#SLOE: People's Basketball Sim League

Over the past few seasons we have seen some impressive records coming out of the West, and the Bucks kind of standing alone atop the East, regular season record wise.
This year it seems as if the win totals are a little higher in the East.
Have we seen a shift of power from the Western to the Eastern Conference?
Which is stronger this season?
Why?

Rules: 1 point if you give thoughtful answers, which I will award after the timer ends for responses. The timer ends for responses at the moment the corresponding week's Sim is run.

Note: Use approximately 5 sentences as your bare minimum for 1 point. If you write 3 long, complex sentences, you'll still get a point. If you write 5, 3 word sentences, you will not get a point. Don't @ me.

Due: Due by the deadline for sim 11

Mike Lowry wrote: Wed Aug 27, 2025 1:43 am Over the past few seasons we have seen some impressive records coming out of the West, and the Bucks kind of standing alone atop the East, regular season record wise.
This year it seems as if the win totals are a little higher in the East.
Have we seen a shift of power from the Western to the Eastern Conference?
Which is stronger this season?
Why?

I wouldn't say the powe has shifted from the West to East.. but there definitely has been a more balanced distribution of strong teams. The West is still dominant in that the Kings are good, the Blazers keep blazing, the Lakers have Magic, and the worst team in the West from last season got 20000000% better in the offseason and is ready to be running the league for a decade. So I think the West definitely has maintained superiority overall. But the East has seen the Knicks resurgence (at the expense of a couple West squads), the Bullets continue to push, the Bulls looking as dominant as ever, the Nets starting to round back to contender form, the Pacers hanging in there, & the Pistons are only going to get better with age. Yeah the Celtics sucking so much may bring down the average overall... but the top half of the East still has gotten stronger.... just not as powerhouse as the West comparatively.

The West is still the better conference overall but the East is closing the gap. The interconference talent shifts via trades are one reason the gap is closing. The Knicks got King and Malone, the Bullets got Griffith, the Bulls got Natt and Short, and the Bucks got Rivers. That is a lot of talent which is evening the scales a bit but I still think the West is better.

Over the past few seasons we have seen some impressive records coming out of the West, and the Bucks kind of standing alone atop the East, regular season record wise.
This year it seems as if the win totals are a little higher in the East.
Have we seen a shift of power from the Western to the Eastern Conference?
Which is stronger this season?
Why?

Easy. Moses Malone went East. End of discussion.

I'll be honest - I'm a bit surprised to see the Bucks leading the pack again. I thought the Bullets and Knicks would be dueling out for top seed, and that the Bucks and re-tooled to much to lead the pack again, yet here we are.

By the numbers at the top, there are two teams in the west with 50+ wins, and 3 in the east. Does that make the east the tougher conference? Possibly. Could the Lakers or Blazers feasibly beat any of those teams in the finals? Possibly. Following the top of the pack, I think the Spurs are a tough out for any team, and the Bulls as well. So there are more top tier teams in the East this season - sure. And it's all because of the perennial shadow MVP Moses Malone.

Mike Lowry wrote: Wed Aug 27, 2025 1:43 am Over the past few seasons we have seen some impressive records coming out of the West, and the Bucks kind of standing alone atop the East, regular season record wise.
This year it seems as if the win totals are a little higher in the East.
Have we seen a shift of power from the Western to the Eastern Conference?
Which is stronger this season?
Why?

Rules: 1 point if you give thoughtful answers, which I will award after the timer ends for responses. The timer ends for responses at the moment the corresponding week's Sim is run.

Note: Use approximately 5 sentences as your bare minimum for 1 point. If you write 3 long, complex sentences, you'll still get a point. If you write 5, 3 word sentences, you will not get a point. Don't @ me.

Due: Due by the deadline for sim 11

There's a lot of talk about balance between conferences and things like that. Really, does this matter? You play who is in front of you, and in the Finals, its one versus one. In four seasons, each conference has one a title.

But to answer the question, the conference strengths has really been on the fringe playoff teams. The East has been weaker at the 6/7 than the West and I think that has definitely changed. And that is an effect of the Spurs in my opinion. With seemingly stronger powerhouses in the West, the middle ground teams are a bit weaker. The East loaded up with players from the West to be very top heavy with the Bucks, Knicks, and Bullets. But the teams in the East is after that could easily compete with all of the west teams. I think the East and West are even from fringe playoff teams to the top.

Mike Lowry wrote: Wed Aug 27, 2025 1:43 am Over the past few seasons we have seen some impressive records coming out of the West, and the Bucks kind of standing alone atop the East, regular season record wise.
This year it seems as if the win totals are a little higher in the East.
Have we seen a shift of power from the Western to the Eastern Conference?
Which is stronger this season?
Why?

There are a lot of intermingled questions here, but I'll do my best to untangle them. Power has shifted from the West to the East because stars have moved from the West to the East - Moses Malone, Bernard King, Calvin Natt, and James Edwards all spring to mind (Michael Cooper shifted from East to West in Free Agency, but there wasn't much impact cross-conference movement in Free Agency). I think there's also been an influx of talent into the East by way of the draft - finishing with worse records and higher picks usually means you're getting better talent - but I think (1) we're a couple of years away from really feeling those effects and (2) trades are much more impactful because even draft picks and young talent seem to move quickly around this league. Obviously, the Bucks won the title last season, so the top of the East has been as good as the top of the West, but I think the depth in the West is still a little bit better (and the bottom of the East is abysmal right now).

I'm going to base my answer on trajectory as much as current positioning and say that the East has definitely become the stronger conference.
Even for myself, that is hard to fathom when you look at the talent in San Antonio and LA, or the consistency of the Trauma Unit in Portland, but it's true.
It's true where the stars like Kevin McHale, Bernard King, Calvin Natt and Darryl Dawkins have proved able to carry their teams to the promised land.
It's true when you look at the inter-conference records of the top teams.
It's true when you look at the amount of teams like the Nets, Pistons, and Hawks building in the middle.
And it's true when you look at the Celtics flexing in the tank as we have only seen the Spurs do recently.
There's a ton of teams that need to figure things out regarding tear down or fixer upper, but that is more true in the West, where the Clippers, Kings, Sonics, and Mavericks don't have any direct line to legitimately contending for the title and the Lakers seem to be out of sorts.
I think the next few seasons will see them all regroup at different speeds.
And that will likely coincide with the Spurs growing up and eventually having a lot to say, but they aren't ready yet.

I don't think it's necessarily a shift in power more so than a balance of power. The West had been dominant for so long that it was eventually going to even out. We saw more than half the East try to tank the previous two seasons while the West pushed for championships. Now the East is starting to get back to competing while some teams in the West are starting to go into either rebuild or retool mode. Now that we're past the 1984 draft, teams are going to be more inclined to compete than to tank because the drafts won't be as deep as it just was. The Bucks took advantage of a weak conference and I think after this season they will start to see even more competition.

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+1 point