They do?
And who cares about the entire league. There are 3 (maybe 4) teams that matter in the East. (Boston, Miami, Orlando, Chicago) and 3 teams out West (SA, LA, Dallas) The rest is just junk to wannabes.
How do those team do against each other?
Glad you asked.
Boston is 8-4: 1-0 vs Spurs, 0-2 vs Mavs, 1-1 vs LA, 3-0 vs heatles, 1-1 vs Bulls, and 2-1 vs Magic (who don't deserve to be in this list IMO).
Heatles are 3-6: 0-0 Spurs, 0-2 Mavs, 1-0 LA, 0-3 Celts, 0-1 Bulls, 2-1 Magic
Bulls are 7-6: 1-1 Spurs, 2-0 Mavs, 1-1 LA, 1-0 heatles, 1-2 Celts, 1-2 Magic
Magic are 6-7: 1-1 Spurs, 1-1 Mavs, 1-0 LA, 1-2 Celts, 1-2 heatles, 1-1 Bulls
Spurs are 5-4: 1-1 Mavs, 2-0 LA, 0-1 Celts, 0-0 heatles, 1-1 Bulls, 1-1 Magic
Mavs are 7-4: 1-1 Spurs, 1-0 LA, 2-0 Celts, 2-0 heatles, 0-2 Bulls, 1-1 Magic
LA is 2-7: 0-2 Spurs, 0-1 Mavs, 1-1 Celts, 0-1 heatles, 1-1 Bulls, 0-1 Magic (only reason they belong on this list is the B2B titles)
Celtics do lead the list:
Celts 8-4
Mavs 7-4
Spurs 5-4
Bulls 7-6
Magic 6-7
heatles 3-6
LA 2-7
So I guess you come in on the side that beating other elite teams tells you something? http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=8811
es, I'm not a big believer in stats that focus on avg differential as their primary metric, like SRS (with what is it, 54% predictive accuracy) or the blog you mention above where the difference between all the variables is 7.3% (in the noise). You claim the bball-ref.com factors SOS into their power ratings, but as they use differential there as well I'm not convinced - particularly when the numbers put the heatles in 1st ahead of the Spurs and celtics.
When trying to compare conference strength - as you did with the arbitrary 4-pt giving the east a 4-2 advantage, doesn't it make sense that with over 2X the qty of below .400 teams, the east point differentials will be inflated vs the West's?
The biggest factors to consider IMO are health of the team when they played during the season vs health in the playoffs, HCA in the playoffs, and overall W-Lrecord vs ALL teams.
So I would definitely include the Thunder with their 2-games better record than the Magic as "elite" - or alternatively restrict the definition to just the Spurs, Celtics, and Mavs...