With all due respect to fans of woeful NBA teams like the Utah Jazz and Portland Trail Blazers, it's time we have a frank conversation. And I apologize for how it will exclude your totally valid (but, to me, ultimately tertiary) needs as diehard supporters of your respective favorite teams. The NBA's latest truly generational draft prospect, , must play in the Eastern Conference when he likely jumps to the league in the summer of 2025.
Full stop. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it, either. If we want to have a truly healthy and balanced NBA, throwing another potential franchise superstar like Flagg into an already-stacked West is a dire scenario for the league.
The sheer talent disparity between the two conferences -- -- is already way too glaring. The East's embarrassingly slow start to the 2024-2025 season only confirms as much. It's still a small sample size (less than 10 games into the year at the time of this writing), but here are some eye-opening early numbers to keep in mind if you're one of those people who'd like to see Flagg play somewhere West of the Rocky Mountains: Only two East teams, the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics, currently have a record.
That's right. Quite literally, everyone else outside of Cleveland and Boston in the East is straddling the line at .500 or lower.
Yikes. Eight of the NBA's 10 best records so far belong to Western Conference teams. Eight.
EIGHT. The West, itself, is winning over 70 percent of its games head-to-head with the.
