Hey, the clips are decent this year, at least they play hard. So it's no longer fair to judge a team by the way they play the clips. Heck, the clips took the jazz into overtime, what's up w/ that?
To get back to the original question, nobody has mention the sixers in the east. Sure their perfect record doesn't indicate much, but the fact that their team has talent and chemistry does. Not that they would win the title tho, cuz they would still lose to the Lakers(or the Spurs) in the finals.
And the Blazers are going nowhere, unless they finally realize lots of all star does not equal to championships. The real equation would be lots of all star w/ chemistry = championship.