The NBA According To Blue States and Red States
After the election, it got me thinking: What would the NBA landscape look like if the two conferences were divided by Blue States and Red States opposed to location?
For one, we’d have a new NBA Finals. Representing the Blue States would be either the Boston Celtics or the Los Angeles Lakers. And if the season were to end today they could be facing the Atlanta Hawks, although it’s more likely New Orleans will make it to the ’Chip.
Also, the size of the two conferences would definitely be skewed after our recent landslide election – the Blue States would rep 20 teams, while the Red States would rep only nine. Oh yea, Toronto might have to be contracted.
Blue Conference
Boston
Charlotte
Chicago
Cleveland
Denver
Detroit
Golden State
Indiana
Los Angeles Clippers
Los Angeles Lakers
Miami
Milwaukee
Minnesota
New Jersey
New York
Orlando
Philadelphia
Portland
Sacramento
Washington D.C.
Red Conference
Atlanta
Dallas
Houston
Memphis
New Orleans
Oklahoma City
Phoenix
San Antonio
Utah
Other
Toronto
Although it’s impractical, how would you like the shakeup?
November 12th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
NT says:
haha Aron, how do you come up with these kinds of ideas! brilliant
November 12th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
heckler...formerly 'yallallreadyknow' says:
isn’t this what the d-league is already?
lol
November 12th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Patrick says:
for a normal (not following bush) election year the swing states of ohio and florida would even out the size of the conferences. do they reorganize every 4 years?
November 12th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
turambur says:
This has to the the lamest idea for a post that I’ve ever seen.
I suggest that the Dime crew stick to hoops and leave politics to the so-called experts (where I can safely ignore them).
Almost all of your viewers come here to read and talk about basketball, and all that you little forays into politics accomplish is alienating readers who don’t agree with your politics and making you look foolish with idotic blogs like this.
November 12th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Big Sia says:
Toronto = Communist
Chea!
November 12th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
George says:
Re: Big Sia…
So you’re saying Toronto would be a Blue State (pro-Obama) then?
November 12th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
P_Dizzle says:
Agree w/ post 4, stay the hell out of politics. You’re just going to lose.
November 12th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Amar says:
The jazz have routinely handled all of those teams in the Red State conference(save for atlanta in atlanta, and the spurs). The spurs look bad so far though . . . the red state conference title would still go through salt lake city, regardless of how great CP3 is.
November 12th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Aron says:
@turambur and P_Dizzle
This has nothing to do with politics other than how it breaks down. We’re talking about basketball. I don’t know about you…
November 12th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
turambur says:
@Aron
First, there have been a handful of posts that were very political at Dime this fall. Now, there haven’t been very many or I would be long gone by now. To me, basketball is one of the relatively pure and simple things left in my life and I try to keep it that way by not mixing it with my adult responsiblities and worries.
Second, the fact that it is even tangentally related to politics means that it gets people thinking and talking about politics in the comments, which is one of the primary reasons to read Dime–you have one of the best comment sections on the ‘Net. Look at post 3 with a fresh eye and see how it could easily send the tread into a flame war about Obama and his policies.
Finally, using this as a criteria for splitting the league into new conferences is just stupid and not worth discussing. It’s just too arbitrary; you might as well have split the teams based on the number of letters in their names, or by coaches weight, or the average height of the white guys on their roster.
If you want to talk about the pros and cons of an AFC/NFC style split in the NBA’s conferences instead of East/West, including which teams should be in each conference and division, that would make a great post and good discussion.
This post however, stinks of a random idea that came up during a brainstorming session and should have been left on cutting room floor.
I understand your push to increase your website content this season, but throw-away posts like this do nothing but make the entire site seem silly and random–like the whole crew just sits around high all day and just posts whatever weed induced “breakthroughs” they have on the site to share their brilliance with the rest of the world.
This has turned into a very long and negative post (though I hope that my criticism has at least been constructive), so I want to wrap up by saying that I still think that this is one of the best hoops sites on the Web, and it’s the first place I come for news and insights about the NBA every day; it’s just that random stuff like this just clutters up the front page and detracts from everything that you do right.
November 12th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
DZ says:
Don’t know what turambur is freaking out over. I think this is fun. I vote for more pieces like this one.
It would be neat to go a level deeper and look at the actual counties the teams come from. I mean, it’s not like Atlanta represents Georgia, right? Same for N.O. and Louisiana.
November 12th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Three Stacks says:
Wow. I haven’t seen an overreaction like that since Kermit Washington punched out Rudy T for no reason.
Is it that hard to skip over posts you don’t like? Alls you gotta do is read the headline to figure out whether you’re interested or not.
November 12th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
vinny says:
man i have to agree with three stacks-damm people what happened to freedom of posts!!!
November 12th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
parinaz suns says:
the suns would still be stuck with san antonio. at least we would be away from the lakers