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And the imbalance isn’t just at the top of the conferences; it goes clear through to the bone.

Three sub-.500 teams from one conference in the playoffs is embarrassing and wrong. More often than not, the East manages to produce at least one team that can’t win even half its games that gets rewarded with a playoff berth. The past two years, it was just one sub-.500 team from the East going to the playoffs. In 2003-2004 it was two teams. This year it could be two, it could be three, or it could even be four. The conference is that bad.

If the postseason began today, The top two seeds would be Boston and Detroit, who lead the NBA with winning percentages of .793 and .729 respectively. The next seven – count ‘em, seven – playoff teams would come from the West: the Spurs (.707), Lakers (.700), Hornets (.672), Suns (.661), Rockets (.661), Mavs (.650) and Jazz (.633) – would come from the West. At playoff seed number 10 we’d finally get our third team from the East, the Magic (.623.) The final six seeds would be the Warriors (.621), Nuggets (.593), Cavs (.567), Raptors (.552), Blazers (.517), and the Wizards (.492).

What would be so wrong with that? The Sixers and Nets stay home with their embarrassing records and hope to get lucky in the lottery. The West picks up two teams in the playoffs – the Nuggets and Blazers - and you can still end up with some mix of Celtics, Lakers, Pistons and Spurs in your Final Four. If you must have an East-West finals matchup, fix it so that if there are two teams from each conference left in the semifinals, they have to play each other, no matter what their seedings are. If one conference can’t get two teams that far, too bad. A conference that bad doesn’t deserve a break.

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