I’ve always found the relative strength of conferences and divisions to be such an interesting topic. The separation between "conferences" is starkest in baseball: There are two basically independent leagues with rare regular season offerings between them. We also get an All-Star Game and the World Series between the two leagues. For this reason, the World Series - for all the wonderful sabermetric tools - seems to me somewhat mysterious going in, the term "mysterious" going well beyond "unknown".
In NBA basketball, on the other hand, both Finals teams have generally played one another twice, and against the other team's conference fully 30 times. A lot of games (generally 450) are played between the conferences in the NBA. Because of this, strength-of-schedule ranking methods have a solid chance at giving us info about the relative strengths of conferences. While we might not know what to expect, we can make empirically plausible predictions in an extremely direct and simple way. "This team is 6-23 against the West, I'm pretty sure they'll lose in the Finals by an average of 5.4 points against the best team in the West right now, based on this graph here." If you're wrong, there's probably going to be some good reason for it, either an overestimate or an underestimate of someone's efficiency or shot volume or a certain play-call. Then again, few picked Dirk from the first round onward, so maybe our speculation is not so reasonable.
In NBA basketball, on the other hand, both Finals teams have generally played one another twice, and against the other team's conference fully 30 times. A lot of games (generally 450) are played between the conferences in the NBA. Because of this, strength-of-schedule ranking methods have a solid chance at giving us info about the relative strengths of conferences. While we might not know what to expect, we can make empirically plausible predictions in an extremely direct and simple way. "This team is 6-23 against the West, I'm pretty sure they'll lose in the Finals by an average of 5.4 points against the best team in the West right now, based on this graph here." If you're wrong, there's probably going to be some good reason for it, either an overestimate or an underestimate of someone's efficiency or shot volume or a certain play-call. Then again, few picked Dirk from the first round onward, so maybe our speculation is not so reasonable.
