Everybody wants to feign competition, just because it's more exciting than bringing out the brooms for a game and waving them around in degradation of the losing team. Remember last season, in the NBA Finals, when the Philadelphia 76ers actually defeated a bored Lakers team and across the nation sportswriters tired of crafting genuflective diatribes about Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant deemed the series a fight?

C'mon, that thing was never even close.

Allen Iverson scored a few baskets, and Aaron McKie and Eric Snow and George Lynch gained our sympathy for gamely fighting through injuries to play in the games they have been striving to play in all of their lives.

	At least it'd be fun to see Shaquille O'Neal and Brad Miller, right, battle every night.

But the lasting image I have of that series is NBC's slow-motion shot of Shaq coming across the lane with one of his anvil elbows and rearranging the facial expressions of Dikembe Mutombo. No wonder Mutombo wants to build his own hospital in the Congo -- it's a place to go and recuperate after hurting Shaq's elbow with the bridge of his nose.

Does anyone think it is going to be any different this season?

I mean, yeah, it would be nice to glamorize a rematch of the old Lakers-Boston Celtics series, reliving the days of the Garden rocking in Game 7 while the best front line in basketball history rivaled the Magic-led Showtime crew.

Or, wouldn't it even be great if upstarts like the Detroit Pistons and Dallas Mavericks duked it out for a new look at the NBA's future -- once Shaq undergoes surgery and gets up to 400 pounds.

But let's face it: The NBA Finals are going to be a rout. No way any one of the eight Leastern Conference teams has a chance to upend its Western foe, whomever that may be.

Let's take this in order: First, nobody can even figure out who the representative from the East is going to be. Think back to 1994, when the Denver Nuggets defeated the Seattle SuperSonics in the first round, the first time a No. 8 seed beat a No. 1 seed in the playoffs. It shocked the world. Again, Mutombo is the image, lying on the floor, the ball held above his head, sheer joy etched across his face -- that was pre-Shaq, when his face looked normal.

Now? Would it surprise anybody if the Indiana Pacers beat the New Jersey Nets in the first round to knock off the East's top seed? Didn't think so. Take it a step further: Would it really surprise anybody if the East's bottom four seeds -- Indiana (8), Toronto (7), Philadelphia (6) or Orlando (5) -- all defeated the "favorites," a loosely used term in this case if ever there was one.

OK, let's look at this logically. New Jersey finished with the best record in the East at 52-30. Detroit was second at 50-32. In the West, FIVE teams finished the season with at least 50 victories, topped by Sacramento at 61-21. And Portland had 49 wins. Hell, Seattle, which is seeded seventh, had 45 wins, which is better than all but three teams in the East.

But here's the kicker: The East plays the majority of its games against the East, and the West plays the majority of its games against the West. I mean, imagine if Sacramento was playing in the East. It might have eclipsed the Chicago Bulls' record of 72 victories in a season. Already, with the West teams beating up on themselves, the Kings were only 11 wins behind the record. If they could have played Chicago, Miami, Washington, New York and Atlanta two more times and eliminated the Lakers, Mavericks, Spurs, Blazers and Wolves from their schedule two more times each, MJ and the Boys would be trivia fodder.

Let's take a look personnel-wise. Who is the best center in the East? Alonzo Mourning, who is not in the playoffs, and Jermaine O'Neal, who has about 16 seconds of playoff experience.

Now you tell me: How is Jermaine O'Neal going to cover Shaquille O'Neal -- assuming the East's eighth-place team actually makes it to the Finals. For that matter, how are Todd MacCulloch, Zeljko Rebraca, Tony Battie or Horace Grant going to cover Shaq? They'd end up in a Congolese hospital along with Mutombo, who already has shown us what he can do against the Big Fella.

Perhaps the player with the best chance to cover Shaq is Elden Campbell, and there is a reason that Campbell no longer is in L.A. Actually, I hope the Pacers make it to the Finals just to see Shaq and Brad Miller duke it out every night.

Settle down everybody out West who thinks their team is going to knock off the Lakers. I'll give you your props. But my contention is the same. Almost every team in the East is perimeter oriented: New Jersey, Jason Kidd; Detroit, Jerry Stackhouse; Boston, Paul Pierce; Charlotte, Baron Davis and Jamal Mashburn; Orlando, Tracy McGrady; Philadelphia, Iverson; Toronto, Morris Peterson; and Indiana, which doesn't know what it is (and the reason a team with that much talent nearly missed the playoffs).

How are those teams, which shoots jump shots, going to contend with the offensive and defensive presence of Tim Duncan? Or Chris Webber? Or Dirk Nowitzki? Or Kevin Garnett? Or Rasheed Wallace? Or even Karl Malone? The only team out West who is similar to almost all the East teams is Seattle, jump shooters all.

And who was the last purely jump shooting team that won a championship? I can't even think of one, and if you can, you are much older than me.

How about this intangible? Coaching.

Phil Jackson, eight championships. Rick Adelman, two NBA Finals trips with Portland. Gregg Popovich, a championship. In the East, Byron Scott has not even coached in a playoff game. Same for Jim O'Brien, and the same for Rick Carlisle (though, to be fair, Carlisle has been an assistant to Larry Bird in the Finals.) The only two East coaches who have Finals experience are Larry Brown, last year, and Lenny Wilkens, back in 1842, when he had some guy named Abe Lincoln as his power forward and he scored four.

How do you think Honest Abe would have felt about Shaq's elbows?

Frank Hughes, who covers the NBA for the Tacoma (Wash.) News-Tribune, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.