The Pacific Division - The Worst or Best division in basketball?

With the 2023-24 NBA season approaching, analysts and fans made their usual statements about the difficulty of the Western Conference and the high amount of playoff contenders. Yet, one division in the West stands out as the most intriguing, the Pacific division.

The five rival teams in the Pacific division are the Suns, Lakers, Warriors, Clippers, and Kings. Anyone who currently watches NBA basketball would have predicted that this would be the top division at the beginning of the year. Now, however, about halfway through the season, there are arguments to be made that this is the worst division in the NBA.

The Suns, who many predicted to win this year’s finals, are currently the 8th seed and 2 games over .500. The Lakers, who had hopes of being at the top of the West, currently sit 2 games under .500 at 11th in the conference. The Warriors, who are assumed to be contenders every year, sit one game below the Lakers.

Three “Superteams,” three disappointments.

That brings us to the Clippers and Kings, who sit at the 4th and 5th seed respectfully. Both teams are playing great basketball, but even the Kings have been disappointing at times compared to their deep success last season.

In the Western Conference, no one could have predicted that the Pacific Division wouldn’t have a single top 3-seeded team. Therefore, it is clear that the true best division in basketball is the Northwest Division, with 3/5 of the members being the top 3 seeds in the West: The Timberwolves, Thunder, and Nuggets.

In basketball discourse, divisions aren’t typically brought up because unlike in the MLB, NFL, or many other sports, there isn’t a direct incentive for winning your division such as an automatic playoff berth. However, it still matters in the NBA because each team plays the teams in their division 4 times, instead of the 3 games against other conference opponents or 2 against the other conference. Therefore, a team’s strength of schedule and playoff chances are directly affected by how competitive their division is.

In April, when the regular season wraps up, maybe teams like the Lakers, Suns, and Warriors will turn it around and all 5 teams will be in the playoffs. Then, all of this talk will feel like an irrelevant, midseason memory. This means that just as quickly as the division was the worst, it could soon be the best yet again.

Even if the Pacific isn’t the NBA’s worst division, the underwhelming performance of its teams suggests that regular season success is increasingly becoming more irrelevant in predicting playoff success. With so much parity around the league, maybe this is a good thing. We don’t know who will win or lose each game in the regular season, and shocking teams can now emerge in the playoffs and go on a deep run. 

The only thing we can predict about the NBA: whichever team plays the Pistons tonight is going to win that game.