Maybe a membership at 24-Hour Fitness or Gold’s Gym will help out an NBA Eastern Conference that is so weak that it is simply embarrassing. Get in the weight room and throw some weight around! Hey I hear the Western Conference is on a five time a week regime.
The uncompetitive Eastern Conference boasts three teams at .500 or above. The Indiana Pacers, Miami Heat, and Atlanta Hawks are the only pretty girls at the party with the Pacers being the belle of the ball. The other 12 teams seem to be competing for the “who can have a horrible record and still get into the playoffs” award.
Honestly, that award does not sound all that great. I’m simply asking the question that everyone wants to know, “WHAT HAPPENED?”
On the other hand, a ridiculously strong Western Conference has 11 teams that are .500 or above. With about 30 percent of this season over, the huge discrepancy of talent between these two conferences is not only apparent, but disappointing as well.
It is not as if the Eastern Conference suddenly gave away all of their star players to the Western Conference. For the most part, all of the available talent in each conference has stayed pretty much in conference. Sure there were some players that moved to different teams in the offseason, but most of the movement happened in the same conference.
Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Jason Terry moved from the Boston Celtics to the Brooklyn Nets. Joe Johnson left Atlanta and went to the Nets as well. Dwight Howard left the Los Angeles Lakers and moved to Houston to play for the Rockets etc. etc. etc.
The Eastern Conference is such a joke that the official Twitter accounts of the Portland Trailblazers and the Phoenix Suns both took shots at it. Portland, sporting the best record in the NBA right now, said, “Is it too late to join the Eastern Conference? Asking for a friend.” To which the Suns account replied, “@trailblazers We asked you to keep that on the down low. That eager to get rid of us already?”
The Suns have dealt the Trailblazers two of their four losses this season. The Eastern Conference has been so bad this year that there’s talk of the NBA getting rid of a few franchises and realigning the conference division has been a hot topic all season long.
The playoffs last year were boring due to the uncompetitive nature of the first and second rounds. I honestly believe that they should get rid of the conferences and divisions. The reult would be the top 16 teams getting a playoff berth.
I do not know about going so far as to get rid of organizations or franchises all together, but having an Eastern Conference that really makes the competition factor of the NBA dwindle, is something that I believe we can all do without.
