 teams in the West would run the East, which is pure nonsense. The top 2 teams were excellent, but after that Denver wasn’t even close to being passable on D this year, Houston always had a nonviable playoff offense, the Wolves were not good enough on either side of the ball (and then got ravaged by injury), and the Lakers just have an unathletic, overmatched team outside of Luka and Lebron and Luka got hurt.

Then on top of that the East juggernaut actually arrived when all of the Knicks players decided to hit their ceiling at exactly the same time in the playoffs lol.

Just do the top 5 players in the nba. They are all argubaly in the west. That matters a lot. 1-8 in each confrence the west is by far better. And I am a knicks fan. just switch nuggets or minny with pistons they would easily make confrence finals too.

Pacers should’ve won last year if Hali didn’t tear his Achilles and Celtics won the year before

The gap is that only one or maybe 2 teams in the east are considered strong. West has many more prospective contenders. 

No? Nobody ever said a team from the east can’t win it, they just said there are better teams in the west, which is true. The knicks are killing it and deserve to be there but imagine them in the west and having to go through San Antonio, OKC, Denver, Minnesota, a healthy Lakers team, etc. It just doesn’t compare. Getting to beat up in a shit Eastern conference and be rested while the Spurs killed themselves in 7 games just to get there is a HUGE advantage. It pays to play in the weak East for sure. There are no downsides, only upsides.

Lol folks are still denying what their eyes are clearly showing them, I guess because it’s unfathomable to accept that the LOLKnicks are a great TEAM.

The Spurs, the team a lot of y’all said played their Finals in the WCF and “the Knicks were just playing for second place”, are down 0-2 to that very same team due to huge plays from the role players late in the game on the road.

It’s time for the “weak east” shid to die and start giving credit where it’s due. You can’t luck your way into 13 straight playoff wins. This team is the real deal.

I’d say that the west has a higher floor for their teams, you can have bad teams make the playoffs in the east while the wests worst teams in the playoffs are usually in the decent/good non contender tier, but the ceilings are relatively similar.

Historically it’s been in the wests favor but in the parity era teams from both conferences have won the finals at a pretty similar rate.

Would you trade the knicks playing against the hawks 6rs cavs for spurs going trailblazers wolves okc? Or the wolves path of denver spurs okc if we wanted to make the finals?

Not sure how much the finals should be taken into account when we consider the path both teams had to get there and the fact that the Knicks are supernova hot rn.

Also beyond the Knicks what East playoff team do you feel confident in beating their West counterpart?

I think the dialogue was shifting in recent years, but injuries plaguing the East, Dame not working out, etc caused lots of fans to view the East as super weak again and viewed teams like the Knicks as pretenders. The western teams get so hyped up in the media and get the majority of attention, especially since the top 3 MVP candidates are all in the West, everyone just kind of forgets about the East. Add on the Knicks dog walking their way to the Finals and it confirms people’s bias that the East is just ass rather than the Knicks are a really good team.

We’re living in an era of unmatched parity and I think people struggle with the idea that teams are now built and designed with purpose rather than just throwing stars together. You’d think the Pacers run last year should’ve really shown people to not underestimate the East and teams without MVP front runners, but maybe after this Knicks run people will finally start recognizing.

The East is a Hali ACL away from being 3-0 in the last 3 finals matchups

I’d still take the Warriors if they played the 10th seeded east. Record doesn’t mean everything as if you’re in the west you play more western teams. If you match them up 1-10 west vs 1-10 east, the west wins most of those if they play a series.

While I agree with your overall point - there is less of a gap than people like to admit - pointing out Denver’s defensive rating when the team faced significant injuries (can’t underscore how important Gordon is, then Jokic being skews things), is a little disingenuous.

And injuries will always be at play, as well as having a little luck, which the Knicks have had with players staying mostly healthy.

I believe Pacers take game 7 last year of Hali doesn’t go down.

Bottom line - I agree. Knicks are 2 wins from the chip, so time will tell.

Name another team on NYK’s tier in the east, I’ll wait.

LA (when healthy), SA, OKC, & NYK are all clearly in a tier of their own compared to the rest of the league.

Yes, NY is the best team this year, but their road to the playoffs was reminiscent of LeBron vs “the cans”. It wasn’t like these teams did particularly well in the playoffs this year, your conference finals opponent had the worst possible record they could have, and then they waltzed into a matchup where they have a massive stylistic advantage playing 5 out. Nobody was on their level enough to put up a fight, and it was pretty obvious watching the Hawks games that the Knicks lost them from bad game planning, not talent.

If the Knicks put up 60 wins next year, the east still won’t be considered strong, just the Knicks will. You can blame that on bias all you like, but the reality is nobody is looking at the bottom 12 out east & saying yeah it’s likely they’ll be better than NYK/BOS/DET this year. Meanwhile out west, SA/OKC/LA could all lose their spots to a dealers choice of DEN/MIN/HOU, and that’s not mentioning the rising Mavericks or the possible banana boat team with LeBron/Curry/Butler.

