An Apology Letter To The Eastern Conference

Dear Middle of the Pack Eastern Conference Teams,

Over the summer, the NBA experienced one of the most intoxicating offseasons in sports history. While the constant movement of stars had us glued us to Twitter to watch the ongoing battle for breaking news dominance between Woj and Shams, it all came at your expense. For each star that left via trade or free agency, your relevance diminished.

The Western Conference was deemed deeper and more star-studded than the East, but a few teams were able to withstand the arms race while staying competitive. The Celtics, Cavaliers, Wizards, and the Raptors were destined to represent the Eastern Conference, while the rest of you were grouped into the laughing stock that was projected to reside under .500. You were cast asunder, gone and forgotten as the superpowers across the league continued to grow larger than the aliens that became the MonStars once they stole NBA star power in Space Jam. You were expected to battle for mediocrity with the prize of winning earning you the right to become the tune-up game in the first round of the playoffs before the true titans of the East played series that actually mattered.

For the most part, teams are fitting their predetermined role within the conference. The beasts of the East make up four of the top five seeds. The Cavs are making a surge as they strung together a number of wins that actually include defense, the Raptors and Wizards are both relying on of the strong play of their All-Star ridden backcourts, and the Celtics are putting together a memorable win streak behind Kyrie Irving, Al Horford, and the first man to have the Coach of the Year award won by November, Brad Stevens. Yet the properly fitting label for these teams is not the story here.

The story is that we were wrong about you, the rest of the competitive Eastern Conference.

What we see above aren’t just some juggernauts within the conference and a bunch of fluffers that would spend an entire season on the wrong end of a highlight reel. They’re teams that have proven night after night that they’re relevant. No longer shall they be treated as the island of misfit toys. They should be treated as some of the most entertaining franchises around, and deserve an apology from each and every one of us, as well as an explanation.

For many teams, there was a reasonable amount of doubt. Take the Pacers, for example. You can’t blame us for expecting you to plummet down the Conference after Paul George siphoned every last bit of trade value he had and spit it back in your face. We may have laughed and made jokes about the return you received for one of the best two-way players in the NBA, but how were we supposed to know Victor Oladipo would look like a much calmer and more emotionally stable Russell Westbrook?

It seemed like the signs were never there, or maybe we just weren’t paying attention, like the time we heard about Andre Drummond receiving surgery on his deviated septum. The common man may know that surgery is supposed to help you breath better, but how were we supposed to know it was going to help him bump his free throw percentage by nearly 23 percent? That surgery not only helped Drummond revive his career, but it caused us to eat our own words as his play has helped fuel the Pistons early in the season.

Even the medical geniuses across the world couldn’t have predicted that Drummond’s revival would spark Reggie Jackson to have one of his own while Avery Bradley seamlessly fit into his new role on the Pistons. All of these things could be considered common day miracles, but an apology is still necessary.

Assuming has become the bread and butter of fans and media members of the NBA alike. People like to grab onto the things they’re sure of. That’s why the arrival of two unicorns that were clearly not born on this planet was something we all had a hard time of grasping. It’s not every lifetime we see a meteor crash land on Earth and deliver us MVP candidates. Calling them names like “Giannis” and “Porzingis” was enough of a reason to be skeptical of these beings who are not from this big blue marble we call home, but their play silenced even the biggest extraterrestrial doubter. Now, we find ourselves in a heated debate about which of these players will become the first “person” who wasn’t born on Earth to bring home the MVP trophy.

Even if a 7'3" big man that could run the court like a gazelle and pull up from Curry range was around, it was hard to accept anything could be created to put out the dumpster fire that has been burning in Madison Square Garden for years. Yet here we are, all witnesses of the man of few words and many highlights that has somehow lifted the Knicks out of the eternal despair they once resided in. No long speeches, no explanations. Just one-word answers and more rims to destroy.

Maybe it was hard to embrace this kind of change in 2017. Many people in the past may have believed flying cars and time travel would be around by now after they were horribly led on by the “Back to the Future” trilogy, but as people who currently reside in this era, it all seemed like something we would have to deal with in the future and not the present, just like the arrival of “The Process.”

It seemed like the pyramids were still being built when fans were chanting “trust the process” in between bites of Philly cheesesteaks on a nice, toasted hoagie, but the plan has finally come to fruition. Simmons now looks like the world-beater he was proclaimed to be as Embiid steals the hearts of fans and the souls of defenders on a nightly basis. Maybe the wishes of fans who prayed on a nightly basis to give these two budding superstars working body parts finally paid off, but it has certainly come sooner than we all thought.

These all may seem like excuses, but they aren’t. We have wronged each and every one of these teams. It’s not like fans took these teams lightly. They considered them dead before the season arrived. Even the league doubted their own franchises and changed the All-Star format to expunge the yearly beating the Eastern Conference would receive from the schedule. No matter where you looked, there was doubting coming from each and every angle. For that, we are sorry.

On behalf of everyone who was wrong, we can only hope you accept this apology while continuing to provide us must-watch television on a nightly basis to help cope with the frigid winter months ahead.

Sincerely,

Dan O’Shea, a humbled NBA fan