Then you have the NBA. Nobody gives a shit about the regular season except for the highlights. About 85% of the games are awful or as boring as any day Steve Trachsel manages to pitch a complete game.
If you had to rank the order of NBA elements, it would go something like this:
1. Playoffs – First 3 Rounds
2. Trade Speculation
3. Actual Trades
4. Draft
5. Latest Fight / Shooting / Suspension / Scandal / Lawsuit / Rape
6. NBA Finals (Post Jordan Era)
7. Regular Season
With this being said, there are things that happen within the season that are in fact interesting and will later affect the VERY interesting first 3 rounds of the Playoffs. Here are some random thoughts after the first 30 games.
Kobe Bryant can destroy the Lakers, others as well
Don’t be fooled by the Lakers 18-10 start. Lamar Odom is still a china doll, Bynum is vastly improved but has not yet developed pubic hair, and Kobe is like Reese Bobby and must blow up anything good in his life. When the injuries and losses begin to mount, look for the Lakers and Kobe to implode again.
It also looks like Kobe’s trade demands were the straw that broke the Chicago Bulls back and sent them into a free fall. The perfect storm of factors hit the Bulls and it was just too much.
Trade rumors, Deng and Gordon worried about extensions, Wallace phoning it in, the entire team seemed to hate Skiles, Hinrich forgot how to shoot, etc…..
Lucky for Paxson he has the multiple young assets to make a few trades to right the ship.
Speaking of trades…..
Trades are coming soon (maybe)
With the Bulls in a funk, Dallas and Phoenix underperforming, Jason Kidd unhappy, Memphis going nowhere, and the Heat looking like one of the worst teams in the league, bodies should start moving sooner than later. Cuban needs to get Dirk some help.The Eastern Conference still sucks balls
What a mess. Only 5 out of 15 teams are above .500 in this pitiful conference compared to 9 out of 15 in the West. It really should be 10 teams above .500 in the West, but McGrady can’t seem to get healthy.
The Celtics look like they may be some sort of real threat. The Pistons don’t count after they let that horrible Cleveland team beat them last year. They have zero heart and might have the ugliest starting 5 of all time. They should apologize to women and children who cry at their sight and cross to the other side of the street. It isn’t because they are racist, it is because they just really, really hate ugly people.
Portland Trailblazers are in a scary, scary good position
There hasn’t been a team that has gone through more ups and downs in the past 7 years.
Ever since the Lakers made that insane 4th Quarter rally down 15 in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals with 10 minutes to go things have been awful in the The Rose Garden.
Terrible trades, horrible drafts, pounds of weed, bad signings, dog fighting, in-fighting, chemistry issues and massive amounts of losing. It even drove a sports nut like Paul Allen to look into selling the team.
Fast forward to the NBA Lottery drawing when Portland is smiled upon by the Basketball gods and granted the man-child Greg Oden. As if this wasn’t enough of a miracle, the Blazers are once again blessed by the stupidity of Isiah Thomas who takes the cancer named Zach Randolph and his bloated contract off their hands. Isiah is even nice enough to throw in a good young player like Channing Frye.
Everything is good until the future of the franchise undergoes the dreaded MF surgery and will miss the entire season before he even plays a game. They Blazers start the season at 5-12 and it looks like another season of mediocre ball until Oden is ready to go in 2008.
Then they rip off 12 straight and counting against some decent teams. They play hard, smart and with passion. The Rose Garden crowd is going nuts again.
Oh yeah, in 2 years they will have some huge cap room with dead weight like Raef LaFrentz, Steve Francis, and Darius Miles all coming off the books. That is something like $24 million in cap space, or at least $12 -$14 million depending on which young players they extend. That means in 2009 they will have max contract money and the mid-level exception to throw at somebody.
Portland is young (average age of 23.8 years old), well coached, smart, tough, hard working, and only at half strength right now. That is a dangerous combination for the rest of the league.
One line random thoughts….
- Ricky Davis is poison to any team he touches.
- Kendrick Perkins is the luckiest man on earth.- The Suns need to move Marion.
- Kevin McHale should be drug out to the street and shot.
- Lebron James and Dwayne Wade were very smart to sign only 3 year extensions.
- James to the Knicks and Wade to the Bulls when their current contracts run out.
- Rudy Gay will piss on your head from above so get the hell out of the way.
- Yao and Shaq might be taller than the normal human being (or pop star tramp).
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