NBA Betting Preview: West coast attack/East coast defence

Basketball / Nick Shiambouros / 28 October 2008 / Leave a Comment

With the NBA season set to begin tonight, Nick Shiambouros puts last season's finalists under the microscope to discuss contrasting approaches to the game on opposite sides of the country.

The 2008/09 basketball season gets underway tonight with World Champions the Boston Celtics and last year's beaten finalists the Los Angeles Lakers both in action on opposite sides of the coast.

These two teams play the same game but have completely contrasting styles. The Los Angeles Lakers play a classic West coast game while the Celtics play in the traditional East coast style.

In the Western Conference the scoring is high and the pace of the game is significantly faster with fast breaks and full court transitions. As a rule it is not uncommon to see scores in excess of 200 points in a game and teams like the Denver Nuggets averaged over 110 points a game last year. Alan Iverson and Carmello Anthony were scoring machines and both averaged over 25 points per game for the Nuggets. This style of play is entertaining to watch with a frenetic pace played for the entire 48 minutes and when both teams are shooting well the West coast style is a delight to watch.

With this style of play defence will inevitably suffer and coaches like George Carl of Denver have struggled to convince their players to be more cautious. The Lakers team of the 1980's were a perfect example of how the west coast game should be played and the rivalry that they had with the Boston Celtics was a perfect example of the two styles competing against each other at the highest level.

The East coast game is centered around defence and the scoring is much lower with a significantly slower tempo. A half court strategy is used in the East and rebounding plays a big part. Players like Shaquille O'Neal who have won World Championships in both conferences have struggled to adjust to moving from the Eastern Conference to the West. Last season O'Neal struggled for Phoenix after his trade from Miami and the team adjusted to make him more of a force underneath the basket.

The Boston Celtics showed the way the east coast game should be executed when they turned the screw on the Lakers with choking defence and a slow and methodical approach in last seasons NBA finals.

The Celtics averaged just over 100 points per game last season highlighting the defensive mindset of the East. This style of play can be very effective even when a team is not playing at its best offensively. A stifling defence can win you plenty of games in the NBA as we have seen in the past with teams like the Detroit Pistons of the nineties who won World Championships with great defensive players like Dennis Rodman and did not have a particularly potent offense.

It is only fitting that the winner of each Conference should face each other for the right to be crowned World Champion and over this long season I will be looking deep into each Conference to exploit the betting opportunities which will arise on the long road ahead in this NBA season.

I have been asked many times which Conference is better but both compliment one another perfectly and when either Conference is played at the highest level they are both highly entertaining.