Not very much on the Knicks. We'll see how accurate it is. Liked that the writer wasnt shy about making a prediction.
LeBron James has headed to LA and the Western Conference has the Warriors and Rockets. But age and Anthony Davis could change the league’s gravityDevin Gordon
@DevinGordonX
Wed 31 Oct 2018
One of the unexamined truths of the modern NBA is that the Western Conference is better than the Eastern Conference, a theory given fuel by events like Monday’s Warriors v Bulls game, in which the Warriors ran up 90 points by half-time. But sometimes West > East gets talked about as if it’s the NBA’s natural resting state – as if water always finds its level, and that the NBA’s level will tilt West for years to come, as predictably as the tides, which, by the way, are much nicer and warmer in the West.
If you really pick at it, people will give you reasons, but none of them make any sense because the notion itself is nonsensical. Maybe it’s the mystical sense, one that transcends sports, of the West Coast as a sun-kissed paradise where dreams are planted in the mind and bloom in the world, like the Triangle Offense, which – interesting fact – was indeed conceived in California in the 1940s (USC to be precise) but was introduced into the NBA by Tex Winter, who was on Phil Jackson’s coaching staff in Chicago.
Or maybe it’s the embrace of disruptive team-building, a front-office paradigm shift that began with Billy Beane and baseball and the Oakland Athletics. Or because the East is the home of some of the NBA’s most inept owners, who help provide cover for the Western Conference’s equally gifted dunces, such as the Suns’ Robert Sarver, and the Timberwolves’ Glen Taylor.
And now LeBron James has switched conferences, tipping the balance even further toward the West, joining up with the Baby Lakers in a conference so deep that it is very likely a 50-win team will miss the playoffs.
So this is maybe an odd time to declare that the Western Conference’s historic and unquestioned dominance is about to end. Not overnight, obviously. And not a wild swing to the opposite pole. But next season it will start to erode for real, and in three years it will be gone.
Since the fish rots from the head down, let’s start with the Warriors, who are going to win the NBA title this year, full stop. It’s easy to see why: Klay Thompson just broke Steph Curry’s NBA record for three-pointers in a game, hitting 14 in three quarters and finishing with 52 points. It’s preposterous that the Warriors’ third-best scorer dropped 52 in 27 minutes but the reality is even more preposterous: DeMarcus Cousins is the Warriors’ third-best scorer, not Thompson.
Next year, though, Golden State are definitely toast.
And it won’t happen because someone beats them on the court but because they’ll break up before anyone gets a chance to. The Kevin Durant-to-New York rumors are as thick as the LeBron-to-LA rumors were this time last season, which doesn’t make them true, but they sure smell true, and just by himself, Durant heading east would be as impactful as LeBron heading west. That’s step one.
Step two is Jimmy Butler. His operatically entertaining trade-demand catastrophe in Minnesota seems destined to end with him being shipped out of town, and almost certainly to a team that will only do the deal if he promises – wink-wink – to stick around long term. No matter how many times this trade falls through, it’s still likely to be Miami. Houston are allegedly willing to fling four (four!) first-round picks at the Wolves for Butler, but those picks would have little value coming from the loaded Rockets. Some say the 76ers are lurking. The Wolves’ entire season could turn it into one long 82-game Mexican standoff. But one way or another Butler won’t be in Minnesota, and at least from here, he seems more likely to wind up back in the East.
Step three is age. The current crop of superstars atop the Western Conference aren’t fossils, but with only a handful of exceptions (who we’ll get to in a minute) they’re in their primes or cruising past them. Chris Paul is 33. Russell Westbrook, who turns 30 next month, has chronic knee problems, and will never slow down in order to alleviate them. Steph Curry is 30. James Harden is 29. Math and history tell us that at least one of them (Paul) will break down very soon.
Age will also take out a pair of sturdy playoff regulars, the San Antonio Spurs and the Memphis Grizzlies, the kind of teams that have filled out the West’s playoff bracket for years – the teams we’re really talking about when we talk about the West’s dominance over the East. Memphis, however, are staring down a full-scale rebuild, and if Gregg Popovich retires, the Spurs are, too.
Just like the East isn’t a talentless desert now, the West won’t be barren once the tradewinds shift. LeBron will still be there, he turns just 34-LeBron-years-old in December, which means he has about 12 or 13 peak seasons left. Even if Durant bolts, Golden State will still have Curry and Thompson (unless Klay is with LeBron in LA) and Draymond Green. Durant leaving town could give the Warriors the money to keep Cousins, assuming that’s a thing they want to do. Damian Lillard is 28 and in his prime and if he goes anywhere, it’ll be south, not east.
That’s not to say the West is entirely doomed. The conference has plenty of legit young stars approaching their Big Leap phase: Minnesota’s Karl Anthony Towns, who made the leap a couple years ago and then stumbled back a step; Denver’s Nikola Jokic, a legit 7ft point center; and Phoenix’s Devin Booker, who is the NBA’s most entertaining under-the-radar bonkers scorer right now. All three, though, play for franchises that can’t stop tripping over their own sneakers. None are within a few seasons of ruling the league. Also, shoutout to Dallas’s wunderkind point forward Luka Doncic, who’s already a more complete player, four games into his NBA career, than any of them. Also also to Utah, which has Rudy Gobert the most disruptive defensive player in the league since Dwight Howard five teams ago, and Donovan Mitchell, who will be plunging daggers into rival hearts for a decade. Good for them. The league’s balance of power, though, does not hinge on the Utah Jazz.
The figure it hinges on is Anthony Davis, the 254lbs Pelican in the room. If Davis stays in New Orleans, his presence alone plus LeBron’s (and Steph’s, and Harden’s) would anchor the West for years to come. The problem is, no one thinks he’s staying in New Orleans. Davis will be a free agent after the 2019-2020 season, and as many NBA insiders have already noted, you don’t switch agents (as Davis did this summer) if you intend to sign a max extension with your current team. Lots of those insiders assume he’s headed to the Lakers because his new agent also represents LeBron James. But Davis is not a free agent; he’s under contract, which means his path out of New Orleans is likely via trade, and Danny Ainge has far more assets to bring him to Boston and (just as importantly) block him from LeBron.
Who knows? Not even Anthony Davis! The point is, his future in the West is far from guaranteed, and if the 25-year-old moves East, this is a list of under-25 superstars he will join: Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, probably the preposterously-early MVP frontrunner so far; Philly’s Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons; Boston’s Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown (plus Kyrie Irving, who is still only 26); the Knicks’ Kristaps Porzingis; and Indiana’s Victor Oladipo, who spent a year learning from Russell Westbrook how to be Russell Westbrook and, holy crap, did he nail it.
Then there’s the three Western Conference stars who’ve moved East since the start of last season: Gordon Hayward (from Utah to Boston), Blake Griffin (who scored 50 earlier this month for Detroit), and most significantly of all, Kawhi Leonard, the third best player in the NBA, who forced his way out of San Antonio, wound up in frigging Canada, and now seems determined to burn down the league in an act of merciless vengeance, laughing his weird ghoulish laugh the whole time.
LeBron saw all this coming, by the way. He is not the type to go ring-hunting without looking at a map first. And when he did, he wouldn’t have seen some insurmountable armada out West blocking him from the finals – he’d see a leaky, aging fleet about to get cut to pieces by a bunch of slick young catamarans.
So really, it’s no wonder LeBron fled the East. He’s no dummy. In a couple of years, the Western conference will be a cake walk.
