Westward leaning still proceeding
Western Conference’s rich get richer as stars try to take fight directly to Warriors
LAS VEGAS— As star after star headed west this summer either in free agency or via trade, Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers became more and more bewildered.
“I think Gordon Hayward’s the smartest one. He got out of town,” Rivers said, referring to the all-star small forward’s move from Utah to Boston. “He went to the East. I really don’t understand the logic of this. It is what it is. It’s just going to be a harder conference, if that’s possible.”
Paul George, Jimmy Butler and Paul Millsap were all all-stars in the Eastern Conference last season who will play in the West next season. Chris Paul chose to leave the Clippers, but stayed in the West to join James Harden in Houston and important role players P.J. Tucker (to Houston) and Patrick Patterson (to the Oklahoma City Thunder) left the Toronto Raptors to go West for a run at the Golden State Warriors.
Rather than running from the Warriors, who burned down the league last season and seemed poised to dominate for the near future with four all-stars all in their prime, most teams in the West are running right into the fire.
“The other way, that’s a defeatist attitude,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “How long can you wait? I don’t know if Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, (guard) Klay (Thompson) and those guys are going anywhere for a while. You just can’t go into hibernation, wake up and say, ‘OK, it’s our time.’ We compete.” One of the most common measurements of a single player’s impact on a team’s overall success is win shares — a metric that estimates the number of wins a player produces for his team. Using that as a guide, calculated by the research site basketballreference.com, the Western Conference has added174.5 win shares to its roster this summer. That number takes into account free agent signings, such as Millsap leaving Atlanta for Denver, the major trades of George from Indiana to Oklahoma City and Butler to Minnesota, and the re-signings of players including Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant with Golden State.
The Eastern Conference, by contrast, added 127.6 win shares by Friday afternoon. Hayward was the lone bankable star to move to the East, while Kyle Lowry re-signed with the Raptors and Otto Porter stayed with Washington on a four-year, $110 million (U.S.) deal.
For more than two decades the Western Conference has lorded over the East in terms of talent disparity. Next year figures to be a bigger gap.
“You would think with all the picks that the East has had over the last 15 years, but they draft a great guy and he comes West,” Rivers said. “So I don’t know what’s going on. Growing up it was the exact opposite. It was the East and the Lakers when I was a kid. Now it’s the West and a couple of teams. It’s just a period we’re going through I guess. I hope it stops.”
Two years ago, the league explored the idea of changing the playoff format to seed teams 1-16 regardless of conference. But concerns about excessive travel and the varying strength of teams’ competition led the NBA to stick with the status quo. On Wednesday, NBA commissioner Adam Silver did not rule out revisiting the issue again down the road.
“I think many of us felt a 1-16 playoff made more sense,” Silver said, referring to the committee discussions two years ago. “And maybe there’s also the potential, it’s in some ways a separate issue, should you reseed after every round as some leagues do? I think those are the things we’ll continue to look at, but it’s not at the top of the agenda right now.”
Rockets GM Daryl Morey joked on Twitter that his front office full of deep thinkers were combing the Collective Bargaining Agreement for a clause that would allow them to relocate to the Eastern Conference. But rather than lament their geography, the Rockets, Timberwolves, Nuggets and Thunder all made major moves to try to catch the Warriors.
“It’s a weapons race in the NBA and you’re either in the weapons race or on the sidelines,” Morey said in June after acquiring Paul.
The East is not barren, of course. The best player in the world still resides in Cleveland. Hayward joins a talented Celtics team that made the Eastern Conference finals last season and also added No. 3 overall pick Jayson Tatum in the draft, The Raptors return their proud core for another run, Washington has one of the best backcourts in the league with John Wall and Bradley Beal and Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo gets better every season.
“The East has definitely changed a lot since the end of the season,” said Sixers president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo, a former Raptors executive. “I think what’s on the horizon is a lot of unknowns right now. There’s still come player movement that needs to happen. But things are wide open.”