NBA Season 2012-2013

Basketball might be my favorite sport and the new season is already upon us. What do you expect of your teams? Any surprises this year?

As usual the Lakers face another season of championship aspirations. That looks like everybody is making a mistake with those expectations at the moment, but they will find their game. Not really worried as Howard looks good and Kobe is still a top 3 player. The best thing to happen to us was the Thunder trading away Harden to the Rockets for Kevin Martin and Jeremy Lamb along with picks. We struggled defending Harden and won't have that problem against Martin. I expect us to come out of the west and beat the Heat in the finals.

 

Not going to lie, my team is rebuilding, so my NBA viewing consists of Sportscenter for the most part (can't watch non playoff games as a neutral). I tried to watch a little of my Trail Blazers against the Lakers and even though they won (Blazers have been smacking around the Fake Show in Portland for decades) I know Portland won't be in the playoffs. There will be NO surprises in terms that Miami will win again, over either the Lakers or Thunder (I agree seems both sides in the Harder situation were stupid). Justin, nice to hear a rational Laker fan on their start of the season. I'm in my car a ton every day and have had to switch off sports talk because of moronic LA fans pissing and moaning. Kobe did an interview and told them to 'shut up' yesterday :lol:

 

I think my Sacramento Kings have a shot at making the playoffs for the first time is several years. Demarcus Cousins seems to have matured and is going to be a beast, Tyreke Evans is outstanding, and they have good depth. They can be fun to watch.

Sure it's only the preseason, but it was nice to go 3-0 against the Lakers.

 

I expected better from the Lakers, but then realized that was unrealistic. We have a veteran team and should get it together with a month of games with a full starting lineup. The only thing holding us back is Mike Brown, but I'm not as big a hater as most Lakers fans. He's a good coach, but people expect greatness from their coaching in LA as we've had 2 of the best in Phil Jackson and Pat Reilly.

Apparently Lillard looks good for you guys. He was great at Weber State so he has the talent. Not sure they're a bad team, only play in the wrong conference.

Interested in how Cousins does. If he csn put away his attitude problems then he could be pretty damn good. Not sure how realistic that is considering he has always had those problems. He is a key to a good season if he can just play basketball.

And can TWC get a deal done with DirecTV already? This sucks having games blacked out on NBATV because of a dispute between the channel and the satellite provider. I love watching the Lakers and can't rely on idiot fans to provide me with details on how well they're playing. I agree with Kobe.They need to shut up.

 

I wasnt too big on Brown when he was in Cleveland, but I'm missing him now. Watching the Cavs losing by over 20 points to the Bulls with plenty still to play in the first half. Their offense shows potential but their D is just bad. Mike Brown certainly knew how to get some good D out of the guys.

 

I just watched the Ben Wilson documentary on ESPN. Man, that might have been the saddest 30 for 30 yet. He was the best high school player in the country at Simeon in Chicago. He was shot and killed outside of his school. They interviewed the shooter and he says Ben was the aggressor, but there's differing accounts of the story. The saddest part was Chicago had a policy of taking gunshot victims to the nearest hospital regardless if they're staffed or not. The nearest hospital had no trauma surgeons and he had to wait 2 hours for surgery. No doubt he could have lived if he had surgery right away.

Definitely worth a watch. His story and Len Bias are two of the what if stories of basketball. Both had the potential to be top 10 players of all time.

 

I saw that one too. Really sad. He seemed like such a nice kid, along with all that skill. I'm not saying he couldnt have been saved had he been taken to a trauma center, but I read that the bullet severed his aorta. I didnt hear the 30 for 30 mention that. That's a pretty serious injury. The other strange thing is for Chicago to have that ambulance policy, which does sound kind of familiar to me. I grew up in Illinois and I can tell you at that time the rest of the state had the policy to take trauma victims of any kind to the nearest trauma center. Such a shame Chicago didnt.

 

Lakers finaly won a game! By 29 points no less. Nash didn't play last night, but if Brown could give him more of the ball then games like last night's would be more of a regular occurence.

 

Never a dull moment in LA as Mike Brown was fired yesterday after, seemingly, holding onto his job after the Utah game. In fact, the Lakers used Thursday to reiterate that he was staying. Obviously something happened in a meeting on Friday for him to be fired.

The frontrunners are D'Antoni and Phil Jackson. Here's the deal. Jackson is a win now hire for the next couple of years. He will get this team rolling. D'Antoni is a guy who will get the offense rolling, but we'll be bad defensively. We could still win and he will be a coach for the long haul. If Jackson wants it, he gets the job. If not, D'Antoni is probably our new coach.

