The movement initially took hold in November, when even passing NBA fans noticed the massive disparity in win/loss records between the Western and Eastern Conference. It received a kick in the tail late last month, when Grantland’s Zach Lowe penned a typically thoughtful column calling for the abolishment of divisions. And now NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver, set to take over for the retiring David Stern in February, is on record saying he’ll at least consider doing away with the damned things.

With November turning into December and the trend barely abating as the West continues to pile up wins, while the East slags about, it probably won’t take very long for some cranks to wonder if the entire idea of conferences within the NBA are an anachronistic venture. Why should a successful and smart team like the Dallas Mavericks have to play the far away (and quite good) Portland Trail Blazers four times, when the similarly spaced Miami Heat gets to buffer its win totals against the awful Milwaukee Bucks?

The NBA is likely so embarrassed about the totals so far this season that, as far we can tell, they declined to fine both the Trail Blazers and Phoenix Suns for taking pot shots at the East through their Twitter accounts. The league probably didn’t want to draw more attention to those tweets and the current gulf between the two conferences; because you know the NBA didn’t decline the fine because they developed a sense of humor out of nowhere.

The frustration, especially for fans of those on the playoff bracket bubble out west, has been growing for a decade and a half. A series of poor executive moves from various Eastern Conference teams, mixed with some lottery luck and Michael Jordan’s retirement shifted the league’s fortunes in a western direction in the late 1990s. Since that term the East has snuck in some rather crummy basketball teams, working with records inflated by an easy Eastern schedule, into several postseasons.

This season is shaping up to be the worst yet, with the 10-14 Boston Celtics set to “earn” the East’s fourth seed should they eventually win the Atlantic Division. What’s more telling about Boston’s situation is that they’d outright earn the seventh seed in the Eastern playoff bracket regardless of the NBA rules that place a division winner in the top half of the bracket by law. The East only features two teams with records above .500, with the third-seeded Atlanta Hawks having won only half their games, and the 10-12 Charlotte Bobcats (after winning a combined 28 games in the previous two seasons) have the conference’s fourth best record.

That’s pathetic, whether it’s by design (Boston, Philadelphia, Orlando, and to some degree Toronto were built to punt the season), injury (Chicago, and possibly New York and Brooklyn if we’re being kind), or incompetence (everyone else). Meanwhile, the team with the 13th-best winning percentage in the West (your injury-hit Memphis Grizzlies) would rank fourth in the East, and five different current Western Conference lottery participants would get into the postseason if they played in the crummier conference.

The solution to the divisional problem is obvious, you get rid of them. Some owners, such as Dallas’ Mark Cuban, say that the format does increase the value of a rivalry and helps sell both tickets and enhance intrigue, but that’s really only true when it involves the Texas triangle with Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, or the Atlantic Division excluding Toronto. Nobody cares about the Southeast Division even though it houses the two-time defending champs, and even this longtime NBA writer would have a tough time discerning just who, exactly, fills up the three divisions out west. They just don’t matter, and awarding a division winner with a guaranteed high seed is a joke.

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