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https://www.nba.com/standings?GroupBy=conf&Season=2019-20&Section=overall

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o Eliminated from Playoffs contention

e Clinched Eastern Conference

w Clinched Western Conference

nw Clinched Northwest Division

p Clinched Pacific Division

sw Clinched Southwest Division

a Clinched Atlantic Division

c Clinched Central Division

se Clinched Southeast Division

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o Eliminated from Playoffs contention e Clinched Eastern Conference w Clinched Western Conference nw Clinched Northwest Division p Clinched Pacific Division sw Clinched Southwest Division a Clinched Atlantic Division c Clinched Central Division se Clinched Southeast Division

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We conducted an observational study based off of the western and eastern conferences in 2019. We evaluated which athletes in both conferences averaged the most points to discover which side had the highest average points individually. We gathered information from several online sources and generated averages on our own. We  discovered that statistics can express a lot of information and that there is a lot that can be demonstrated with them. It has taught us that numbers can back up and prove anything. This alters how we approach data because we can see how much it can prove and how crucial accuracy is; even the tiniest error can alter the average of the entire data set.

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The website basketball-reference.com backs up the claim that western conference players score more than eastern conference players in general. The reason for this is that we averaged out the top 125 players in each conference, and the western conference players averaged 22.6 points per game, while the eastern conference players averaged 20.3 points per game, according to this statistics source. As perceived through the data, the average scores varied by 2.3 points. When finally calculated the viewer can conclude that the western conference players average more points than the eastern conference.

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Our first suggestion is to provide averaged out points each game for the leagues rather than every player so that we don't have to perform the calculations ourselves. Next, supply a wider range of players so that we can collect more data. They could also provide more types of statistics rather than the limited number of statistics they currently supply. Additionally, it would be beneficial if they provided us with data from previous or future seasons. They should have also given us the height and weight of each participant so we could see if that had an impact. They can also tell us how old we are so we can determine whether that has an impact. Finally, they should have informed us what college they attended so we can see how they were trained and prepared before being drafted.

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The website The Ringer, on the other hand, advocates for the eastern conference's higher success. Despite the fact that they are winning more games, the individual players are not scoring as much. The website demonstrates that the west is not dominating as a whole. This is corroborated by the previously mentioned statistics, which demonstrate that the players are averaging more points in the western conference.

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https://www.sportingnews.com/ca/nba/news/dissecting-the-nbas-parity-through-one-quarter-of-the-season-eastern-conference-western-conference/g27l73ij62am1crtzxgjtzpvv#:~:text=Dissecting%20the%20NBA's%20parity%20through%20one%20quarter%20of%20the%202019%2D20%20season,-Kyle%20Irving&text=For%20the%20past%20several%20years,better%20than%20the%20Eastern%20Conference.

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For the past several years, the Western Conference has been significantly better than the Eastern Conference.

Yes, the Golden State Warriors' dynasty had a lot to do with that, but through-and-through, the rest of the West generally beat up on the East.

In fact, the Western Conference has won the head-to-head battle against the Eastern Conference in 19 of the last 20 NBA seasons.

This type of imbalance has led to some discussions of dismantling conferences,with some believing the playoffs should be made up of the 16-best records in the league, not the eight-best from either conference.

In seven of the last 10 seasons, the West would have more teams represented in the playoffs than the East if you took the 16-best records. Just once, in 2015-16, would the East have qualified more teams than the West.

Typically, you can tell how much more dominant the West has been by the difference in records of the No. 8 seed - the final team to qualify for the playoffs. Last season, the LA Clippers (48-34) finished seven games ahead of the Detroit Pistons (41-41) as the 8-seed in their respective conferences. The year before that, the Minnesota Timberwolves snuck into the playoffs with a 47-35 record compared to 43-39 for the Pistons.

But the league's parity began to emerge a bit last seasonin that if you were to take the top-16 records in the league, you would have had eight teams from each conference represented.

Through the unofficial first quarter of this year's NBA season, you're seeing the same trend. Here's what the standings would look like if you took the 16-best records in the NBA right now to shape the playoffs...
*All records before tip-off of games on Dec. 7.
The East and West nearly alternate every seed. And for what it's worth, the East is currently beating the West 59-58 in head-to-head record so far this season ( h/t Reddit u/AsPeHeat).

When you look at the conferences individually, you can almost compare the teams and their tiers directly across this season - something that you haven't been able to do for a while.

The Lakers and Bucks are both dominating the league. The Celtics, Heat, Raptors and 76ers all belong in the same tier as teams like the Mavericks, Nuggets, Clippers and Rockets based off of performance early on this season.

The teams fighting for the last few spots - the Nets, Magic, Timberwolves and Suns - also belong in the same tier.

