TrueHoop reader Phil Welsh writes that strength of conference should be a factor in determining home-court advantage in the Finals:

June, 2011. Heat vs. Lakers. Game 7. Highest-rated NBA game in over a decade. Three Kings vs. Three Rings. LeBron vs. Kobe. Phil vs. Pat. Shaq’s old team vs. Shaq’s other old team. And one completely undeserving champion to follow.

Yes, count me in the boat that thinks the Heat will be our 2011 NBA champions. They will pull away in the final minutes and the analysts will all praise LeBron for his courage to leave Cleveland and come to South Beach to win a ring. They will say this is the start of one dynasty and the end of another. They will talk of the trend of superteams to follow. They will probably even play some sort of Phil Jackson montage since everyone will know it’s his final game coaching.

What no one will mention is that the game was played in Miami … when it should have been played in L.A.

We all know how big of a deal home-court advantage is in the playoffs. It can decide series when two teams are evenly matched. This is why teams play their tails off for 90 percent of the regular season and coast through the final 10 percent once they know their seeding. Home-court advantage is everything; everything else in the regular season means virtually nothing. I can think of no greater example of this than when Mike Brown’s Cavs tanked the final game of the 2009 season once they had home court locked up for the playoffs. Not even matching Boston’s 40-1 home record was enough to convince Brown to play his starters. And I don’t think most of the Cavs cared.

And while this may seem strange, you could argue that home-court advantage means even more in the NBA Finals than it does in other series. Over the last 12 years the team with the home-court advantage has won the title ten times, a ridiculous success rate of 83%. If you don’t think the 2-3-2 format has anything to do with this then explain to me why the decade’s only two lower-seeded teams to win the title -- the Heat and Pistons -- were also the only two teams in history to win all three of their consecutive Finals home games. The 2-3-2 format is HUGE.

Yet isn’t it ironic that even though we know the Western Conference is stronger than the East – thus making regular season records by Western and Eastern conference teams not truly comparable -- we do nothing about this when assigning home-court advantage in the NBA Finals? Is it fair that even though the Lakers will face stiffer competition than the Heat during the regular season -- and thus finish 3-4 games lower in the standings -- that they should have to play on the road in a deciding Game 7 to determine our champion?

We cannot ignore the fact that the conferences are unequal in strength. The data clearly backs this up; only once in the past decade has the East finished with a higher regular season record than the West (’08-’09). This is why I think the logical way to determine home-court advantage between two teams in opposite conferences is a simple formula I created called Adjusted Win Total (AWT). The purpose of AWT is to offset any dominance one conference has over another in determining a team’s record. All it requires is each conference’s overall record during the regular season and simply adjusting the win total so that a team’s AWT in the stronger conference is higher than its actual record and a team’s AWT in the weaker conference is lower than its actual record.

Let’s use last season as our example. The East won 594 games and the West won 636. Since each conference plays 615 games (15 teams per conference times 41 home games each), we can simply divide the number of wins each conference had by 615 to give us our AWT%.

2009-10 Eastern Conference: 594/615 = AWT% of .965

2009-10 Western Conference: 636/615 = AWT% of 1.034

We then multiply this percentage by the team’s actual win total to get their AWT. For instance, the Cavs finished with 61 wins last year so we multiply 61 by .965 to get an AWT of 58.87, which means if the Cavs would have played just as many games against the West as they did against the East they would have won about 59 games, not 61. Conversely, if we were to find the Lakers AWT from last year we would multiply their actual number of wins (57) by 1.034 to get an AWT of 58.94.

Look at the Cavs AWT and the Lakers AWT one more time … yes, the Lakers had a higher AWT than the Cavs did last season. Accordingly to my formula, L.A. should have clinched home-court advantage throughout the entire 2010 Playoffs. While this didn’t end up mattering since the Lakers didn’t face the Cavs or Magic in the Finals, had they done so our league’s strongest team would have opened up the series on the road.

2009-10 NBA Top Three Regular Season Teams, Actual Record and AWT

Cleveland Cavaliers: Record 61-21, AWT 58.87

Orlando Magic: Record 59-23, AWT 56.94

Los Angeles Lakers: Record 57-25, AWT 58.94

I know what you’re thinking: The Cavs tanked the end of the regular season and could have finished with more than 61 wins if they really tried. I agree … which is exactly why AWT is so great. If the league implemented this formula to determine home-court advantage for the Finals, teams would have to play their starters into the season’s final week because the games would still matter. Not only that, the use of AWT would make every inter-conference matchup a much bigger deal. Could you imagine the Heat on the last day of the regular season rooting for the Bucks to beat the Thunder so their AWT rises just a fraction of a point? Imagine all the added playoff scenarios AWT would present for sports analysts to discuss. Basically, unless you’re a fan of the Heat this season, what’s not to like about AWT?