Poll: Which conference is deeper

[celticsclay]

My definition matches the traditional sports notion of quality.  Parity and depth are not equivalent terms.  The East has more parity but the West is deeper because the West has better teams. 

For an example from college football, which Big Ten football division was deeper the East or West using the conference record only (since non con and bowls has a great disparity in opponent)?  https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/conferences/big-ten/2021.html

I'd pretty easily say the East was the deeper division since they had the better teams, but by using your logic here you'd have to say the West since Wisconsin and Illinois were better in conference than Penn St. and Maryland.

You are one odd duck mo. Not even sure what your point is with the big ten conference here, kind of out of left field. But I don’t want to get off in the weeds on some random football conference. I guess the only thing we can agree on is head to head is a good determinant. I expect the east to lose a few more games this week, but then make another charge as some of the awful teams from the west make their east trips and there will be a lot more tanking teams in the west.

you said I had some weird definition of depth, which just isn't accurate and I tried to illustrate that point with the Big Ten as I thought it applied. I take it from you not answering that direct question that you agree with me that the Big Ten East was the deeper better division this year.

I literally don’t know what you are trying to argue here. You are kind of making the argument I have been trying to make. The east was deeper cause it had 5 times over .500 compared to 4 for the west. This is partly the same reason the east is deeper than west in nba. More above .500 teams. Very odd way of doing it, but thank you for finally admitting it.

I said conference records because post season and non-con are different

Regular Season conference records
Big Ten East
8-1
8-1
7-2
4-5
3-6
2-7
0-9

Big Ten West
7-2
6-3
6-3
6-3
4-5
1-8
1-8

Your definition the West is deeper, but we all know the East was the deeper better division.

More parity, does not make a conference/division deep, if the parity is a result of a bunch of mediocre teams and not good ones.

I honestly don't believe you even believe this after the injuries to lillard and George. There is a legit 7 bad teams in the west now and three in the east. But will sit back and see how the records end up. No point arguing it
Further now.

[Moranis]

Of course I do.  If you tiered the teams by realistic title chances, the West still has more of the better teams because the West has more of the better players, and better players lead far more often to playoff success.

[Moranis]

Big week for the West as they now have a 9 game edge in the head to head and they absolutely dominated after last Monday's 0-4.  As has been much of the year, the top 3 are out West and bottom 2 are in the East.  Continuing the trend 9 of top 16 are in the East.  Trade deadline should provide some clarity on teams as the Pacers and Blazers have already sold off assets.  Be interesting to see what happens and how many teams in the West actually are going to try for the play-in vs. sell off assets since that 10th spot is in range for basically everyone (Houston is only 6 games from it and OKC is 3.5 out). 

[celticsclay]

Big week for the West as they now have a 9 game edge in the head to head and they absolutely dominated after last Monday's 0-4.  As has been much of the year, the top 3 are out West and bottom 2 are in the East.  Continuing the trend 9 of top 16 are in the East.  Trade deadline should provide some clarity on teams as the Pacers and Blazers have already sold off assets.  Be interesting to see what happens and how many teams in the West actually are going to try for the play-in vs. sell off assets since that 10th spot is in range for basically everyone (Houston is only 6 games from it and OKC is 3.5 out).

If you haven’t noticed this by now when a bad team like the Knicks goes west and a great team like the suns goes east it is easy to pile up some wins for one conference. We will probably have the reverse of this as these trips end and San Antonio and okc start eastern trips. I agree the trade deadline could change the balance for some of these teams.

[Moranis]

The Suns were 2-1 (all on road) and the Knicks were 1-2 (only 1 on road), so that helped some, but that is just 2 games of the many that the west picked up.  And I'm sure the Spurs going on an 8 game road trip will negatively affect their record as well.  But all of that evens out over the course of a season and right now the West has won more games in the intraconference games.  I'm also not one that thinks that matters all that much as early in the year when the East had a slight lead in that department, I maintained the West was still the better deeper conference, but I was in the minority in that view.  And now all of those people have conveniently gone silent the last few months when the West has had more wins. If you take a hardline view that record is really the only factor, then you can't ignore the record.  If record matters that much, then clearly the West has been the better deeper conference over the course of the season.

[celticsclay]

The Suns were 2-1 (all on road) and the Knicks were 1-2 (only 1 on road), so that helped some, but that is just 2 games of the many that the west picked up.  And I'm sure the Spurs going on an 8 game road trip will negatively affect their record as well.  But all of that evens out over the course of a season and right now the West has won more games in the intraconference games.  I'm also not one that thinks that matters all that much as early in the year when the East had a slight lead in that department, I maintained the West was still the better deeper conference, but I was in the minority in that view.  And now all of those people have conveniently gone silent the last few months when the West has had more wins. If you take a hardline view that record is really the only factor, then you can't ignore the record.  If record matters that much, then clearly the West has been the better deeper conference over the course of the season.