While it is still only one quarter through the season and there is plenty of time for this all to change, it appears that the gap between the East and the West is beginning to narrow.
The views on this page do not necessarily represent the views of the NBA or its clubs.

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Dissecting the NBA's parity through one quarter of the 2019-20 season

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For the past several years, the Western Conference has been significantly better than the Eastern Conference. Yes, the Golden State Warriors' dynasty had a lot to do with that, but through-and-through, the rest of the West generally beat up on the East.

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https://www.landofbasketball.com/year_by_year_stats/2019_2020_leaders_points_tot_rs.htm

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nba 2019 2020 20 regular season stats leaders players total points

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2019-20 NBA Regular Season: Total Points Leaders

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Information about which players led the NBA with more total points in the 2019-2020 Regular Season, including leaders, average, totals and games played.

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https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/12/16/21023780/east-west-nba-conference-imbalance

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Any basketball fan who has even casually checked the standings since, oh, Michael Jordan left the Bulls knows the NBA's strength tilts westward. Season after season, the Western Conference outperforms the East-in individual talent, in depth of quality teams, in the 30 interconference games that each team plays every season.

So a night like this past Saturday is something of a surprise. The lowly Bulls beat the dominant Clippers for their first win against an above-.500 team all season. The Pistons upset the Rockets. And the Heat knocked off the Mavericks in overtime in a battle of third-place teams.

One night, of course, does not constitute a trend, especially with Kawhi Leonard and Luka Doncic not playing and leaving early with an injury, respectively-but Saturday was merely the latest point in a quarter-season full of Eastern surprises. As the NBA adjusts to a new power landscape with Golden State in last place and newer contenders on the ascent, the East has closed the gap with the West from the top of the conference to the bottom. It remains to be seen whether this new dynamic lasts, but at least for now, four pieces of evidence suggest the long-lasting conference imbalance has faded.

1. The East is winning more games against the West.

The most basic measure of conference strength is record in interconference games. Every team plays every opposing team twice, so this statistic incorporates a conference's full body of work.

The West, naturally, dominates this annual group competition. Dating back to 2004-05, when the then-Bobcats joined as an expansion franchise to give the NBA 30 teams, the West has defeated the East in interconference play every season except one (2008-09, a narrow Eastern win). Through Saturday's games, however, the 2019-20 East holds a 71-68 record against the West, signaling a possible switch for the first time in more than a decade.

Much of the season still remains, with more than 300 interconference games to go, so there's ample time for the West to regain its typical advantage. Moreover, analyzing the entire conference isn't a perfect method because the Knicks beating the Warriors, for instance, does not reflect conference strength in the way it's typically considered, by its best teams. However, increased interconference balance emerges even when looking at the top of the standings, both now and projecting for the rest of the season.

2. The East's best teams are as dominant as the West's best teams.

Pop quiz: Which of the two conferences, based on the records of their top teams through Saturday, is the East, and which is the West?

Whatever your guess, the real takeaway here is that there's little differentiation between the two conferences at the top. The best team in the East is just as good, record-wise, as the best team in the West. Ditto no. 2, and so on down the line. (By the way, Conference A is the East, B the West.)

By Basketball-Reference's Simple Rating System, which uses strength of schedule and margin of victory to rate each team, the top 10 squads this season split evenly, with five in the East and five in the West. Looking forward, FiveThirtyEight's projection system thinks nine teams will reach 50 wins this season, with five in the East and only four in the West.

The top Western teams usually outperform their Eastern counterparts for two reasons. The first is that they beat their supposed interconference equals; in every season in the 30-team era, even 2008-09, when the East won overall, the West still won the majority of matchups between playoff teams.

The West is winning those games this season, too, but only by a narrow 24-22 margin. That's the closest the two conferences have been in playoff-teams-only record in the entire span. It's easy to see the balance in individual game results: the Bucks with two wins over the Clippers, the Heat with a split pair against the Rockets, the Celtics with a split against the Nuggets, and so on.

The East's top teams are also pummeling the bottom of the West. Teams currently in the Eastern playoff field are 26-5 against teams currently outside the West's top eight, which would be the conference's best performance in this stat by far. The West usually does about this well with its playoff terms versus the Eastern also-rans, so now the East is finally returning the favor.

The Bucks and 76ers were expected to remain at the top of the conference after last season's steps forward, but the other Eastern powers register as something of a surprise. The Heat missed the playoffs last season but are playing cohesive, entertaining basketball with the additions of Jimmy Butler and a fleet of shooters. The Raptors remain contenders despite losing Leonard, with improvements from the likes of Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet. And the Celtics are a better team despite losing Kyrie Irving and Al Horford in free agency.

