Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is all for realigning the conferences to even the playing field. Included in Cuban's proposal are the San Antonio Spurs and the Chicago Bulls swapping conferences, ESPN reports.
While it's not as bad as last season, there's still a disparity between the Western and the Eastern Conferences in terms of competitiveness. Cuban has an idea: realign the conferences.
"It's not like it'd be the first time we've ever realigned," Cuban said, via ESPN. "It's happened many times before, so there's precedent and I just think it shakes things up and makes things interesting."
Cuban's plans includes: the Houston Rockets, the New Orleans Pelicans, Dallas and San Antonio swapping conferences with the Indiana Pacers, the Detroit Pistons, the Milwaukee Bucks and Chicago.
"It's not like you're reducing competition," said Cuban, who pointed out the teams he suggested switching to the West are about the same distance from Portland as Dallas and closer than New Orleans, San Antonio and Houston. "You keep Cleveland, Washington and other good teams in the East. It kind of shakes things up in terms of not just interest but also in terms of how people rebuild.
"It just changes things up and it changes the thought process of a lot of teams. It makes both conferences very competitive, at least for the short-term and I think, based on the history of the teams, for the long-term as well."
To give an example of the disparity between the two conferences, Cuban's Mavericks had a 49-33 record that earned them the eighth seed in the Western Conference; if Dallas had been in the Eastern Conference, their record would have netted them the No. 3 playoff seed.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver recently suggested a different idea to address the disparity in the conferences: a 16-team playoff bracket that does not look at conference standings.
