1986 Houston Rockets vs. 1996 Chicago Bulls

[Psileas]

Depends on what you mean by competitive. There was much more competition in the middle of the pack. But there was little competition for elite teams in the West. The Spurs made the playoffs with 35 wins (albeit this is partially because at that time a large proportion of the league made the playoffs). The Lakers were the only team in the Pacific not below .500. So it (the West, at least) was competitve in terms of closeness but maybe not so much insofar as the term indicates quality of play/competition.

I said it was a competitive season, meaning that the winning discrepancy among the teams of the whole league was small, despite the Celtics and the Lakers still dominating. For me, having multiple 55-60+ win teams doesn't necessarily make a competitive season, as long as we also find multiple 15-25 win jokes.
Like you wrote, the Spurs made the playoffs at 35-47, but 67% of Western teams made the playoffs, compared to 53% now, so the closest analogy would be to have the first 6 make the playoffs. Even so, it would make a 40-42 team make the playoffs, while the worst team of the whole conference was at 30-52. Even the Knicks, with the worst record in the league, still managed to get 23 W's (18-32 when Ewing was playing), which is a pretty high number for last place standards.

[get these NETS]

if Sampson could let little Jerry Sichting get into his head....he'd be ejected by game 2 facing up against Rodman

[Owl]

I said it was a competitive season, meaning that the winning discrepancy among the teams of the whole league was small, despite the Celtics and the Lakers still dominating. For me, having multiple 55-60+ win teams doesn't necessarily make a competitive season, as long as we also find multiple 15-25 win jokes.
Like you wrote, the Spurs made the playoffs at 35-47, but 67% of Western teams made the playoffs, compared to 53% now, so the closest analogy would be to have the first 6 make the playoffs. Even so, it would make a 40-42 team make the playoffs, while the worst team of the whole conference was at 30-52. Even the Knicks, with the worst record in the league, still managed to get 23 W's (18-32 when Ewing was playing), which is a pretty high number for last place standards.

Yeah just trying to be clear, because by competitive some people mean balanced (and this is probably closest to the literal meaning), some people mean many plausible title winners and some mean the league is of a high quality.

And because that related to my point about teams record depending on schedule I thought it was worth pointing out that an elite team in the West would have a good chance of running a high win total relative to its ability, and so whilst competitive is accurate, you couldn't conclude that the West would be a difficult conference for an elite team to dominate.