 

I don't think any coach should be fired after 5 games in any sport. It's not Mike Brown's that Nash is old and got hurt, Kobe is old, Pau is old, Meta World Peace is old, the only real young talent in Howard has a bad back.

I do think somehow or another though, the Zen Master (Phil Jackson) will take the job and lead them to the playoffs. He just knows the game better than anyone else.

 

He did deserve it. We played like crap last year and then proceeded to play even worse this year. While Nash might be old, he didn't play anywhere near his normal standards because Brown decided to make him run around without the ball. Then when he was asked if Nash should be allowed to play more pick and roll, he made a smartass remark about how it didn't get Phoenix anywhere. I was trying to be patient, but we weren't showing any improvements and then the way Kobe looked at him sealed the deal. Shows me that he didn't have the teams backing.

I think everybody here will admit we have the best collection of talent in the NBA. The problem is getting them to play like a team and that falls on the coach. Think Phil or D'Antoni could do that. Would like to see some other moves like Pau for Josh Smith, but getting the right coach is most important right now.

 

I think New York has the most talent. Thats just my opinion but they seem to have a solid starting line-up, to go along with a deep bench. Not to hate on Kobe, but I swear that Mike Brown was more-or-less his choice of coaches. I know Lakers fans have this sense of entitlement like Yankees fans do. That its a ring or nothing else is good enough. But lets be serious, when you make the playoffs its not a bad year. Especially in a shortened season.

Someone like me being a Dallas Homer has to be happy when a team makes the playoffs and considers it a good year.

 

At the peaks of their careers, yes. Now, no.

 

Obviously I thought wrong on that. Kobe is still getting his points, Pau is still the most gifted PF in the game, Nash is still a top 5 PG and Dwight is the best all around center. Not sure what team has all of that, but we are getting into very subjective territory so I won't really push the subject. Point is, Brown should do better with what he had.

 

Yeah sure Kobe is still getting his points. Pau is not the most gifted PF in the game though and love Nash always have, always will. But not a top 5. Maybe top 10.

I never disagreed with you on Mike Brown obviously not getting the job done, just thought it was low class to fire him after 5 games.



PF- Blake Griffin, Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, Chris Bosh

PG- Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Rajon Rondo, Tony Parker, Russell Westbrook

 

I would take Pau over all of them. Nobody can handle the ball like he does. I like what he provides, usually. It's his consistency in the playoffs that bothers me. Especially Blake. I think he's the most overrated PF in the game. Can't shoot and can't hit free throws. Both of those things, Pau does well at.

I will concede the top 5 thing for Nash and say top 7 because Rose would be on that list too. But he's more of a pure PG which fits our offense more than a guy like Westbrook would. Really, him and Pau should make each other better with the way they play, but Brown didn't realize it. Guess that's why Kupchak held onto Pau.

 

Yeah, forgot about Rose your right. You know who else I forgot about as far as power forwards go. Dirk. Don't know why I would forget about him? I live in Dallas own 3 Dirk jerseys and still forgot about him, it's cause his not playing right now. I do agree that Nash will bring the best out of Pau and Howard for that matter.

Just for the record. Dirk is the best power forward ever!!




that last comment was completely biased

 

Mike D'Antoni was hired as the coach. I didn't think Phil would come back after Brown left, but it sounded like he was ready to come back if they agreed to his terms. Those terms were that he wanted some road games off, a stake in the ownership, his previous salary and final say on all basketball decisions. Glad they said no to that. That would have been ridiculous to give him all of that for a short term fix. Lakers fans are going crazy, but they have some really short memories as his Triangle Offense led to a 4-0 sweep against the Mavericks in the last series he coached in. Lakers fans were bitching the entire season about how his offense was figured out. One thing I hate about loving a big market team is that fans are stupid and this is another example.

D'Antoni wil bring instant success to the offense. If this team can't score 105 a game then we're in bigger trouble than I thought. Mitch is going to have to make some deals for some shooters though. Only Meeks fits that role. Metta should be on his way out as he is not the kind of player for this offense. If Mitch waves his magic wand yet again then we'll be great to go come playoff time.

Everybody knows his biggest problem and that's defense. He needs to bring in a defensive coordinator. We can outscore teams up to a certain point and need to find ways to shut down teams when necessary. If we play defense like Phoenix did then we'll be in the same WCF position every year with no title to show for it. Get some defensive minds of your staff, Mike.