Dear Mr. David Stern,

Hanes, Nike and Just For Men are in. Now I need your support.

Michael Jordan is my starting shooting guard. John Stockton brings the ball up and David Robinson mans the middle. My forwards are Charles Barkley and Karl Malone.

Reggie Miller comes off the bench first while sharpshooters Glen Rice, Allan Houston and Dan Majerle use the ellipticals on the sidelines to stay warm. My backup centers are Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon, even if they can’t walk, and Scottie Pippen and Glenn Robinson wait their turns at the three and four.

Since I played with most of these 13 recently retired former all-stars in NBA Live ’98, I’m most qualified to coach. And in order to save a little cash for all the trainers we’re going to hire, I don’t want any assistants. We may need to build a casino in the locker room, though, to keep my players happy.

So that’s my aging squad, and here’s my guarantee: we will make the playoffs next season. I just have one request: please place my expansion team in the Eastern Conference.

Detroit is currently sitting atop the Leastern Conference despite winning 59 percent of its games, and New York is three games out of the final playoff spot with a modest 18-26 record. On the Western front, Dallas leads the conference with a 36-8 record (.818), followed by Phoenix (also with eight losses), San Antonio, Utah, the Lakers and Houston — six teams with better records than the Pistons.

How did the East get so bad? Well, you can partially blame the West. Western teams have found megastars Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Yao Ming, Dirk Nowitzki, Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony in the draft, and have acquired other top-notch players through trades and free agency. Just in the last three years stars such as Jason Terry, Carlos Boozer, Tracy McGrady, Allen Iverson, Baron Davis and Ron Artest have moved from the East to the Best.

But now the balance of power will shift again. I’m bringing M.J., Sir Charles and The Mailman back, and they’re hungrier than ever. Literally.

I really can’t see how my franchise would finish much worse than .500 next year, and a team that hovers around mediocrity in the East gets rewarded with home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. If you put us in the Atlantic, we might even get the three seed. My guys would have more trouble running up and down the court than scoring on the Knicks.

The only thing that could stop us in the East would be the injury bug. Mr. Commissioner, you know that wear and tear is always a factor in the NBA, and it certainly doesn’t help that our average age is nearly 52. But that’s why I plan on recruiting a couple of more guys, just as insurance, with your permission. I wonder what Muggsy Bogues is up to these days.