There’s more rosters in the West that gm’s would salivate over, and until the Raptors move off of Ingram & RJ or the Magic find an upgrade to Suggs, it’s gonna stay that way.

West was better imo from like 1992-2020. League has been more even since then. MJ and Bron playing in East kept it semi afloat but West was considerably better. Today I actually think East is deeper as a whole west just has more top 5-7 level guys so it’s top heavy.

twolves heading to the east will get both conferences balanced

It’s definitely overrated if you ask me but there’s also some truth to it, the East has only beaten the West head to head 3 times since 2000 so looking at the regular season it really is prevalent but in terms of winning the finals the West has won 17 vs the East’s 9 in the same timespan so it’s not as biased but still shows the West has historically been more dominant. I’d love to see that change and we are potentially on the cusp of that happening with how much parity there has been.

I mean Knicks are doing great but sweeping Cavs and Sixers definitively goes against rest of East. Competition was weak , Spurs a 62 win team got exhausted in West playing tough series especially against experienced Timberwolves and OKC.

It felt like OKC series actually spent Spurs and they were celebrating winning it too early (cause they are a young team ) and all that helps Knicks an experienced team beat them. At end both games were close but younger more tired , inexperienced Spurs gambled them away .

If its somehow first round Knicks vs Spurs i am sure playoffs would look way different . Also there are always matchup teams who suit each other better OKC would be way tougher for Knicks but Spurs are very well built to fight OKC. Classic rock paper scissors

Knicks might be champions but overall East is a little weaker and has less competition

The Cavs made the conference finals almost against their own will.

The Knicks being on a generational run doesn’t somehow improve the entire conference.

Future seasons with tanking not on the table should clarify some of the conference strength stuff.

I don’t have an opinion about the meat of this post but the warriors beat the clippers in the ⁹⁄₁₀ game

I mean I get it, but we’re a year removed from OKC going 29-1 vs east. Is the gap exaggerated? Yes. Is there still a gap? Yes. The Knicks are an incredibly bad matchup from the Spurs in the same way Spurs are a bad matchup for OKC. Minnesota is a terrible matchup for Denver but Denver was a bad matchup for the Spurs, and the Spurs are a bad matchup for The wolves. Playoffs are about matchups rather than which team is better overall, player for player.

No.

When I say the West is better than the East, and has been pretty consistently since the 90s, I’m talking about the top teams in each conference. Not a single team going on a historic run (the Knicks this year, the Pacers last year), and not the overall head-to-head matchups for all teams in the league.

Case in point: the West playoff teams had a 72-56 (.563) record against the East playoff teams this season, which is a higher win% than half the East playoff teams had for their whole season, which includes games against all the tanking teams.

Find a new slant, lol.

The fact that the Knicks blew through the east like they were playing a bunch of college teams isn’t evidence the east is awful. It’s that the Knicks are that good.

I watched the whole series and I still can’t believe we blew a 3-1 lead. That really happened?

Really?

Can we let the series end first?

This is why I wish they’d just seed 1-16 and not do conferences because this east vs west thing is never going away. It’s like completely stuck with people and idk how it goes away. That being said, I understand how people look at a team like the Hawks or even the Cavs and don’t see great matchups. They both come off as teams that probably would’ve lost in the first round in the west. One is basically Clippers East and the other is basically the Trailblazers. Fun but not really serious quite yet.

The Knicks are playing better basketball than the Spurs at the moment, that is literally all this Finals has shown us. Even that can change in a week, who knows?

I’m not saying your point of the East/West gap being overrated isn’t valid, but that has nothing to do with this Finals performance, the Finals is simply the matchup of 2 teams who happen to be in opposing conferences. The Knicks could totally lose against the Thunder in a series of 7 for example, so much just comes down to matchups and health.

Of course the best of the East can beat the best of the West. The thing is it’s always only 1-3 great teams in the East while 1-6 in the West usually are on the level or better than the top 3 in the East.

No, the Eest is 8 strong teams and 4 mid. The East is 4 strong and 8 mid.

Knicks deserve their respect but nah the East is not on the same level

Don’t forget last year’s East champs, who took the defending champs Thunder to 7 games and was leading Q1 until the guy who makes their playstyle possible and the most clutch performer of that playoffs went down to an injury, was also out of contention due to injury of said integral player.

It will stick around as long as this keeps being true: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1ocenzo/akabas_the_western_conference_has_had_a_winning/

Maybe people will learn to stop applying it to specific matchups. It just means that the average west team is a bit more likely than a coin toss to beat the average east team, and regular season W-L records and stats are slightly inflated in the east and deflated in the west, emphasis on slightly.

Outside of context for those season stats, it doesnt apply to top teams or who is more likely to win the Finals. And doesnt have anything to do with specific match ups.

And yeah, I dont think the Warriors would have been a play-in team this year if so many teams werent tanking.