THE WESTERN CONFERENCE: Enough Said!

Johnny J

The Western Conference dominance over the Eastern Conference, has been around for some time now. Its not that the west plays a different type of basketball, but its more of a team effort. Compared to the East, teams like the New York Knicks and Miami Heat focus on a superstar.  If you took away the superstar from each team, would they still be Conference title contenders, let alone NBA Title contenders? Out west, teams like Memphis, Golden State and Denver would still find away to win games minus their leading sorer. Truth be told, the West may have more superstars than the East as the latter has won the last three All-Star games. They also won five out of the last eight NBA Finals. That's what I call Conference dominance!

 The East is full of depleted stars this season, due to injuries: Derrick Rose, Danny Granger, Rajon Rondo and Amar'e Stoudemire have all missed a significant amount of games this year because of injury. Who has the best chance of reaching the finals? Obviously its easier to win in the East because of teams missing their stars. So for a team like the Knicks, now is the time to turn that frown upside-down. This could be their year.  The only team in their way--the Miami Heat. The Knicks have beaten them three times this season; once without Carmelo Anthony. Now just make it stick in the playoffs. I see only two teams being able to make the Finals in the East: New York and Miami.

If you look at the eight teams in the playoffs for the West, I would say six of them can make the finals. The only two who I believe won't are the Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors.

• Houston, we have a problem: James Harden has to go back to OKC and show them why he should have gotten paid. Who's worth more to a team: Harden or Russell Westbrook?  (Russell Westbrook--Ed). My answer is Harden.  He led the league in  free throw attempts with 792. Kevin Durant attempted 750. Imagine having them on the same team. Oh wait , that happened! Now Harden has to take his one man band into Chesapeake Arena, where the Thunder have only lost seven games all year. 
• "Warriors come out and play": This isn't the 1979 classic, but more of the 21st century video game. All I can say is this is going to be a series that doesn't believe in defense. These teams can definitely put up points. Denver lead the league with 106.1 PPG and Golden State came in seventh with 101.2 PPG. Stephen Curry vs Ty Lawson: a 2013 classic!

Matter of fact, if you take the eight seed Rockets and put them in the East, they would be a five seed. If you take the fifth seed Grizzlies and put the in the east, they would be a two seed. So is the West harder than the East?  Yes!  It's because they don't rely on one person; they rely on the team. Six of the the top teams who lead the league in assists are out West. Carmelo Anthony's team ranked 30th in assists. Big difference between ball sharing and ball hogging. It just seems to work for the Knicks. The West also plays at a faster tempo. Its more of a full-court, fast-break style of play. It's all about possession efficiency and pace.  Matter of fact, there is a formula that measures team pace: Team Possessions + Opponent Possessions / 2 X [Team Minutes Played / 5]

Basically, the more possessions you have, the more points a team can put up. The Rockets lead the league with 98.6, followed by the Nuggets with 97.8. Then you have the Warriors, Lakers, and Spurs in the order of four, five, and six. That's how the West dominates. Its simple mathematics. The West plays at a faster pace, while the East is mostly half-court play. Whoever comes out the East will still have to worry about slowing down their Western opponent.  It's that simple!  Easier said than done.

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NBA PICKUP GAME 2012: Point Guards (you don't want on your team)

Felipe M

I conducted a small poll asking the simple question, "Which five NBA players would you not want to have on your pickup team?"  Needless to say, I ended up getting very different answers so I decided to split this into a 5 part series based on NBA positions.  What follows is the list of players followed by the reasoning behind the selection. 

