Author: Henry Meier
It’s autumn; the air is getting crisp, the leaves are falling off the trees, and. . . ok who am I kidding, we live in Southern California, but one sure sign it’s fall is that the NBA season is upon us! With the pre-season already complete and the regular season tipoff scheduled for Oct. 28, the time has come to look at the NBA and see what the landscape of the league looks like.
While the offseason saw a few significant changes in the NBA scene, the power structure of the league seems to remain relatively intact. Most of the teams that challenged for the title last year kept their rosters together and only made minor personnel tweaks. Last season saw a matchup of two of the league’s most storied franchises, the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals.
The eventual winners of this battle of titans, the Celtics, have essentially kept the same roster as last year with the only real significant change being the loss of James Posey. While his hustle and defense will be missed off the bench, the real concern for the Celtics will be if their veterans can match the intensity they had last year before they won the title. The Celtics will still be one of the tops teams in the league, but for them to reign once again as champions, they will have to recapture that drive and intensity they had last season.
The other half of the title bout, the Lakers, also haven’t changed the makeup of their roster much. The biggest change for the Lakers will be the return of Andrew Bynum who was having a breakout season last year before going down with a knee injury. If they can find a way to blend his talents in with the rest of the Lakers’ starters and keep reigning NBA MVP Kobe Bryant happy, they will be a force to be reckoned with.
While the two best teams from last year may remain the cream of the crop in the NBA, most other playoff teams from the past season remain near the top of the NBA landscape as well. San Antonio will continue to be mind-numbingly consistent with Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobli (when he returns from ankle surgery). As long as these three remain together and Gregg Popovich is working his magic on the sideline, it is impossible to count out a team that has won four titles in the past decade and made the playoffs for ten straight years.
The Eastern Conference equivalent of the Spurs – the Detroit Pistons – will also continue to be consistent performers in the East and will most likely make their seventh straight appearance in the playoffs come spring. However, they haven’t proved that they can get out of the East the past few years and I don’t think this coming season will be any different. They will win 50 plus games and beat a mediocre team in the first round of the playoffs before folding to one of the power teams in the East like the fore-mentioned Celtics or LeBron James’ Cavaliers.
Speaking of the Cavs, they will once again be an inconsistent team during the regular season, but will be carried by the league’s most explosive player in James. While the Cavs’ front office seems stubbornly bent on surrounding James with a supporting cast that will be underwhelming at best, James will somehow manage to score 70 points a game himself if that’s what it takes to get his team deep in the playoffs.
Several teams that didn’t make the playoffs last year should be in the mix as well. The Heat should be among the NBA’s top teams again after a complete roster makeover and the return of a healthy Dwayne Wade. They created a more versatile squad by sending Shaquille O’Neal and his 65-year-old knees to Phoenix last year in exchange for Shawn Marion. This acquisition, along with rookie scoring machine Michael Beasely who they just drafted, should compliment Wade nicely. In these three, the Heat have a nucleus that should not only win games, but be insanely entertaining in the process.
Another team that will be an excitement factory will be the young, but wildly talented Trailblazers. They have Greg Oden, the number one draft pick from ’07, back after he missed the entirety of last season recovering from knee surgery. Oden will join a team, led by ’07 Rookie of the Year and budding superstar Brandon Roy, that made leaps and bounds last year under the tutelage of head coach Nate McMillian. With 20-year-old Oden and his 35-year-old mug patrolling the paint and cleaning up anything that rattles off the boards, the team should continue to improve and move up into the Western Conference elite.
With last year’s best continuing their dominance in the league in addition to a few newcomers shaking up the playoff picture, this year’s NBA season looks to be an entertaining one to say the least.
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