Actually, the NBA's Eastern Conference Is Great

The Eastern Conference is talked about with a shake of the head, as a problem to solve and something to be fixed. It's an eyesore, a failed state, a backwards-looking and generally backwards half of the NBA that is going to keep two of Phoenix, New Orleans, and Oklahoma City out of the playoffs. It's happened before—last year, a 38-44 Atlanta team made the playoffs while Phoenix went 48-34 on their way to the nine seed—and will happen again.

That's certainly a weird bummer for Phoenix fans, but that's not the end of the story. While most discussion of the NBA's conference imbalance has been focused on the poor teams who are left out, the other side has been ignored. Sports don't have to be a straight up meritocracy, and are often more fun the less rigidly meritocratic they are. Sometimes, in other words, it's better if it's easier to make the playoffs.

Strictly speaking, what's keeping good teams out of the Western Conference playoffs every year is a few elite teams defying the logic of cyclical success. Because San Antonio and Dallas have employed ageless cyborg basketball warriors Tim Duncan and Dirk Nowitzki continuously for their whole careers, they have stayed out of the lottery. Los Angeles was up there too until very recently. Western Conference powers have been able to patiently develop young players—think Kawhi Leonard with San Antonio—while remaining competitive. The result, over the last few years, has been the most thoroughly competitive conference in NBA history.

But is watching the same-ish eight teams grind each other to nubs in the playoffs really that great? The only intrigue this year is Oklahoma City, which could theoretically slide into the playoffs as the eighth seed and play Golden State. OKC is a far more talented team than their spot in the standings suggests, and if a seeding quirk—the result of some early-season injuries for the Thunder and other upcoming flukes TBD—leads to a historically great Warriors team crashing out in the first round, that would be its own type of injustice. Mostly, though, it would be familiar. Watching the same dudes in the playoffs every year exhausts its charms and delays the postseason trial by fire of developing stars like DeMarcus Cousins or Anthony Davis.

The Eastern Conference suffers no such exclusion problem. Those same Hawks who claimed that shameful eight seed last year are now 37-8, and riding a 16-game winning streak. That playoff experience probably helped them turn into the machine they are now. Last year, the Milwaukee Bucks were the NBA's worst team, and went 3-27 against Western Conference opponents. This year Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks are going to make it to the playoffs, and he is the most compulsively watchable player in the league. Because there isn't that stubborn clot of old stars clogging up playoff spots, young, fun teams like Milwaukee and Washington have space to thrive. If Cousins' Kings and Davis' Pelicans were in a more balanced conference, we'd get to watch them in the playoffs, too.

Even the best argument against the East, which is that trash teams sneak into the playoffs the bottom, isn't quite true this year. Two of the Heat, Hornets, Pistons, and Nets will make the playoffs; the only boring, bad team there is Brooklyn, which looks to be gearing up for a fire sale. Miami features a pair of legit stars and the league's most exciting shot-blocker in Hassan Whiteside. The Hornets are a fascinating experiment in how far a team can go with an elite defense and virtually nothing else. Even without Brandon Jennings, the new-look Pistons play bombastic, weird basketball. Regardless of which two teams make it, they'll likely make their series worth watching.

Conference solutionism is tempting, but unnecessary. The NBA doesn't need to be perfected, every corner rounded off and every oddity sanded down towards reason. Idiosyncratic as it may be, the Eastern Conference doesn't need to be dissolved; it's already fixing itself. Each conference has its problems, which is a good thing. These weirdnesses give texture and personality to the league. It can't be all ageless cyborg basketball warriors. It shouldn't be.