The East's bias is showing again and Western Conference coach, players and writers have every right to be a little upset.

The lapdog half of the league is winning the majority of the awards again. How do you explain it? True bias or an accident of geography? The fact is, teams east of the Mississippi are, by most standards, less deserving. But even with the MVP award going to Tim Duncan, the West pulled only two of the league's six principal awards, continuing a trend of the past decade.

	Tim Duncan was just one of two award winners from the Western Conference.

This is not to say that Rick Carlisle of the Pistons wasn't deserving of the Coach of the Year award or that Corliss Williamson did not merit the Sixth Man award. It says here that Carlisle did a brilliant job this season in turning around a struggling franchise and winning a division title. Williamson played very well. Ben Wallace was a magnificent defender and certainly did not disgrace those Defensive Player award winners who came before him.

But enough is enough.

A case has already been made on this website for Rick Adelman, who actually got the Kings to play defense and won more games (61) than anyone else in the league. Maybe some writers and talkers were influenced by the cheap way the Kings treat Adelman, the only coach in the league whose picture does not appear in the NBA Guide.

Apparently, there is some bitterness among the voters. ESPN Radio reported Wednesday morning that some Western Conference voters had completely omitted Jason Kidd from their MVP ballot. That's disgraceful and, if it happened, those questionable journalists should be stripped of their right to vote in these elections.

It's tough enough keeping the playing field level among honest and fair-minded voters who see teams in their own conference twice as often as they do the other side.

In the decade from 1992 through 2001, the West had an edge only in Coach of the Year awards, 6 to 4. The conferences were tied in the MVP voting, and in Defensive Player of the Year voting, 5-5, the East winning five straight defender's awards before Wallace was honored.

After that, it is utterly one-sided. The West, the dominant conference since Michael Jordan's retirement in 1997, has 2½ Rookie of the Year honorees (Kidd tying Grant Hill in 1995). The East won the rest. Note that three of those rookie winners, Elton Brand, Damon Stoudamire and Shaquille O'Neal are now playing in the West.

	What's The Difference?
	The Eastern Conference played a tighter brand of basketball while the West was more wide-open. Eastern teams scored less but also allowed fewer points and Western teams shot better but allowed a better opponents shooting perentage. And the numbers of 50-win and 50-loss teams suggest there were more quality teams in the West but more balance from top to bottom in the East. Here's a look at the numbers, illustrating the differences between the conferences.
		East	West
	PPG	93.9	97.2
	PPG all.	94.5	96.4
	FG pct.	.441	.449
	FG pct. all.	.443	.448
	50-win teams	2	5
	50-loss teams	3	4
	--Rico Longoria, ESPN.com

Eastern players won the Most Improved award nine of 10 times before Jermaine O'Neal of Indiana was honored. The Sixth Man award went to an Eastern player seven times in 10 years before Detroit's Corliss Williamson got it. Did Williamson deserve it for contributions to a team that won 52 games? I suppose so. Could Bobby Jackson of the Kings been regarded as a legitimate choice. I think so.

A man could say that's why they make vanilla and chocolate. You could argue that while the West had five of the league's seven 50-plus game winners, the West also had four of the six teams that could not win 30 games.

All said, Carlisle was the pick here for the coach's award and Kidd for MVP after leading the Nets to a remarkable season in which they also won a division title. Kidd's work was self-evident. The Nets doubled their victory total when he came to town.

With a coach, things can be a bit more subtle. Yes, the Pistons won more games since 1991 in Carlisle's first try as a head coach, but keep in mind this happened because the team reformed at the defensive end and learned to score off turnovers.

Carlisle also (sort of) reformed Jerry Stackhouse, who finally accepted the reality that his team would win more games if he took fewer shots. Stackhouse was a loser since he came into the NBA with the 76ers during their nadir in the '90s. He spent two years at Chapel Hill so he had the smarts to figure out the obvious.

Still, Carlisle, 42, had a tough time coming into a head coaching job. He played five years in the league, three with the Celtics, and he worked as an assistant in New Jersey and Portland before Larry Bird brought him to Indiana.

Bird, Carlisle and Dick Harter took the Pacers to the Finals in 2001, and Bird left the job. The assumption was that Carlisle deserved it and that he would get it. Contrarians complained that Carlisle, a man of dour personality at times, openly courted players with a false sense of bon homme and did not deserve the shot.

Pacers president Donnie Walsh apparently agreed, at least in part. He went after Isiah Thomas who had never before coached in any capacity. Carlisle went to Seattle to do broadcasting.

"I'd rather do that than take another assistant's job," he said, adding that his next job "would be the most important move of my career." Joe Dumars, a great player and a young general manager, had the smarts to turn his team over to Carlisle.

Late this season, Carlisle started calling writers around the country to pitch for his players' candidacy in award voting. He must have had some good affect. And that's another reason why he deserved the award, bias or no.

Jeffrey Denberg, who covers the NBA for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.