John Reid of the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports: According to the NBA's Deputy Commissioner, The NBA's decision to move the New Orleans Hornets from the Eastern to the Western conference was simply based on geography.

The move was approved during the NBA Board of Governors meeting in New York on Tuesday.

"When you look at the map and New Orleans is sort of sitting directly below Memphis and not far from Dallas and Houston, it became the natural result of the decision that we wanted to have an equal number of teams in each conference," said NBA Deputy Commissioner Russ Granik during a national conference call with NBA commissioner David Stern and Stu Jackson, the league's vice president of basketball operations.

"It wasn't that heated a discussion on the subject," said Stern, who confirmed the owners' vote was unanimous.

The move was made to have an even amount of teams in each conference when the new Charlotte franchise joins the league in 2004-2005.

Their is also a good possibility that the NBA will re-align from four divisions to six. This would put three divisions of five teams in each conference.