anyways that's beside the point I think - the celtics had back to back conference finals appearances and made the second round last year despite the complete collapse of their locker room, and tatum is looking more and more like he could be the guy. I may have overrated the heat but jimmy is at least somewhat proven and the rest of the team looks solid (although their future contender status prob hinges on who they sign w all that cap space). as much as lebronto was a thing it was lowry and derozan against easily the best player of this generation, whereas the rockets had two superstars and a scheme crafted specifically to beat golden state and still lost over and over again (yeah I know I called golden state a cheat code but the rockets g6 losses in 2017 and 2019 were just really bad looks. certainly the raptors are not losing to cleveland if lebron's out with an injury).
for the west...the nuggets by contrast have one postseason appearance in recent memory where they lost to a shorthanded blazers outfit and arguably they're due for regression. the jazz have had their down year but I'm not quite certain they've bounced back enough, and I don't think I need to write an essay on all the ways the rockets could collapse under themselves. there's also little to no room for these teams to grow without internal jumps while both toronto and miami are openly gearing up for 2021 free agency to augment their existing cores (and boston can prob make a run at somebody too with hayward coming off the books). forgive me for assuming that the west is overly stagnant by comparison bc there are certainly exciting young teams there, it's just that the east's exciting young teams are already in the championship mix.
anyways this is kind of a silly argument, and it is certainly fair to assume that maybe the east's best teams are boosted by the bottom half of the conference being worthless (the magic are only decent because they've drafted and scrounged too many solid players to outright collapse like the 7 teams beneath them, although I think the nets deserve the benefit of the doubt considering the turnaround sean marks has pulled off) but at the same time the eye test and the stats seem to validate the east's upper crust ahead of the west's, and the milwaukee - toronto axis looks like a more convincing conference top2 than the la teams. but again this years playoffs could prove me completely wrong, who knows. should be interesting anyways I think.
