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The Eastern Conference may have four of the league's best six teams, with the Cavaliers, Celtics, Hawks and Magic each making cases for NBA supremacy over the past two months. But let's not get carried away with respect for the conference: the league is still massively unbalanced.If the season ended today, three teams with losing records would be in the East's postseason bracket. In the other conference, one team with a winning record (17-14 Oklahoma City) would be on the outside looking in. In fact, the East's seventh place team -- 12-17 Chicago -- would be the West's No. 13 team.
In the past, the case for a conference-free playoff bracket has been made. Various pundits have argued that the league should take the 16 NBA teams with the best records, and seed them 1 through 16, regardless of conference or division. If such a system were in place today, 10 of those teams would come from the West, and only six would come from the East. (The East's sixth team, Toronto, would be the No. 15 seed, just ahead of Memphis.) The first three teams on the outside looking in under this system would all be Western teams.
The argument against such a seeding system has always been that eventually, the cycle will end and the East's depth will improve relative to the West. We've been hearing that since 2000. It's a decade later, and the West still leaves good teams out of its postseason while the East gives extra games to mediocre squads. Teams like Oklahoma City and Memphis could use that extra playoff revenue, and teams like Chicago frankly don't deserve it, just based on geography. The league should really consider moving to a bracket independent of conference.
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