The resurgent Eastern Conference is primed for frantic, thrilling finish

This time of year isn't typically conducive to Eastern Conference viewing.

It's not that there haven't been tight playoff races in the East in recent years - in fact, three teams finished within a game of the eighth seed last season. It's been hard, however, to get invested in the fates of any of the uninspiring sub-.500 teams fighting for the right to be first-round fodder, or mid-tier pseudo-contenders running up wins against diluted competition.

For nearly two decades, the West has been home to the more engaging and dramatic races. The league's best and most entertaining teams scrapped it out night after night on the West Coast, with implications baked into every contest. What the East may have had in uncertainty, it lacked in real stakes.

It's a different story this season. From the ashes of all those years of ineptitude has risen a unique, dynamic crop of teams spreading their wings as the regular season hurtles toward its conclusion.

The Cleveland Cavaliers remain the clear favorite to repeat as East champs. They can be a whirring death machine when fully locked in, but those instances have felt few and far between. For a team so heavily favored to make a second straight finals appearance, they still seem oddly fragile and combustible. The Toronto Raptors, meanwhile, have no business being as good as they are, yet they continue to punch the league's best teams in the teeth behind unlikely superstar Kyle Lowry.

Top 6 in W-L vs Each Other
Warriors 11-1
Raptors 6-3
Cavaliers 6-5
Spurs 5-5
Thunder 3-8
Clippers 2-11

— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) March 23, 2016

The Boston Celtics are thriving as an equal-opportunity defensive juggernaut with a wizard of a coach. Ditto for the Atlanta Hawks who, after a shaky start, look more like last year's 60-win outfit. The red-hot Charlotte Hornets have undergone one of the more dramatic overnight cultural overhauls in memory, weathering the loss of Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and reinventing themselves as a 3-point-bombing brigade with playmaking at every position.

The Miami Heat are finally getting the most out of Goran Dragic, and they've been blazing even without Chris Bosh, who could be back for the playoffs. The notion of a healthy Chicago Bulls team finally hitting its stride in April is as tantalizing as it is unnerving to the top two seeds (whom Chicago is a combined 6-1 against). John Wall remains one of the most eminently watchable players in basketball, and he's been doing superhuman things to keep the Washington Wizards in the race.

What makes this all the more exciting is that virtually the entire East playoff field has been rolling since the All-Star break.

Team	Record	Point Diff.
Hornets	14 - 4	5.3
Raptors	13 - 5	4.7
Cavaliers	13 - 6	6.7
Heat	12 - 6	5.6
Hawks	11 - 6	7
Pistons	11 - 7	1.1
Wizards	12 - 8	3.1
Celtics	10 - 7	2.5
Pacers	9 - 8	-1.1
Bulls	9 - 9	-2.7

At the top, the West undeniably remains best, with the two (arguably even three) best teams in the league. There's an overwhelming probability the eventual NBA champion will hail from that conference. But even if all roads lead to destruction at the hands of the Warriors or Spurs, the East - which has produced far more top-down balance - will be the conference to watch in the lead-up to the postseason.

That's because the East is rife with interesting playoff races that could go right down to the wire. No team is locked into any seed - unlike the West, where each team in the top five is already virtually locked into its seed.

The East playoff race breaks down into three pretty distinct tiers. There's the race for the No. 1 seed, with the Cavs up two-and-a-half games on the Raptors.

Team	Record	Remaining SoS
1. Cavaliers	51-20	.489
2. Raptors	49-22	.538

The Cavs have the far softer schedule down the stretch, and with a relatively comfortable cushion, appear unlikely to slip. Cleveland has been plagued by on-court fit issues and off-court weirdness, though, and head coach Tyronn Lue has said the team will prioritize rest over chasing No. 1. The Raptors, meanwhile, have a game in hand and own the tiebreaker.

After that, it's a mad scrum for seeds 3-6, with the Hawks in a virtual tie with the Celtics, and the Heat and Hornets a half-game behind.

Team	Record	Remaining SoS
3. Hawks	42-30	.546
4. Celtics	42-30	.486
5. Heat	41-30	.446
6. Hornets	41-30	.488

The order in which this four-team race shakes out will be determined in part by who wins the Southeast Division, which acts as a prohibitive tiebreaker. In other words, one of the Heat, Hawks, or Hornets will claim the third seed if it comes down to a tiebreaking scenario with the Celtics, who are seven games back in the Atlantic. Within that intradivisional trio, the Hawks have the most difficult remaining slate, but have clinched the head-to-head tiebreakers over both the Heat and Hornets. Those two teams have split four head-to-head games, but the Heat currently own that tiebreaker based on divisional record (8-5 versus 7-7).

Meanwhile, the Celtics have clinched head-to-head tiebreakers over the Heat and Hornets, but trail the Hawks 2-1 with a game left in the season series. Should they win it, the Celtics have a leg up based on conference record (29-19 versus 24-19). In other words, the Celtics are in good position to nab the No. 4 seed, particularly if the Hawks win the Southeast and take No. 3.

In the bottom third of the bracket is an equally heated dogfight between four teams all fighting for their playoff lives. The 7-9 teams are separated by a game, with the 10th-place Wizards hanging tough at 2.5 back after having a five-game win streak snapped Wednesday.

Team	Record	Remaining SoS
7. Pacers	37-33	.398
8. Pistons	38-34	.572
9. Bulls	36-34	.512
10. Wizards	35-36	.473

The Detroit Pistons have a hellacious finishing slate, with the highest remaining opponent winning percentage of any East team, while the Indiana Pacers have the lowest. The Bulls are the only team among the quartet that'll get two cracks at the other three, with games against the Pacers and Pistons looming.

With the worst conference record of the bunch, the Bulls need those games in order to get the tiebreakers in their pocket. The Wizards will face plenty of beatable opponents from here on out, but seven of their 11 remaining games are on the road. They do, however, hold the tiebreaker over both the Bulls and Pistons.

The race for the final two seeds (and particularly the seventh seed) also feels more significant than it has in years past, because outside of Cleveland, every team is beatable in the right matchup, and any of the other nine teams could find itself in the conference finals with a break here or there.

All of this should add up to the most exciting finishing kick the Eastern Conference has seen in a generation. Sure, it probably won't make a difference in the big picture, but even if we're ultimately just waiting to discover which team does its damnedest to push the Cavs to six games in the conference finals, aren't you excited to find out who it is?

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The resurgent Eastern Conference is primed for frantic, thrilling finish