You really still living off eastern conference accomplishments? Beating up on bad eastern conference teams is not that impressive. Kawhi proved last year that dominating the east isn't that hard.
Why hasn't any other great player dominated The East, then? In the last 20 years, the following guys played all or most of their primes in the East:
Pierce, Allen, Melo, Iverson, Wade, PG, Mac, Dwight, Butler, Rose...
These are all guys who at some point were considered Top 10 active players or right now are debatably Top 50 All-Timers...
So why couldn't any of these guys do it if it's that easy?
Blocking Demar Derozan and Kyle Lowry from making the Finals isn't that impressive. Its amazing that you can't accept the reality that the Eastern Conference has been the JV division of the NBA since 1998 when Jordan retired.
You could've put several Western Conference superstars like Kevin Durant or Kawhi in Bron's place all those years and the results would've been the same.
Stop, the Bulls were seen as favorites to win it all in '11, don't minimize and get revisionist on how people viewed Rose and that squad...
The Celtics were threats every year until Bron deaded them twice, we're gonna talk about them being "old" but a)if the Celtics won those last two series over Bron we wouldn't say that, and b)Bron is "old" now and none of you guys give him the "old" pass...
The Pacers were title contenders, led by Next Big Thing (George) and the best D in The League at the time...
Ended the Pistons run, you can call em what you want but they were 2x Finalists and were in the ECF six years in a row, that team is underrated to this day and was every bit a mini-dynasty...
These were all squads that had multi-year runs and were champions and/or championship contenders in real time, but no thoughts on that? Hahahaha...