Seriously, Tiger won the US Open on a torn ACL? His performance was already legendary...now it's just downright sick. The sickest part though: although he's going to be out until 2009, it was almost worth it. Until he comes back, all we're ever going to talk about is how amazing his US Open run was. And he played three majors on that injury - two wins and a second. He's the best of all time. Get over it.
There's a great debate all of a sudden about whether the Eastern Conference of the NBA is better than the West. Boston is the champion, and Detroit had a great year too. But let me say emphatically: NO, YOU STUPID IDIOTS, the West is WAY better. You measure a conference top to bottom, not just by its best teams. The East may definitely have had the two best teams in the league this year, there's no doubt, but the dropoff from there was significant. Let's get real here...the West is clearly superior.
Let's compare the #8 seeds. The Denver Nuggets barely made the playoffs with a 50-32 record, one of the best records ever by a #8 seed (Golden State stayed home with a 48-34 record). On the other hand, Atlanta stormed in with a head of steam and pushed the Celtics to the brink despite a 37-45 regular season. For all you non-math majors out there, that's a 26-GAME DIFFERENCE with respect to .500 in records, from Denver being 18 games above .500 to Atlanta's 8 games below. The West had EIGHT teams with 50 or more wins, and the East had only three. The worst record in the West was five games better than the East's worst record. Only three East teams had winning records against the West: Boston, Detroit and Cleveland, but 10 West teams had winning records against the East. And, most definitively, the East sucked head-to-head against the West this year, going 192-258. That's a winning percentage of just .427.
Seriously people. Rumors of the West's decline have been greatly exaggerated.
I'm out like Tiger Woods.
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Without sounding like President Clinton defining the word "is," I think you have to also take into consideration what you define as "better." If these playoffs showed us anything, it is that substance will always surpass flash, and the Eastern conference has more well-rounded, hard-nosed teams than the West. Yes, the Western Conference is chuck full of teams that can score 110+ points on a whim, but when it comes to X's and O's, hard fouls and toughness in the paint, the Eest has that market cornered. Maybe its just because I grew up watching the Eastern conference (as many of us did as either the Bulls or Knicks were on NBC every Sunday for a long stretch of time), but the Eastern conference style of basketball has proven to be tried and true (and I include San Antonio in that mix, for they play a much different style of basketball than the rest of the West), and now that the talent in that conference is improving, momentum not only in the playoffs but in the regular season may be switching over to the East.
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