It's about the least sophisticated mathematical analysis you could perform. Sure, the West has a better interconference record and has for 22 out of the last 23 years - nothing is controversial about that. But it sure seems extremely lucky considering only one team in the West has been dominant for almost that entire period in the Spurs. Even the Lakers were pretty bad for somewhere between a third and half that time.

So when we have teams that are constantly fluctuating in record and standing from year to year, with constantly changing rosters including trades with the "lesser" conference, with changing front offices, coaches, strategies, and cultures....but we keep having the same result, it makes sense to ask "why?" Is it possible the West, despite constantly changing, just always ends up better? Of course it's possible. Is it probable? Absolutely not. We can use different types of regression analyses to identify features of games that lead to one team winning more often regardless of conference to see if common factors emerge. When we do that, we see that teams traveling from a western time zone to an eastern time zone win more often than not, regardless of conference. We also know the effect is amplified by the number of time zones crossed. We've also found that, while it had little effect on predicting individual games, teams with stable front offices/coaching staffs usually end seasons with higher records than teams with significant turnover (for those interested, this had far less predictive power for playoff record or winning a chip). Finally, when we control for those two factors, we find the West and the East are roughly even. Of course one conference will be "better" each year, but not in any way we can reliably measure. Records obviously matter, but ignoring all the other statiatical tools we've developed for a simple win ratio is not rigorous at all. If math ended there, it would also end in the 4th grade.

I am sorry that you consider to be any math a hot take

I don't think think that - I do consider low-level, unsophisticated mathematical analysis that is being passed off as rigorous as a hot take.