After getting plump on opponents who have as little to play for as they do, the Wolves tonight enter a six-game stretch where they play playoff-bound opponents. All but Detroit at home next Tuesday are Western Conference teams desperate to secure seeding or just to keep themselves from plummeting out of the ridiculously competitive playoff hunt outright.

Tonight is Kirk Snyder’s first game back since the Rockets traded him last month for Gerald Green, and gave the Wolves a 2010 second-round pick and cash to boot for a player whom they cut barely two weeks later.

It also is the second time this month that NBA commissioner David Stern is in the house. He is here on a night when the Rockets honor 16-year veteran Dikembe Mutombo for his playing career and his humanitarian effort. Don’t call it a retirement party — although Stern joked that he thought he was here for Mutombo’s “60th birthday party — because Mutombo hasn’t decided if he will return for another season next year yet.

Stern chatted with reporters before the game and among the topics of conversations:

*A general manager called him with this suggestion on how to address the disparity between the Western Conference’s torrid playoff race and the Eastern Conference’s tepid one: Eight teams from each conference still qualify for the playoffs, but teams are seeded 1 through 16 with no regard to the conference they play in. That could mean, say, a first-round series between Portland and Boston. Stern didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand, saying it’s possible in this era where teams have their own planes, and said it would be discussed further later this spring.

*As he said when visited Salt Lake City for the Wolves-Jazz game earlier this month, the SuperSonics are goners from Seattle. The only question is whether they will move to Oklahoma City for next season and spend two lame-duck seasons in Seattle until their arena lease expires.

*He’d like to see college players spend two seasons there before being eligible for the NBA draft — right now it’s just one season — but that, of course, is subject to collective-bargaining with the players union.

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