In NBA, Finesse in West Is Given Edge Over Brute Force in East

Some of us who follow the bouncing ball in the National Basketball Assn. have been contending for some time that the Western Conference is, well, different from the Eastern Conference, in style of play. The West is finesse. The East is brute force. The West is fast and loose. The East is hard and mean. The West is fencing. The East is a knife fight.

For the first time, however, we take up another cause today. See if you agree with us here.

We say, unequivocally, with confidence of a kind that we have never had before, that the NBA’s Western Conference is clearly better than the NBA’s Eastern Conference.

What do you say? Agree or disagree?

Presuming that the Lakers and Detroit Pistons are the best teams in their respective conferences, and are even-steven to the point that their 1988 championship series came down to the final minute of play, let us examine the second tier in each conference. Which teams do you like better? Cleveland, Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and barely-.500 Boston? Or Dallas, Denver, Utah, Houston, Portland and Seattle?

We’ll take the West’s.

We believe that a better caliber of basketball is being played, night in and night out, in the Western Conference than in the Eastern Conference. No club from the East other than the Pistons, to us, seems capable of taking the NBA championship this season, but we can easily see not only the Lakers making it three in a row, but the Mavericks, Nuggets, Jazz, Trail Blazers or SuperSonics having excellent chances at the championship.

In fact, to be absolutely blunt about this, we are picking a championship final between Detroit and Dallas. We have become very comfortable with the notion of the Mavericks as a legitimate contender.

The players themselves will, quite naturally, stick up for whatever conference in which they are playing. No sense in riling up some conference rival who sticks an elbow in your cheek and growls, “So, you think our conference isn’t tough, huh?” Diplomacy is generally wiser and safer in this case.

We particularly remember Jim Paxson of the Celtics, a couple of days after he was snatched away from Portland, immediately pronouncing that the Eastern Conference was obviously superior to the Western Conference and that everybody in the league knew it. Funny how ol’ Pax neglected to comment on that point when he was still getting paid by the Blazers.

The players do still get a kick out of razzing the other conference, out of describing ways in which the West and East differ. We put the question to a few of them recently, looking for reasons why the styles of play in the conferences are dissimilar.

“The weather is the biggest reason,” said Detroit’s Isiah Thomas. “When you play in the East, it’s always cold. Everybody’s freezing all the time, and they’re mad at the world. So, they take it out on each other. ‘I’m cold, man. Take this! Oof!’

“Out West, everybody’s nice and warm. They just go up to each other and say, ‘Hey, hi, how you doin’, what’s happenin’, let’s play a little basketball, whaddaya say?’ The West teams have a better time than the East teams. The East teams like to kill one another before the season’s over.”

Chicago’s Michael Jordan says, “Sure, the East is a lot more physical than the West. By all means. That’s because they fast-break more in the West. They don’t really set up and play the physical inside game, like we do. They don’t like to take the body as much. They go around the body.”

Everybody’s got a theory. Ron Rothstein, coach of the Miami Heat, believes, “It’s the travel. The West teams play less physical because they’re tired from all the travel. That’s why they’re not quite as rugged.”

Travel trouble also might contribute to Miami’s bid for the NBA’s first 0-82 season, by the way.

Is the Western Conference a wimp conference or a stylish conference?

We see no wimps here. We see talent and strategy. When we see Bill Laimbeer and Robert Parish lock horns like a couple of mastodons, we grimace. Then again, when we see Karl Malone and Xavier McDaniel play in the West, we know we’re not exactly watching Julius Erving. The West does have a few beasts of burden.

Jordan’s teammate, Brad Sellers, has been in the league only a couple of years, but already has the whole thing figured out.

“Out West it’s an attitude,” Sellers said. “They’re going to get up and down the court and run as much as humanly possible. I know the guys out West tell me they don’t ever want to come back and play for an Eastern team, because they like playing that way. And who can blame them?”

Sam Vincent, a Chicago guard, says, “We all hear the stereotypes. The East is physical and in the West you’ve got the greyhounds. I can’t say why. Maybe in the East you’ve got a lot of cold, blue-collar towns, where toughness is a little more--what?--necessary, I guess.”

Maybe.

All we know is that the those rough, tough, blue-collar Atlanta Hawks are supposed to be championship contenders this season, but they play more like a Western team than Western teams do. They run and gun and don’t have enough basketballs to go around. They play matador defense, their offensive players are selfish and Moses Malone is on his last legs.

Cleveland is the coming team, but not championship material yet. The Knicks are the best they have been since Willis Reed went away, but still have weaknesses. Philadelphia, even with Charles Barkley, lost to Charlotte the other night. Now there’s a team to fear. Boston, without Larry Bird, becomes Milwaukee. Forty-five victories and out early in the playoffs.

We happen to think Dallas and Utah are solid through and through, that Denver is dynamite, and that Seattle, Portland and even Houston could peak during postseason play and represent the West well in the finals. We believe the West is far better balanced in talent, and that the East is aging and rotting.

A return match between Los Angeles and Detroit? Why not? They still appear to be the best teams.

We suspect, as others do, that the odds will catch up to the Lakers this season, although Mr. Earvin Johnson will definitely have something to say about that. Getting eliminated in the Western Conference playoffs would be no disgrace, however, because those playoffs will be a fight from beginning to end. You can phone in the East’s.