Power Outage

There's a severe star power shortage in the NBA's Western Conference.

For several years now, the power has been in the West where teams like the Spurs and Lakers have reigned supreme throughout the 2000s. Even beyond the elite level, the Mavericks, Jazz, Blazers, and Suns have all competed for Conference titles. Over in the East, we've seen some great teams like the current incarnation of the Celtics, LeBron's Cavs, or the 2003-07 Detroit Pistons, but once you got past the top three or four, there was nothing else to speak of. That's about to change.

Just in the last 36 hours, two of the Western Conference's biggest superstars in Carmelo Anthony and Deron Williams changed zip codes. Add in Amar'e Stoudemire jumping from Phoenix to New York last summer, and you can argue that three of the top ten players in the league have switched from the West to the East.

Look at the West now - the three best teams are the Spurs, Lakers, and Mavericks. Each have aging cores, and appear to soon be on the decline. Meanwhile in the East, Boston would fit under the Spurs-Lakers-Mavs category, but the rest of the Conference is on the rise. Miami has a trio of superstars in the prime of their careers. The Knicks have done the same with the duo of Carmelo and Amar'e. Even the teams near the bottom of the playoff standings like Philadelphia and Indiana have improving young cores.

If we're just comparing star power, the shift of balance really becomes apparent when you look at the ages. In the West, top players like Kobe Bryant (32 years old but 14 seasons in the NBA), Tim Duncan (soon-to-be 35), Manu Ginobili (33), Dirk Nowitzki (32), Steve Nash (37) all have left, or are leaving, their primes. Only four members of the West All-Star Team last week (discounting Anthony and Williams) are under the age of 30. When thinking of young(er) stars in the West, the list is pretty short: Kevin Durant, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, LaMarcus Aldridge, and Monta Ellis. If you want to, you can also include All-Stars Kevin Love and Blake Griffin. In the East, you likely have seven of the top ten players in the entire NBA that are all under the age of 30: LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Dwight Howard, Derrick Rose, Amar'e Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony, and Deron Williams. Beyond that, you have a second tier of stars that includes Rajon Rondo, Chris Bosh, Al Horford, and Josh Smith.

These things tend to go in cycles. The East dominated the league throughout the 1990s behind the strength of Jordan's Bulls, and teams like the Pistons, Knicks, Pacers, Heat, and Magic. The NFC dominated the NFL from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. The National League destroyed the AL for nearly two decades from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s.

Like these other trends, I'd expect the West's dominance of the NBA to come to an end soon.