Last year I made the mistake of thinking that the Eastern Conference wasn't as bad as other people believed. I wasn't about to put that opinion out there at the start of this season, but I also pledged not to write off the good ol' East too early. I thought: Let's give those New Jersey Nets, those Detroit Pistons and those Indiana Pacers some time to jell. It was a season, after all, in which the three-time defending champion Los Angeles Lakers appeared ready to implode, paving the way, perhaps, for a beast from the East to rise.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it appears time to write off the East. I still believe the Nets are the best team in the conference, and while there was a time when I believed they might be the third best team in the NBA behind the Lakers and Sacramento, I don't think that's the case anymore. I put New Jersey at No. 7 or 8 in the league, just ahead of the Pacers and a couple of spots in front of the Pistons. In fact, while everyone has to appreciate what Detroit gets out of its talent, I now wonder if the Pistons shouldn't be ranked behind the Philadelphia 76ers, the only Eastern club that's made a real run recently and one that at least knows how to bow out valiantly in June, having won a game in the Finals against the Lakers in '01.

The wise-ass answer to the question of what makes the West so dominant is obvious: They have better teams and better players. Ha ha. The question is: Why? When the dominance of the West is brought up to NBA execs, understandably, they say something about this conference-dominance thing being cyclical. That's true to a certain extent. The Houston Rockets' improbable back-to-back conference title wins in '94 and '95 were the only championships won by a Western team from '89 through '98. But that wasn't an East-is-dominant thing as much as it was a Michael Jordan-is-dominant thing, as the six Chicago Bulls' championships followed back-to-back title wins by the Bad Boy Pistons. The competition in the West during those years (in no particular order -- the Lakers, the San Antonio Spurs, the Utah Jazz, the Phoenix Suns, the Portland Trail Blazers, the Seattle SuperSonics and, of course, the Rockets all had strong teams) was just as good as it w! as! in the East. It harkened back to the '60s when the East was ascendant basically because the Boston Celtics were next to unbeatable.

What we're seeing these days is unusual because of the depth of good teams in the West vis-a-vis the East. Something is bound to happen with the expansion team in Charlotte coming aboard in 2004 (probably the Minnesota Timberwolves joining the East). But it's interesting to note that, to a large extent, the East has only itself to blame for the current state of affairs.

Take a look at the top teams in the West and consider:

The Milwaukee Bucks drafted Dirk Nowitzki with the ninth overall pick in the '98 draft, but traded away his rights for Robert (Tractor) Traylor, who is still, basically, a tractor trailer, now rumbling along the interstate in New Orleans, while Nowitzki has become, as the ad copy might say, a marvel of German engineering.

The Orlando Magic had the draft rights to Sacramento's Chris Webber but traded them to Golden State for Penny Hardaway, a deal that, to be fair, didn't look bad at the time. When Webber came back to the East, as a Washington Bullet, he was famously unloaded to the Kings for two nice, but over-the-hill, players, Mitch Richmond and Otis Thorpe.

Both the New York Knicks and the Toronto Raptors traded Webber's underrated teammate, Doug Christie, and any number of Eastern teams probably could've made a deal to pry Mike Bibby from Vancouver, as canny Sacramento general manager Geoff Petrie did. Speaking of Petrie, while many GMs still couldn't find Yugoslavia and Turkey on a world map, he was drafting Peja Stojakovic and Hedo Turkoglu.

Those two picks speak to the fact that, in general, the West has shown more perspicacity than the East in selecting foreign players. The only international player of recent vintage making a true impact in the East is Zydrunas Ilgauskas, drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers at No. 20 in the '96 draft. Meanwhile, the West's list doesn't stop with Nowitzki and the mini-United Nations established in Dallas. San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich (he gave up his GM handle this season but no Spur gets drafted without Pop's approval) plucked point guard Tony Parker with the 28th pick of the '01 draft and, two years earlier, beat the East (and everyone else) to Emanuel Ginobili, snagged with the 57th pick. (Andrei Kirilenko adds to that case: the Utah Jazz got him at No. 24 in the '99 draft.)

The Trail Blazers aren't, in my opinion, a title contender -- they probably blew their best shot in '00 when they had the Lakers all but beat in the Western finals -- but Portland would certainly be the cream of the East. The theme continues. The team's best player, Rasheed Wallace, played in Washington for one season, before being traded to the Northwest in '96, while Portland's second best player, Bonzi Wells, was drafted by Detroit and then had his rights traded to the Blazers for a draft pick. (It's probably not fair to mention Scottie Pippen, who made a stop in Houston before going to Portland, but, for the record, there's another Eastern expatriate.)

The Rockets and Suns are probably a couple of years away from a title run, but shrewd rookie picks -- Yao Ming for the former, Amare Stoudemire for the latter -- have helped fuel the resurgence of both clubs.

Anyone else? Oh, yes. There is the matter of that former Eastern Conference resident Shaquille O'Neal (who came to L.A. from Orlando via free agency) and his playmate, Kobe Bryant, whose potential was apparently insufficient to satisfy the Charlotte Hornets -- they traded him to the Lakers for Vlade Divac, who is now back in the West helping the Sacramento Kings.

Look, some of this is 20-20 hindsight. Playing alongside Tim Duncan, as Parker, Ginobli and ex-Miami Heat swingman Bruce Bowen are doing, would make anyone look better. Then, too, the East has had some bad breaks, most recently the possibly career-ending injuries suffered by two centers. But with apologies to Philadelphia's Todd MacCulloch (a progressive nerve disorder) and Detroit's Zelijko Rebraca (irregular heartbeat), they are not the kind of players who make franchises. Now, Grant Hill was that type of player and, partly due to his bad ankle, the Orlando Magic have never risen the way many observers thought they would.

Speaking of the Magic Kingdom, for a long time it was the rumored destination of Duncan, who will be a free agent at the end of this season. Now? The betting is that Duncan will stay put and the Nets' Jason Kidd, the second-most coveted free agent, will flee to San Antonio. Add to this the factor of Jordan's retirement, and the East's future isn't exactly getting brighter, is it?