But that's the point. The issue is not that the east is uncompetitive: the east is quite competitive indeed. The issue is that the gap in talent between the best team in the east and the second-best team in the east is basically the same as the gap in talent between the second-best team in the east and the tenth-best team in the east. And the same thing goes for the west.
But that's not the same thing as the conference being uncompetitive, and that's where confirmation bias sets in: on Earth-2, or whichever version of Earth there is where LeBron James doesn't exist and/or never became a basketball player, the 2017 NBA eastern conference playoffs would be quite interesting. But, since we live on this earth, and LeBron James does exist and play basketball, people want to gauge whether or not the eastern conference playoffs are competitive based on how legitimate the challenge is to LeBron. Which, IYAM, is not the most useful metric to use.