It's Fantastic!

The NBA season is minutes away from starting and Bones has never been happier. Yes, I know this great country is now run by the NFL but to me nothing beats the NBA. Individual NFL games are definitely more important, more fun and more intense but you can only realistically watch 4 games a week while in the NBA you can watch almost that many in a night. And No, I do not like college basketball better. In college most guys who are 6'10 struggle to make it up and down the court and look more awkward outside the paint then the guys on the Pick Up Artist due in the field. In the NBA 6'10 guys like Amare Stoudamire and Dirk Nowitzki can not only run the floor but also can hit jumper after jumper with relative ease. In college Randolph Childress and J.J. Reddick are stars, in the NBA they are to short, to slow and to weak. These guys are simply the best athletes in the world and yes they coast from time to time but if you played 41 road games the night after having VIP access to the best clubs in the world wouldn't you? With my love for the NBA oozing out of my pores I will attempt to enter the seven most important questions entering the upcoming season.

7) Will Mike D'Antoni make the Knicks relevant again?
My answer to this is an emphatic yes. Just a few of the many reasons D'Antoni will be better than his predecessor Isiah Thomas: He does not eat all his meals at Red Lobster, he can grow facial hair, he has never said it is part of his culture to refer to women as "bitches" and he actually has a basketball philosophy. New York's roster still looks like an auto picked fantasy team but there is potentail there. David Lee and Nate Robinson both seem like perfect fits for a team run by D'Antoni and Zach Randolph should get enough shots to make him play relatively hard. The Knicks will not be great but in the weaker conference I think a 7th or 8th place finish is not out of the question.

6) Will Elton Brand be able to take the Sixers to the next level?
No, call me crazy but if I was a GM it would hard for me to justify giving franchise player money to a guy coming off a ruptures achilles whose voice is the opposite of Barry White's. Elton Brand is a great player but he does not put the Sixers ahead of the Celtics, Pistons or Cavs. It is possible the Sixers will sneak into the second round but they are still a year or two away from being relevant.

5) How will the Mavericks respond to Rick Carlisle?
Although, I am as big of an Avery Johnson as there is the Mavericks will be better this year. Sometimes in the NBA it is simply time for a change. You can only expect grown men to listen to Lil Penny for so long. Although Carlisle is also known as a rigid coach the Mavericks will be playing with a newfound vigor this year. Dirk's locks will be flowing, the Jet will be draining deep threes and Josh Howard will be shooting 15 foul shots a game while the lyrics of Bob Marley echo is his head just like old times.

4) Is it the end of the road for the Pistons?
Bones, like the guys from Boys 2 Men is not ready for this ride to be over and is trying to convince himself the boys from Mo Town have something left in the tank. Realistically, it looks like another Eastern Conference finals exit but if Rodney Stuckey and Amir Johnson step up and have huge years you never know. It will be interesting to see how the Pistons react to having Flip Saunders replaced by former Piston Michael Curry. Curry who in a heated contest barely beat out Kurt Rambis as the worst shooter in NBA history, is supposed to light a fire under this group of perrenially undermotivated group. We will see.

3) Is it the end of the road for the Spurs?
No, it is not! The Spurs will start out 15-14 or something like that as they do every year and Tim Legler like he does every year will declare them dead. In-between this proclamation and the end of the season Legler will look in the mirror over 1,000 times and the Spurs will rebound to win 50 games. The combination of Parker and Duncan will be able to tread water until Ginobili comes back and they will end up being a factor just like they always are.

2)Is LeBron James human?
This is debatable. I heard on the television the other day that somehow he is still growing and is now almost 6'10 and weighs 255. That is just propostorous. It is hard not to wonder what type of numbers he would put up in a normal system. But alas, he plays for Cleveland. Mike Brown should win Coach of the Year every year for the sole reason that he can make a team with possibly the most exciting player ever tought to watch. If D'Antoni is still in New York when King James ascends upon the Big Apple he could possibly average 40, 8 and 8. For now we will just have to be content with the handful of "holy hell he was higher than Josh Howard moments" and a bunch of shots of Brown adjusting his glasses while thinking of ways to prolong Zydrunas Ilgauskas's career.

1) Will the Lakers and Celtics meet again in the finals?
The answer is probably yes. Now for some more important questions. Would you take the over or under of how many showers Pau Gasol takes a year if the line was set at 3.5? If Gasol wore a tight black pants, a vest with shoulder pads and donned a red cape would him posing as a bull fighter not be the greatest Halloween costume of all time? Picture it before you answer. What type of shampoo does Sasha Vulijic wear to get that kind of texture and glow? As for the Celtics, Do you think Gus Frerrotte has ever called KG and warned him about the danger of assuming just because a surface is padded you can head butt it as hard as you want? Is Rajon Rando the best real name of a professional athlete ever? Can anyone think of a worse NBA Jam team than Brian Scalabrine and Scott Pollard? On that note, let the season begin.