It's no secret that The Western Conference is the more dominating of the two, but the sad part about it is the fact that The West will only get stronger. Think about it now, look at the teams this summer with around 10 million + cap space to aquire big name free agents... Phoenix Suns (West) Utah Jazz (West) Denver Nuggets (West) Atlanta Hawks (East) Los Angeles Clippers (West) San Antonio Spurs (West) Cleveland Cavaliers (East) 5 Western Conference teams, just 2 Eastern. Now with all the big names who will be free agents this season they're choices are quite limited. Not many players want to goto the Hawks, so really they're just one choice in The East, Cleveland. However they're likely to be resigning Carlos Boozer, basically leaving NO choices to sign with in The Eastern Conference. Does anyone ever think the balance of power will EVER even out?
The balance in power will not sift toward the east until. The balance in bigman sift toward the east. Right now the east is to guard oreintated. Its hard to win alot of games when your best player is a guard & you dont have a bigman to the ball down low to inside. If you look at the eastern teams their are only 3 or 4 teams that you cant throw the ball down low.And have a good chance that you can come away with points. So the balance power wont go back to the east until eastern conference power forwards and centers get better. But it will happen sooner or later. One thing the east does have in its favor is that it has alot of young bigmen with huge upsides for the future. People like Brown(Wizards), Curry(Bulls),Bosh(Raptors),Boozer(Cavs) etc can develope to the level where they become legit low post bigmen then we will start to see the balance sift toward the east against. You simply can win games with serious low post threats on a consistent basis. I give the east 3 or 4 years. And then you will see a serious improvement in alot of eastern conference teams. The balance will never completely sift toward the east but it can even out given the chance for a few guys to develope. But I think that despite what alot of experts think their are 3 teams with a shot at winning a world championship in the east depending on who they meet out of the west in the finals.
I can see Cleveland being a marquee team in the next couple of years. They've got a franchise player in Lebron, a solid 20-10 guy in Booze, a legitimate center in Ilgauskas (who was an all-star last year by the way), a lottery pick ( potentially #1) AND enough cap room to sign free agents. Tremendous upside. The balance will shift when this team get their act together.
It won't even out until the Eastern GMs are given a bit of time by their paranoid fans and give up the whole "we need a superstar at all costs" philosophy. Winning begats winning.
It won't even out until the East gets some real coaches with power over the players. If you look in the West players know on the elite teams, if they act up it will be them gone, not the coach. While in the East, coaches get fired everyday. The owners need to give more responsability to the coaches in the east. Thats just my two cents on this.
I don't know if the balance of power will even out any day soon. Currently, there are only 2 teams in the East with legit big men, those being Cleveland and Indiana. And, a legit big man is what you really need to compete with the West. Unfortunately, despite the fact that each of them have a fairly legit big man, they still really can't compete with Western elite such as Sacramento and the Lakers. But, there are teams that could have bright futures. Team such as Chicago, who are very young with 2 very good young big men, could one day do it. But, Tyson and Eddy need to put on more muscle and what not if they ever want to really stand a chance against Shaq. Though, they each have shown signs of their true potential, neither have really reached it yet. Than the Wizards could once Brown fully develops torwards what everyone thought he could be. But, really, overall, I don't think the balance will shift any time soon. There is currently only one team in the East who can even compete with West consistently and that is Indiana. So, maybe about 3-5 years down the line.
<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Currently, there are only 2 teams in the East with legit big men, those being Cleveland and Indiana. And, a legit big man is what you really need to compete with the West.</div> What? Where's New Jersey and their allstar power foward Kenyon Martin. Where's Detroit with the Wallace brothers, Rasheed and Big Ben?
Ugh, sorry bout that. My brain is gone tonight. Yea, Jersey does have Martin who is legit. Ben Wallace is a great center or power forward, wherever they choose to play him. And Rasheed Wallace is almost more or of a small forward because he works on the perimeter so often. But, the thing is, none of them can match up to the likes of Shaq, Yao, Duncan, or Garnett. I personally think the only ones that can are O' Neal and big Z. Martin got smoked the last 2 years in the finals by Shaq and Duncan. Ben Wallace, well, he could probably do something against them considering he is one of the best defenders in the league.
Moo2k4 i don't know which wallace your talking about, but i assume ben wallace. However i think that rasheed would math up pretty well with garnett because hes quick enough and garnett doesn't have a lot of low post strenght which would play to sheed's strenghts as well. Now i don't know how well that team would match up with the lakers, but other than that team i think as far as big men go they would play with the spurs, kings, and twolves because ben and rasheed are quite good. Plus they have guards that can play.
You've got a point, but look at the draft, this year out of the top 10 picks only 2 (Phoenix and the Clippers) are going to be from the West. So 8 of the "top" future players are going to Eastern teams, last year was the same way, only Denver and the Clippers picked in the top 10. So it's only a matter of time to devlope these young draftees and these Eastern teams will begin to take some power back, the problem is with KG, Duncan, Shaq, Yao, Amare, Randolph, Dirk, and 'Melo -- their teams will never move them, meaning the West is always gonna have a lot of great forwards and centers... so perhaps in 5-10 years after Shaq retires and Curry, Chandler, Brown, Howard (if he goes to a Eastern team), Milicic and all these young frontcourt players begin to play up to their POTENTIAL, the East can start to take back some power.
Yeah the power will switch once Eastern teams get quality bigmen,like for example Indiana has Jermaine ONeal a they have one of the best records in the leauge.
