When the 76ers got up on Thursday morning they were 18-28. This should have had them buried so deep in the standings that they were safe making their offseason vacation plans for the third week of April.

Instead, they found themselves just one and a half games behind New Jersey for the eighth spot in the East.

How ridiculous is this, that a team 10 games under .500 could even sniff a playoff berth at this point of the season?

But the hard truth is that the Eastern Conference is so weak that you'll have more than a handful of sub-.500 teams gunning for the right to be crushed by Detroit or Boston.

Worse is the fact that teams with actual winning records in the Western Conference won't make the postseason. If the season ended today, Portland with a 26-19 record would be on the outside looking in. In the East, they'd be fourth behind Boston, Detroit and Orlando.

Maybe it's time for the NBA to scrap the East vs. West mentality and just go to a one through 16 format in the playoffs. It would make the entire playoffs less of a joke, and re-invigorate the Finals.