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Originally Posted by southeasy
my only defense for that & those numbers that you came up with are the fact that both Bosh & O'neal played out last season with injuries (bosh had a recurring nagging knee injury which caused him to miss about 20 games) playing countless games injured, and we all know O'Neals season definitely was hindered.
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Every team has injuries. It's part of the game. Given their histories, it's more likely than not that Bosh and O'Neal will suffer at least some minor, nagging injuries this coming season.
Quote:
Originally Posted by southeasy
overall it's clearly apparant, the east as a whole is improved upon. we won't see the same discrepency between the West & East this season, that was an anomaly IMO
not all 8 playoff teams will have 50 wins this season, i'll be extremely surprised if they. i'll say 4-5 teams out west will have about 50 or more wins.
the rest will go to eastern teams, to even out what seems is a big talent difference between the two conferences.
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No, it wasn't an anomaly. It's been the norm for over a decade that the 4 - 8 seeds in the West have much better records than the 4 - 8 seeds in the East. The discrepancy was magnified last year as all 8 teams in the West won 50+ games, but the fact that the West 1 - 8 was much better than the East 1 - 8 wasn't an exception, it was part of a decade+ long trend. As I wrote previously:
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Originally Posted by BNM
For the last decade, the top 2 - 3 teams in the East have been able to compete with the best teams in the West. The difference is, and has been, in the 4 - 10 positions. The West has traditionally been VERY strong in these positions and the East has been very week.
You have to go back all the way to 1996-97 to find a Western Conference team that made the play-offs with a loosing record. The East has one or two sub-.500 teams in the play-offs almost every year.
Over the last decade, it's not uncommon for teams in the East to make the play-offs with 35 or 36 wins. Over the same time period, it's not uncommon for teams in the West with 44, 45 or 46 wins to miss the play-offs.
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That's not an anomaly, it's a long term trend. The discrepancy may be less this year than it was last, but the West is still the better conference and it will take several years of improvement in the East before the trend is reversed.
BNM