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Commissioner Adam Silver said in July that many around the league believe the 16 best teams should make the playoffs, irrespective of conference designation. But he also noted restructuring is "not at the top of the agenda right now," per ESPN.com's Ohm Youngmisuk.

Travel logistics make doing away with conferences a bittersweet endeavor. Rest is paramount in today's NBA, and driving up every team's season-long odometer is a good way to incite an onslaught of scientific think pieces. Kiboshing conferences would, admittedly, make the most sense when aligned with a shorter schedule.

Something nevertheless needs to be done, like, yesterday. The imbalance between the East and West is too stark to soldier on with conferences.

Since 2000-01, the Western Conference's No. 8 seeds have averaged 5.3 more wins than the Eastern Conference's eighth-place squads. That's...outrageous. And it gets worse.

Over this same span, the West's No. 9 seeds—lottery teams—have averaged 3.1 more victories than the East's eighth and final postseason outfit. Also ridiculous.

And if you're thinking/hoping the East's No. 8 seeds have created ample separation when pitting them against the West's 10th-ranked teams, we have some bad news: They're better but not by much. The East's eighth-best record has a 1.4-win advantage over 10th place in the West .

Isolate the standings since LeBron James entered the NBA in 2003-04, and the West's eighth- and ninth-best teams hold an even larger advantage, while the gap between its No. 10 and the East's eighth seed goes virtually unchanged.

Next season's win-loss records should only exacerbate the variance following the recent mass exodus of talent from the Eastern Conference. According to NBA Math's Total Points Added (TPA), the West has a net-value gain of 859.5, while the East, as of now, will enter the year having lost 638.5 in player contributions. That's a total difference of 1,498 TPA—or more value than Blake Griffin has represented through the first seven years of his career (1,462).



So yeah...can we abolish conferences already? And if not, can we just find a way to swap out three members of the East with the three Texas-based teams—the Dallas Mavericks, Houston Rockets and San Antonio Spurs? Pretty please?