Realignment of the Stars

I came across this post by Warriors' play-by-play man Bob Fitzgerald (via TrueHoop) about a realignment of the NBA, which of course is something I have been advocating for a few seasons now. Fitzgerald's reasoning is that it will cut down on travel and promote geographic rivalries. His recommendation is to keep the 6 divisions and make 3 conferences, instead of the current 2. That would give the NBA an Eastern, Central and Western Conference. Each team would play their own conference opponents 4 times and the teams in other conferences 2 times in the regular season. That results in a 76-game season (36 Conference games, 40 Non-Conference games). Here is his proposed plan:



I like the concept, but I hate to see teams in the Central and Atlantic split up, considering that there is so much history between those teams. Bulls-Knicks, Celtics-Pistons, and so much more in terms of longstanding rivalries that would be greatly reduced with this new setup. That's why I propose the following change to the setup:


With this setup, travel can be reduced just as much, while maintaining the traditional Eastern Conference rivalries and helping to bring about a few new ones among the teams in the new South Conference.

The other change that Fitzgerald recommends is to seed the playoffs #1-16 based solely upon regular season record, which I heartily endorse as well. There is no reason that a 50-win team in the West should miss the playoffs so that a below-.500 team in the East gets in. Let's do away with "locked-in seeds" for division winners and truly reward the best teams in the league in the postseason.

Of course, none of this will ever happen, because David Stern cannot allow writers, fans, pundits to think that they have any control overy anything, but it certainly makes sense. Doesn't it?