You know from reading the title of this piece that I’m about to talk about Eastern Conference basketball.
Therefore, a few notes must be put forth at the outset:
1) This is not going to be a “rip the Atlanta Hawks” piece.
2) LeBron James making five straight NBA Finals — becoming the first player (alongside James Jones, factual nitpickers out there…) to do the deed since the Red Auerbach Celtics — remains an incredible accomplishment, especially in light of the players he’s had to carry along the way. The following should not diminish what LeBron has achieved.
Yet, something has to be said about the state of the Eastern Conference in the NBA, a conference weak enough that the 1-16 (re-)seeding movement has picked up quite a lot of steam among people who follow this sport for a living.
Let’s realize what kind of situation we faced in the East this season, while keeping in mind that the outlook is likely to be a LOT better next season:
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More on the 2015-2016 season in a bit, but let’s say this for now: The East should be miles better than it was this season. While that’s a positive thing in a narrow context, it also reinforces how low the bar was set over the past six weeks of Eastern Conference playoff activity.
Go back a year in the Eastern Conference playoffs. The Miami Heat’s second-round series against the Brooklyn Nets was actually a decent display of professional basketball. Joe Johnson looked like a really good player. Paul Pierce gave the Nets some starch and backbone. While the series lasted only five games, the Heat were pushed at every turn.
Spotlighting Nets-Heat serves the purpose of citing the only 2014 East playoff series in which both teams played relatively well at the same time. Washington was great in the 2014 first round, but Chicago was horrible. Toronto and Brooklyn took turns playing well (and poorly). Charlotte was too injured to do much of anything against Miami. Then, the top-seeded Indiana Pacers engaged the eighth-seeded Atlanta Hawks in a series that was watchable only because it was freighted with the drama attached to a possible 8-over-1 upset. Indiana escaped that series in seven games, looking like a sitting duck for the confident Wizards in a 1-versus-5 second-round series. The Pacers won that series in six largely ugly games, with Washington failing to win a single game at home.
Gee — sound familiar?
The 2015 East playoffs — with Atlanta as the shaky top seed — closely followed the 2014 postseason in which Indiana didn’t look at all like a team with a “[1]” next to its place on the bracket sheet. The Pacers played a brilliant Game 1 in the 2014 East Finals against the Miami Heat, and a strong (if inelegant) Game 6 to close out the Wizards in the East semis, but other than those two games, they rode the struggle bus.
Atlanta’s 2015 journey was similar. The Hawks played a high-level Game 6 against Brooklyn in the first round and were probably even better in Game 4 against Washington in the second round. Other than those two contests, however, the Hawks were simply not their regular-season selves.
It’s true that the 2015 Hawks were hurt by injuries, which the 2014 Pacers didn’t have to deal with to the same extent. If you graded on a curve, perhaps you’d view the 2015 Hawks and 2014 Pacers in the same light and on the same level. However, Atlanta’s 82-game regular season was clearly better than the 2014 Pacers’ regular season. Indiana’s unraveling began well before the final month of its 2014 campaign. Therefore, Atlanta’s abysmal performance in the East finals against Cleveland — save for an admirable Game 3 effort — has to be seen as worse than the 2014 Pacers’ East finals loss to Miami.
The Pacers might have quit in Game 6, but they at least pushed that series beyond its early stages, despite struggles which began well before their 2014 postseason run. Atlanta — while saddled with injuries at just the wrong time — showed a lower tolerance for adversity against Cleveland.
Indeed, as scratchy and uninspiring as the 2014 East Finals (Indiana-Miami) turned out to be, the 2015 East Finals were worse for a shaky No. 1 seed… against an opponent without Kevin Love and (for two games) Kyrie Irving.
If only one East playoff series from 2014 captured our imaginations (Nets-Heat), not a single one from 2015 merited a particularly high grade. Chicago-Cleveland, through five games, was supremely theatrical, but Bulls-Cavs became a series remembered for a pair of game-winning shots rather than a consistent parade of quality. It’s a series which turned not just because of J.R. Smith’s shooting, but because a David Blatt timeout went unnoticed by officials, and because the Bulls laid another bunch of bricks at exactly the wrong time, in the fourth quarter of Game 4.
No Love, a diminished Irving, a gimpy Shumpert, an 11-point lead after 34 minutes of Game 4 — the Bulls had everything they needed to take a 3-1 series lead at home. Instead, they face-planted. That series was tense, but it certainly wasn’t good. Hawks-Wizards fit a very similar profile, echoing Pacers-Wizards a year earlier. Washington faced noticeably frail top seeds in each of the past two seasons, and split the first two games on the road against the 2014 Pacers and 2015 Hawks. The Wizards’ composite home record in those two second-round series: 1-5.
That, folks, is the essence of what the Eastern Conference has been.
The 2015 postseason in the East deserves to be viewed dimly precisely because Washington should have been able to learn lessons from 2014 (especially with Truth-telling veteran Paul Pierce)… but couldn’t. The 2015 East postseason also deserves to be downgraded because the Cavaliers — despite all their injuries — easily won a Game 6 (versus Chicago) and then swept their way into the NBA Finals (against Atlanta).
If you thought LeBron had it easy with Miami in past Eastern Conference seasons — with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh by his side — he had it even easier in the 2015 East playoffs… without Love and without a healthy Kyrie.
Relative to the past few not-that-great postseasons, the 2015 Eastern Conference playoffs set a much lower standard. The East, in 2015, is everything we thought it was.
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Now, the quick postscript: 2016 should be a lot better than 2015.
The Milwaukee Bucks are on their way up, and should approach 50 wins next season. The Miami Heat, if Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade are both able to stay relatively healthy, should blend in well with Goran Dragic and Hassan Whiteside. The Wizards figure to be right in the mix. The Pacers will have Paul George back for a full season — at least, we think and hope that will be the case. The Hawks will be a year wiser, motivated to improve upon their playoff showing this spring. The Boston Celtics should be improved as well, with Brad Stevens working more magic from the bench.
The Eastern Conference has a brighter future to look forward to, so next year, the jokes about this half of the NBA might be reduced in number.
This year, though? Yes, the East deserved every last ounce of the withering criticism it received.
