Let the truth be told: the NBA starts another season tonight, and there are many changes this year.
Amare Stoudamire will be out for four months. Ron Artest will be back, although nobody is certain whether he'll last four months. And Larry Brown now coaches the Knickerbockers, which means Stephon Marbury may be on a new team in four months.
Now I could give you a preview of all 30 teams, breaking down each of their key acquisitions over the offseason and identifying who will be the movers and shakers this year, but I'm not David Aldridge.
And this is an East Coast school, so 95 percent of you don't care that the Golden State Warriors could have a breakout season with Baron Davis and Jason Richardson working together in the backcourt.
The only division that anyone cares about is the Atlantic Division. But before we move further, here's my crude and slightly offensive joke of the week: the New Orleans Hornets, who were a pitiful 18-64 last season, will play games in Oklahoma City this year due to Katrina's wrath. If they are still mired in last place by February, the team will reportedly change its name to the Oklahoma City Bombers.
The favorite right now in the Atlantic is the New Jersey Nets. The Nets brought in Vince Carter last season in late December and after struggling through the regular season, they put together a 16-5 run to close out the year. They took the eighth seed in the playoffs before being swept out by Shaq's Heat.
They are easily the most talented team in the division with Jason Kidd, Vinsanity and Richard Jefferson. The addition of Marc Jackson, who averaged 12 points and five rebounds last season for Philly, gives the Nets a strong frontcourt in a division with weak big men, pairing Jackson with Jason Collins and Nenad Krstic, who could really use a few more vowels. And Jeff McInnis is a good point guard off the bench.
Philadelphia and Boston will give the Nets some trouble. The Sixers' biggest offseason acquisition was bringing in Maurice Cheeks as head coach. Cheeks was an assistant under Larry Brown before heading out to Portland to take the Blazers to two playoff appearances and three winning seasons. Allen Iverson has professed his respect for the coach, so perhaps AI will finally be on the same page as his coach.
There are a lot of "ifs" in Philly. If Chris Webber can finally recover from his knee injury and be a complement to Iverson, if Andre Iguodala has the type of breakout season Sixers' fans are hoping for, and if Iverson can stay healthy, this team should be formidable. But if the lack of depth on the bench caused by the injury to Willie Green and the inexperience of swingman Kyle Korver, center Samuel Dalembert, and Iguodala continues to be a factor, the Sixers will again be just a first round doormat in the playoffs.
Boston is a mix of young and old. It's anybody's guess to how long Danny Ainge will keep Paul Pierce on the team. Everyone knows Pierce has a bad attitude. Gary Payton and Antoine Walker are gone. In their place are Al Jefferson and Delonte West. Justin Reed, Ryan Gomes and Gerald Green are the future of this squad, and the C's have a ton of potential.
The Celtics' good draft gives them a solid bench, with Mark Blount and Brian Scalabrine backing up LaFrentz and Green, Oriene Greene, and Reed coming off the bench for Ricky Davis, Pierce and West. If this team is going to compete, they must play better defense. Doc Rivers' team was 11th in the Eastern Conference last season in team points allowed.
Then there's the new-look Knicks. Does Larry Brown have more magic left in him? This is a new kind of team. Tim and Kurt Thomas are gone, and some new faces have hit the Big Apple. Eddy Curry and Jerome James give the Knicks two very big men under the basket and Quentin Richardson will be a good swingman.
New York got younger by trading Kurt Thomas for Richardson, but Q had back problems in the past and now has hamstring problems. Curry and James have both been out of shape during the preseason, and Brown, who prefers veterans over young guys, may give a lot of playing time to Antonio Davis and Malik Rose.
It will be interesting to see how often Channing Frye plays, considering the treatment that Brown gave Darko in Detroit. Jamal Crawford and Marbury will lead this team, but hopefully for Knicks fans, it will be to more than 33 wins.
That leaves Toronto, which picked Joey Graham and Charlie Villanueva during the first round of the draft. Jalen Rose and Chris Bosh will lead a team which is still rebuilding. The Raptors dealt problem-child Rafer Alston to Houston for Mike James in the offseason, and he joins Rose, Bosh, Morris Peterson and Loren Woods for the Raptors' starting five. Rafael Araujo and Matt Bonner will come off the bench for what will be another disappointing Raptors team.
None of these teams will be able to challenge the Eastern Conference powerhouses of Detroit, Miami or Indiana. But this is Boston. And it wouldn't be Boston if fans didn't care about any other team or division but their own.
