NBA: Is the Western Conference more open than we think it is?

Is the NBA’s Western Conference deeper than just the two teams in Los Angeles?

The Western Conference runs through Los Angeles. At least, that’s what we’ve heard throughout the entirety of the season. Ever since the Los Angeles Lakers and the LA Clippers mortgaged bounties of players and picks in deals that would make Vito Corleone shake in his boots, a seven-game “Battle for LA” Conference Finals has seemed inevitable.

But as the regular season churns along, I keep asking myself a recurring question: Is it really such a shoo-in that either the Lakers or Clippers will represent the West in the NBA Finals?

FiveThirtyEight does not appear to believe so. Its “RAPTOR” forecasting model projects a Los Angeles team to win the Western Conference 64 percent of the time. The other model on the site, termed “Elo”, has either the Lakers/Clippers making the NBA Finals in just 38 percent of its simulations.

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Meanwhile, their main contemporary in the opposing conference, the Milwaukee Bucks, is pegged at 38 percent and 57 percent odds, respectively.

But projection systems can be wonky. I will always take them with a relative grain of salt after seeing FiveThirtyEight give the 2017-18 Warriors a less than 10 percent chance of winning the NBA Finals when CP3/Harden Houston Rockets were at its apex. It can be easy to fall prey to the day to day minutiae of the regular season. The postseason often boils down to “my superstar is better than yours,” as overly-simplistic and trite as that may sound.

That said, it does appear that the upper-middle-class of the Western Conference is on the rise, while the teams at the very top of the upper echelon do not seem to be as formidable as in past years. Here’s how the West playoff teams so far this year compare to each season since 2004-05 (the first year that the NBA had 15 teams in each conference). Based purely on winning percentage, the gap between higher and lower seeds is atypically small thus far.

The void at the top is even more apparent when you dig into the efficiency numbers. The lists below show the weakest Western Conference teams by Net Rating that finished first and second in this metric since 2004-05 (per Cleaning the Glass). For context, the median Net Rating for teams from the West that advanced to the NBA Finals in this time period is +8.0.

Worst Teams to Lead Western Conference in Net Rating

Through All-Star Break

2019-20 Los Angeles Lakers (+7.0)
2007-08 New Orleans Hornets (+7.1)
2005-06 Phoenix Suns (+8.0)

Full Season

2009-10 Phoenix Suns (+6.3)
2009-20 Los Angeles Lakers (+7.0)*
2010-11 Los Angeles Lakers (+7.7)

Worst Teams to Finish 2nd in Western Conference in Net Rating

Through All-Star Break

2008-09 Denver Nuggets (+5.0)
2019-20 Dallas Mavericks (+5.6)
2018-19 Oklahoma City Thunder (+5.8)

Full Season

2019-20 Dallas Mavericks (+5.6)*
2009-10 Los Angeles Lakers (+5.7)
2008-09 Portland Trail Blazers (+6.1)

*denotes current pace

Interestingly, the 2009-10 Lakers were the only team on this list to make it to the Finals. The fact that this year’s Clippers have not been good enough to overtake Dallas in Net Rating should serve as an indictment on them in its own right.

It may seem like the West is there for the taking, but there are several reasons to believe otherwise. Despite having robust win-loss records, the non-LA teams in the playoff picture have been pretty mediocre in terms of overall efficiency. For example, the Denver Nuggets have the fifth-best Net Rating in the conference at +3.6, but historically speaking this would only rank 10th out of 16th among such teams since 2004-05. It does not matter that the Lakers/Clippers fail to stack up to past juggernauts if there is no one else stepping up to the plate to challenge them.

There is also a giant elephant in the room in the form of the Clippers. There are a few causes for concern for them in terms of roster construction and cohesiveness on both ends, but the bottom line is that they have a dominant +10.3 Net Rating when Kawhi Leonard is on the floor. Teams always take their cues from their superstar. With Kawhi not putting much emphasis on the regular season at this point, it is difficult to put a ton of stock in the Clippers’ performance thus far.

What kind of recent precedent is there for the Western Conference shaping out like this?

The 2007-08 season had a similar distribution (not many games separating top-seeds and lower seeds). However, the top-seeded Lakers had a +12.3 Net Rating in games that midseason acquisition Pau Gasol played in, so that is not too apt of a comparison.

The only other season that is alike to this one is 2013-14. It may seem inconceivable in retrospect, but the eventual champion San Antonio Spurs were by no means a lock to win the Western Conference. Vegas gave them 3/2 odds to advance to the Finals right before the playoffs, which was barely higher than the Oklahoma City Thunder. They also were pushed to seven games in the first round and appeared on the brink after getting blown out in Games 3 and 4 in Oklahoma City in the Western Conference Finals. This was also one of the most entertaining postseasons in recent memory, with the first-round alone having three Game 7s.

Based on all of this research, I believe that Los Angeles’ stranglehold on the Western Conference is looser than we initially believed. The West may not be wide open, but the opportunity is there for a dark horse team to make an improbable Finals run.

You cannot say that about many years. I believe that the Rockets will eventually have the greatest case for achieving this, but Denver and Utah also stand a chance. While the Lakers and Clippers are great teams, they are not the impenetrable bosses that we typically see residing at the mountaintop.

On the other hand, LeBron James has a lengthy history of dragging teams to the Finals (admittedly in the Eastern Conference). It would be quite shocking if the LA Clippers never figured out a way to iron out their wrinkles. These last 30 games or so will help illuminate just how worthy their Western Conference adversaries truly are.