[Chad]

No.

The west has the spurs, suns, mavs, jazz, and maybe houston who are legitimate title contenders. The east has Boston and Detroit.

[ElMarroAfamado]

if Kobe would ever go to the East, then you can start talking

[Dre™]

You know when we annoint a team a title contender it's not a first month of the season thing, it's a lot more longterm than that. The Suns, Spurs and Mavs have track records of getting deep into the playoffs. The only teams in the East that have a comparable one are the Pistons and the Heat, and only one of those teams are still realistic contenders.

The Celtics are a safe bet to go deep into the playoffs, but then the West counters with Houston and Utah, so no, the East isn't stronger than the West by any stretch. IMO the West is as strong as it's always been in the early 00s. They're 5 teams deep with teams that could conceivably beat the East's number one, the only difference is that the East actually has respectable title contenders nowadays, when it was pretty much a rotation of one strong EC team vs. the West back then.

[mysterio]

In this post, I use science and prove thread wrong:

Current 8th seed in the East: .435
Teams 50%+ in the East: 6

Current 8th seed in the West: .542
Teams 50%+ in the West: 10

No comparison.