It’s been 129 long days since the New York Knicks broke a five-decade dry spell, kicking off one of the greatest summers the greatest city has ever seen with a hard-won NBA championship. It was a thrilling finale, full of dramatic comebacks and last-second tip-ins delicious enough to keep us fed through the off-season. But just when the absence of basketball was becoming untenable, we came back in a big way this week. The 2026-2027 NBA season has officially begun, and while it’s ridiculous at this early point in the year to promote any narratives about where things might go, when has that ever stopped us? Especially when, after a summer of insane trades and roster-shuffling, one particular take seems impossible to deny: the Eastern Conference is back, baby.

“There are maybe [only] two teams in the Eastern Conference that I can say have no chance of making the playoffs: the Milwaukee Bucks and the Brooklyn Nets,” All-NBA shooting guard-turned-NBC-studio-analyst Tracy McGrady told me on the eve of opening night. As for the other 13 teams, T-Mac says it could swing anyone’s way, because the East is “just that deep.”

For years, it’s been the opposite. Star power in the Eastern Conference was just as limited as depth—the post-season didn’t get interesting until around the semifinals, while the Western Conference regularly felt like a Battle Royale pitting established veteran stars against the new faces of the league. Now, the pendulum has swung in the other direction so thoroughly that West mainstays are willing to admit as much.

“I literally just had this conversation with Draymond Green and I asked, Is the East better?" says the beloved Prime broadcaster Taylor Rooks. “And he took a minute and was just like… 'Yes.'" Rooks, a former sideline reporter for the NBA on TNT, continued: "There's just real star power in a way that's so exciting. The conclusion we ultimately came to was, it's not just that the East is better, it is so much deeper. The gauntlet of what it will take to get through the East is different than an obviously top-heavy Western Conference.”