In the West, the best teams are generally those expected to be at the top after a frenzied summer; only the Mavericks are a surprise. But the East's middle class has pushed through to the upper crust, enhancing the whole conference's outlook as a result.

3. The East's middle class is just as respectable as the West's middle class.

The best teams to miss the playoffs in the 30-team era have all hailed from the West. They all outperformed at least one Eastern playoff team in their respective seasons, if not more.

From this pattern arose numerous proposals to balance the conferences better come playoff time, from making teams switch conferences to force a more even field or doing away with conferences entirely to let the best 16 teams in regardless of geographic affiliation. That disparity is gone this season; every middle class Western team, to continue a previous chart, has about the same record as every corresponding Eastern squad.

Besides Indiana and maybe Utah, both in the 6-spot in the standings, no other team has an impressive record here, but that's kind of the point. The West's depth has dissipated to the point that even pleasant surprises like the Suns and Thunder are several games below .500, but they're still in the playoff hunt because no other teams are seizing ground, either. That's how the East has seemingly always been-but the East now resembles the West at the top, and the West looks like the East in the middle as the two conferences converge.

4. The East has just as many top players as the West ... sort of.

Beyond record, perhaps the single most illustrative stat reflecting recent Western dominance is this: In the 30-team era, 66 percent of All-NBA players have come from the West. The West has had the majority of All-NBA honorees every single season in that span, and the margins haven't often been close.

A similar proportion of MVP shares have come from the West, which has won 62 percent of points-weighted MVP votes (for which a first-place vote is worth 10 points, and so on). And the East would look even worse by comparison if it hadn't had LeBron to rely on for almost all of this era, as the four-time winner outperformed the entire rest of the Eastern Conference over this span. (LeBron earned one MVP point last season, his first in the West. That tally is removed from this chart, though it's so small it doesn't make a difference either way.)

Of the top 10 players in MVP vote shares since 2004-05, only James and Dwight Howard spent any time in the East. Meanwhile, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, James Harden, Steve Nash, Steph Curry, Dirk Nowitzki, Chris Paul, and Russell Westbrook have all plied their trade exclusively out West.

A wide-angle view of the top players this season evinces a more even distribution of talent. When the Ringer staff voted for the top 25 players of the season thus far, the final split was 13 Western to 12 Eastern players; of the 21 honorable mention players who also received votes, the split was 11 West to 10 East.

This is all good news for the East. Here's the bad-and where the West still might retain the advantage going forward. At the very top, the West dominates as always; in our Ringer rankings, Giannis Antetokounmpo earned the no. 1 spot, but the next six players call the Western Conference home.

The leading MVP candidates are Giannis and three Western players (LeBron, Harden, and Doncic). The West has Big Twos and individual players lighting up scoreboards by themselves, even on inferior teams-see: Karl-Anthony Towns on the Timberwolves-while the East's best team might have just one All-Star, and the conference's only so-called Big Two has seen those two players-Irving and Durant-combine to play just 11 games this season.

Over the short term, this persistent superstar imbalance could prevent the East from truly rising to match the West; on the other hand, while the West might boast more established talents, the East could counter with more budding youngsters like Siakam, Jayson Tatum, and the still-young 76er stars.

In general, the league is so overstuffed with talent at this point-heck, Durant, who moved from the West to the East, and Zion Williamson, drafted into the West, haven't played at all this season-that this sort of spread would make sense. There are almost enough elite players for everyone who wants one (er, sorry, Knicks fans). Moreover, the increased volume of star player transactions might benefit conference balance if more players like Durant and Butler move from West to East.

As the league embraces a possible first step into playoff realignment-the reported proposal would reseed the four semifinalists without conference consideration-a full 16-team overhaul could be the natural next step. It figures that this kind of thinking would come after years of complaints-only to arrive when the East has finally evened the scales for the first time in years.

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The East Has Finally Caught Up to the West in the NBA

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Any basketball fan who has even casually checked the standings since, oh, Michael Jordan left the Bulls knows the NBA's strength tilts westward. Season after season, the Western Conference outperforms the East-in individual talent, in depth of quality teams, in the 30 interconference games that each team plays every season.

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https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2020_per_game.html#per_game_stats::pts_per_g

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2019-20 NBA Player Stats: Per Game | Basketball-Reference.com

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Player stat per game averages for the 2019-20 NBA season

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Braydon and I chose this topic because as basketball players ourselves, basketball is something we are passionate about and it's something we would like to research and observe.  As basketball players ourselves, we are always invested in our field goal percentage. Field goal percentage is the percentage of shots you make out of the shots you have taken. We constantly want to know how many shots we are making and how many we're missing.  We both enjoy watching basketball and pay close attention to the different conferences and want to investigate which conference scores the most baskets by conducting an observational study.