Mark Cuban, you sly dog. (USATSI)
Mark Cuban, you sly dog. (USATSI)

Mavs owner Mark Cuban is back in the headlines again, this time with a conference realignment plan that involves moving the Mavs, Spurs, Rockets, and Pelicans into the Eastern Conference, and moving a bunch of East teams West. 

Cuban suggests a conference realignment that would result in a total of eight teams, including the Mavs, switching conferences.

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says changing the conference affiliations of eight teams could help level the playing field between the NBA's West and East.

In Cuban's plan, the Mavs, San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets and New Orleans Pelicans would move to the Eastern Conference. The Chicago Bulls, Indiana Pacers, Detroit Pistons and Milwaukee Bucks would move to the West.

"It's not like it'd be the first time we've ever realigned," Cuban said. "It's happened many times before, so there's precedent and I just think it shakes things up and makes things interesting."

Cuban, whose Mavs were the West's eighth seed with a 49-33 record last season but would have been a No. 3 seed in the East, acknowledged that he had some selfish motivation for the plan. However, he believes the league would benefit as a whole.

"It's not like you're reducing competition," said Cuban, who noted that the teams he suggested moving to the West are approximately 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."

via Mark Cuban of Dallas Mavericks -- Conference realignment could benefit NBA - ESPN Dallas.

Hold on while I cackle loudly at "some selfish motivation." Yeah, because moving three teams in Texas and not the Grizzlies, who are the most Eastern team of the Southwest Division, to a softer conference. By moving the Spurs and Rockets along with them, the Mavericks would have better chances of Texas playoff matchups, which boost the brands of all three teams. Is the rest of this plan to put the Pelicans in the Southeast move Cleveland to the Atlantic and put the Sixers in with the Texas teams?

Moving the Bulls out of the East? Indiana, too? Are you stoned? 

This isn't a realignment plan, this is a "Let's get the Mavs an easy path to 60 wins" plan. 

If you were going to move teams, you'd move the Grizzlies, Pelicans, and Timberwolves, the most Eastern teams. But there really aren't any "Western" East teams. 

A better plan? Let's go to SBNation's Tom Ziller with this map (more on the proposal later): 

Ziller has a plan for scheduling (you play the teams with the lines around them five times, and most importantly no more conferences in playoff consideration. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! 

Nuggets-Suns-Thunder is a natural geographic rivalry (kind of, Colorado has a hard time being close to anything), Spurs-Mavs-Rockets get five games? Yes, please. The Hornets-Hawks-Grizzlies creates a great Southern rivalry, a market issue the NBA has struggled with, and the Kings-Blazers-Warriors Northwest rivalry is perfect. I might move Phoenix to the Pacific group and slide Utah into Denver-OKC, but other than that, it's perfect. Take the best 16 teams, and let's call it a day. Creates more rivalries by having teams close enough to have angst play more often, and you get good balance overall. I'm down. 

As for Cuban's plan, he said he hasn't discussed it with the commish, tha he just decided to drop it to media, make it "headline porn" in posts like this one, and see the reaction. Well, here's the reaction, Mark: "Cuban, you sly dog." 

Everyone agrees realignment needs to happen, but the solution isn't rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic (and letting the Texas teams pillage the East). It's wholesale change.