1. Rajon Rondo--Why Rondo gets so much hate among NBA fans is a perplexity to me.  Obviously, getting into a fight with Kris Humphries earlier this year, probably didn't endear himself to many fans.  In my opinion, Rondo would be great as playground point guard because all he would do is pass you the ball, non-stop!  However, Rondo shows up among many NBA fans' most disliked players all over the Internet. 
• Why? He does come off pretty weird, as a guy who dances to the rhythm of his own beat--maybe a bit arrogant for many NBA fans. Also, many people think he's overrated because he looks to be too afraid to shoot and score and has yet to develop a long range shot.  I like him, but many fans don't.
2. Ray Felton--Felton has been one of the more productive point guards since he entered the league with the Bobcats, but a reputation of selfishness and poor dieting has followed him throughout his career. His weight would be magnified as he arrived in Portland, unprepared for a shortened-NBA-lockout-induced-season and out-of-shape, flushing the Blazers' chances to make the playoffs and Felton and his weight were deemed the scapegoats.  
• This season however, he's been playing like a man on a mission with the New York Knicks, playing admirably for the club and being the main scorer sometimes on a team full of injured players. However, as one pollster explained his reasoning in selecting Felton, "too many donuts in his system. I don't like subbing in the playground, but you know this spare tire would be out of air after only eight minutes of outdoor summer heat." Despite his valiant effort this season, Felton proves that a bad reputation is harder to shed than a few pounds.
3. Jeremy Lin--The reason why Felton is playing so hard this season is because he's trying to make sure people know that he is a million times better than Lin. Lin is better paid and gets more publicity, but this season, Lin's inconsistent play is making NBA fans screaming out "FLUKE!" As one fan noted, "he took the money and ran...Can we please kill 'Linsanity' once and for all?"  Another fan stated that he's "one of the worst starting point guards in the NBA...the only thing this untalented PG does better is sell jerseys in Taiwan."
• Both his FG% and 3-point% are down from last year, but he was never a deep-threat to begin with, though the Rockets are asking him to shoot more from beyond the arc. Because of his poor shooting (and playing alongside teammate James Harden) his scoring is down as well, but playing against a Knicks' Defense earlier this month, showed that he can flourish if he is asked to dribble penetrate more often during games.  The fact that his turnovers per game are down either shows smarter decisions by Lin or a decrease in handling the ball for the Rockets. Besides that, Lin provides a decent, all-around game for a player at his position, but in the playground game, if you're not scoring and hitting your shots, you're not getting the ball, period.
4. Jameer Nelson--The reason I can't stand Nelson is because during the 2004 NBA draft, Nelson was the last player still in attendance who was yet to be picked and he looked devastated. Then Dick Vitale was interviewed during the draft's telecast and pleaded with all NBA teams to select the Senior out of St. Josephs's because he did things the right way and stayed in school and blah, blah, blah!  So by association, I've never really liked Nelson.  However, since Nelson has been the main scoring threat on the Magic this year, he has seen steady increases in production, although his 3-point% is down from last year (not so easy to hit those 3-point shots without teams double-teaming the post, huh?). However, Nelson can be inconsistent as well, scoring 28 points and dropping 10 dimes one night only to score 8 points and 5 assists in the next game. 
• Nevertheless, I can picture myself being on Nelson's team and experiencing a guy who can dribble his way to the paint with ease, but then inexplicably dish the ball to someone and would give dirty looks each time he thought his teammates were not cutting the right way or not rotating properly. Basically, he would glare at you, as if to blame you for his shortcomings.
5. Jerryd Bayless--Back when I covered the 2008 NBA Draft, I remember Bayless being described as an explosive guard who can one day give opposing teams trouble with his speed and raw scoring talent.  Unfortunately, Bayless has not met expectations and had one fan saying, "I spent a season watching him play and he consistently made stupid a$$ decisions."
• Since being drafted in 2008, Bayless has already played for four different teams.  "NBA journeyman" was not part of the scouting report on him.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Goran Dragic, Steve Nash, and Ty Lawson were inserted by me because even though they are pretty good point guards, the fact of the matter is that I can see them push the ball and running up-and-down the court constantly. In the playground game, that running up-and-down the court and trying to constantly score on transition can be beneficial as the opposing team might not see it coming and lazy, transition defense is the norm in the street game.  But for a guy like me, I'm not very interested in running up-and-down the court for a whole game.  I'll take Rondo and his half-court game any day.  

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