Sorry this is mainly from the nets who lost 8 straight to the west without Durant and Aldridge (who is fairly important for them) and  mostly without harden. Now the nets struggling and not being a premier team definitely hurts the east depth but you are really prematurely celebrating here. The blazers just punted on the season. There is definitely more bad/awful teams in the west right now. But I don’t want to get back into debating this with you on a daily basis and we can just see where the records end up.

[Moranis]

West is now up 13 games so they expanded the lead by 4.  They had a couple of very big days on the week, while the East only had 1.  Should be interesting how the trades affect things moving forward as some teams seemed to be going for the play-in in the West, while others did not.  Top 3 still in the West (SRS has the top 4 in the West), bottom 2 still in the East (SRS has Detroit and Houston as worst 2, though Orlando is close to Houston), and 9 of 16 still from East (SRS has 8 teams from each in the positive). 

[Kernewek]

This has been one of my favourite discussions to watch unfold over the season. Props to those of you who keep it going.

[Kernewek]

oh no rogue double post. West is better, east has a slightly higher floor, there’s no good way to measure the height of a wave and the same seems to be true of conference depth.

[Moranis]

So sitting at the all star break the West has 15 more wins than the East at 449-434 vs. 434-449.  The 3 best records are still in the west with Phoenix coming in above .800 which is very rare.  The Warriors are the only other team above .700, though 9 teams are .600 or better (and the Mavs are basically a win away from it). Utah makes 4 of the top 6 in the West.  The two worst teams are in the East still (and 3 of the bottom 5) and no team is below .200, but 3 are below .300.  The top 16 is evenly split at 8 in each conference, though 17, 18, and 19 are all Eastern teams. 

[Moranis]

In the few days post-all star break, they played even so the West still has its 15 game lead in the head to head.  Chris Paul's injury hasn't slowed Phoenix down yet as they are still above .800 and the West continues to have the 3 best records while the East still has the two worst, though Detroit has just 1 more loss than Houston now.  Top 8 in each conference are all above .500, and while the East still has better records from the play in teams, the West is better at every slot in the top 6. 

[Moranis]

West with 14 more wins, so East shaved one off the lead last week, however the West now has a better record respectively from each of the top 8 as well as the bottom 3, so the East is only better than the West's counterpart from positions 9, 10, 11, and 12.  The top 3 records in the West along with 6 of the top 10 and 8 of the top 15 records reside in the West.  Detroit did move ahead of Houston so only the worst record is in the East now though the East still has 3 of the bottom 5 and 2 of the 3 below .300. 

[jambr380]

West with 14 more wins, so East shaved one off the lead last week, however the West now has a better record respectively from each of the top 8 as well as the bottom 3, so the East is only better than the West's counterpart from positions 9, 10, 11, and 12.  The top 3 records in the West along with 6 of the top 10 and 8 of the top 15 records reside in the West.  Detroit did move ahead of Houston so only the worst record is in the East now though the East still has 3 of the bottom 5 and 2 of the 3 below .300.

This seems like a strange thread to keep alive, but I will say that it really depends on people's definition of 'deeper.' I tend to think a number of people would claim that the East having a better record in positions 9-12 is exactly what would make them a deeper conference.

[celticsclay]

West with 14 more wins, so East shaved one off the lead last week, however the West now has a better record respectively from each of the top 8 as well as the bottom 3, so the East is only better than the West's counterpart from positions 9, 10, 11, and 12.  The top 3 records in the West along with 6 of the top 10 and 8 of the top 15 records reside in the West.  Detroit did move ahead of Houston so only the worst record is in the East now though the East still has 3 of the bottom 5 and 2 of the 3 below .300.

This seems like a strange thread to keep alive, but I will say that it really depends on people's definition of 'deeper.' I tend to think a number of people would claim that the East having a better record in positions 9-12 is exactly what would make them a deeper conference.

Yea, that is how I originally intended the discussion when I started it where you are going to have teams like Atlanta, Brooklyn, Charlotte and Raptors most likely in the playins where there will be teams like the pelicans, blazers, clippers and whatever is left of the lakers competing for the play in out west. However, Mo and I have beat that convo to death and we disagree on what it means so I don't want to start it up again. The head to head was just the easiest way to measure it. I still do think the the East has a small chance of pulling out head to head, but time is now running short. Will probably come down to how hard certain teams are tanking in the last few weeks (The nets almost single handedly flipped the head to head records losing something like 9 straight to the west without durant, harden and occasionally irving). There is now essentially a 3 way tie for the west record between houston, detroit, orlando. The question is do those teams care about that. I don't think there is a consensus number one pick this year. 

[Moranis]

The bottom 3 don't matter since they have the same odds, it is whether the teams like Oklahoma City, Indiana, Sacramento, San Antonio, and New York really enter the tanking discussion.  Those are the teams that can increase their odds if they go more into the crapper.