Is the world ready for a Cavs-Kings Finals?

Parity is a great concept, but how does it look in practice? We may find out soon enough, as more NBA teams than ever are contenders including a few (presumably) moribund franchises that have sprung to life, raising a question we never thought we'd have to answer:

- CHRIS MANNIX

Each morning, when NBA commissioner Adam Silver flips open his laptop and looks upon the records of the teams in his league, what he sees makes him smile:

 a cluster of squads competing for playoff spots with no one separated from the rest.

"It's the most compact our standings have been literally in the history of the league," says Silver. "And that's something that we see from the league-office standpoint as very positive." Welcome to the new NBA, where a No. 8 seed can-and might-topple a No. 1 seed, and a half dozen teams (or more) will enter the playoffs with more than a puncher's chance at a championship. Looking for superteams? Gone. Superstars? Evenly distributed. "This is the most competitive the league has ever been," says Cavaliers president Koby Altman. Somewhere, David Stern is smiling.

Parity-er, "competitive balance"-began as Stern's dream, born out of an admiration of the NFL model. In 2011, Stern initiated a lockout, one that came at a short-term cost-16 games of actual basketball plus years of fan backlash-but established the infrastructure of the NBA today. There was a repeater tax to dissuade owners from regularly exceeding the salary cap.