A crazy Western League: 14 teams compete for 8 positions of playoffs

2019 NBA Western Conference Standings prediction

If your favourate team is in the Western League, your should know that it faces a fierce competition with other 13 teams excluding the Suns.

As the graph shows below, it’s easy to find that from the top to fourteenth positon in Western League standings, there is a narrow gap. The Ultah Jazz is ranked as the fouteenth position but actually, If it wins 4 more games and the top one LA Clippers lose four games, Jazz may even be ranked as the first place among these teams.

2018-2019 regular season Western League standings until 25th November, photo from NBA.com

Although the new season starts no more than 2 months and it will have 60+ games for each team to grasp a position in playoffs, every team in Western League excluding Suns has the strength to enter the playoffs based on the their performance.

• This year’s competition in Western league is extremely firece due to three reasons:
• Last season’s strong teams are still competitive.
• Last season’s several teams in the middle echelon begin to break out. 
• Last season’s last few teams begin to rise.

Firstly, last season’s top 8 teams in Western League as the graph below witness some small changes in this off season. They both maintain the main lineup and the playing strategy so that they still have enough power to win the games. Compared standings of this season and last season, we can find Rockets which is top one last season now only ranks as 10th place and the 14th team Utah actually ranked 5th in last season.

2017-2018 regular season Western League standings, photo from NBA.com

Secondly, as some main players recover from injuries, some teams like Grizzlies and LA Clippers(The return of Conley in Grizzlies and Gallinari, Beverley in Clippers )starts to break up, Until now, these two teams are tied for the first places in standings but actually they failed to enter playoffs last season.

Thirdly,  some rookies start to show their talents in NBA and lead some weak teams begin to gain the strength like Dallas and Kings.  For Dallas, the new rookie doncic plays a big part in his rookie season and the second-year player Smith also grows a lot. For KIngs, the rapid development of Fox and Jackson helps them rank in 8th this season.

 NBA rookie Doncic plays well in recent games, photo by USA.TODAY

At the same time, the addition of James and the continued growth of rookies give the Lakers hope of entering the playoffs in the new season. Taking Jokic as the center and traing offensive into a higher level also leads to the good performance of Nuggets this season.

How horrible the western League is. In my opinion these 14 teams all deserve a position in playsoff. What a fierce competition teams in Western League has.

However, the fierce competition can create more enjoybale games. It’s a good trend for the development of NBA and I deem that it will increase the charming of NBA.

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