Minnesota Timberwolves should move to the Eastern Conference
By Keith Rivas
As if we haven’t already seen a lot of interesting moves this off-season, one that the league should openly discuss is moving the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The Western Conference was already clearly the better of the two in professional basketball, but it got even better. While Kawhi Leonard left the Spurs in a trade that sent him to Toronto, LeBron James and DeMar DeRozan are two new supestars out west.
What this shift in the superstar paradigm means is that the league is headed for one of two things. Either an expansion team in Las Vegas or Seattle can open up, allowing Minnesota to move to the Eastern Conference in order to avoid inbalance between conferences or the idea of a conference-less playoff system should be in any active talks.
In both of those cases, the league would be experimenting with something entirely new being introduced to the game, and while there is nothing concrete linking these ideas to any execution in the immediate future, they should be two things that we start really thinking about.
Minnesota moving to the Eastern Conference would give that side of the NBA a fresh face and an opportunity for the weaker conference to not lose it’s edge. Sure, Boston, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia are all going to be near the top, but the rest of the conference is a crap shoot at this point.
And while it will be nice to not have a part five to the Cavs-Warriors NBA Finals saga, is it really that much better if we know that whoever wi=]ns the Western Conference has a real shot at sweeping the Eastern Conference winner almost every time?
The main reason that moving the Timberwolves would be good for the league is if those in executive positions still fear the consequences of going 1-16 overall instead of 1-8 per conference.
Some of the match ups would surely still end up the same, but the bottom line is that the argument for both scenarios is rooted in the constant and semi-predictable — that can’t happen if the league would prefer not touching the conference set up.