The 2015-16 NBA season will mark the first or second time since the late 90s that the eastern conference has been deeper than the western conference on the whole.
There are years where a western conference team that was 10 or more games over .500 and yet still didn’t make the playoffs such as the Suns in 2008-09 and 2013-14 (why must they be cursed??) and the Warriors in 2007-08.
This year there very well may be two teams under .500 to make the playoffs in the western conference and the top two teams in the conference have combined to win 133 games with just over a week of play left.
The gap between the 4th and 5th seed in the western conference is currently 7.5 games when usually there is virtually no gap and the west has had at least six 50 win teams on average for more than a decade. This year the 5th seeded Memphis Grizzlies are 41-36 and will be without two of their best players for the postseason. They have now lost 6 in a row, while the 6th seed is a 41-37 Blazers team that has exactly one player in their rotation with any legitimate playoff experience.
The 2014 NBA Playoffs boasted the most hotly contested 1st round in NBA history. Three of the four first round series in the western conference went to 7 games while the other went to 6 games which included multiple overtime games and buzzer beaters (Houston vs Portland).
There is no reason to believe outside of some major injury or Lillard and McCollum catching fire for a game or two that all four of these first round series will be a clean sweep.
Here are the current first round match-ups as it stands today:
(1) Warriors vs (8) Jazz
(2) Spurs vs (7) Mavericks
(3) Thunder vs (6) Blazers
(4) Clippers vs (5) Grizzlies
The Warriors and Spurs look to be two of the greatest teams we’ve ever seen, the Thunder finally have a healthy Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook and the Clippers just got Blake Griffin back. Meanwhile the Grizzlies are imploding, the Mavericks can barely field a healthy roster, and the Blazers and Jazz are about as green as it gets postseason wise.
The first round fireworks may exist in the eastern conference where the three through six seeds are within a few games of one another and the two seed has only once won a playoff series in their franchise history.
Although the first round of the western conference playoffs will be underwhelming, the conference will take center stage as usual in rounds two and three as any combination of the Warriors, Spurs, Thunder and Clippers will be extremely juicy and well worth the two month investment that is the NBA postseason.
April may not bring fireworks this year, but May and June will certainly make up for it.
