The Season begins again...

Well the basketball gods were quite cruel to the Mavs and the Rockets last May. Only the Spares (I mean Spurs) were lucky enough to win the prize. With the new season on the horizon on Halloween, here are some HSO's on both the Mavs and Rockets...

The Dallas Mavericks:

This is without a doubt the best team in the NBA. Even with the fizzle in the Finals and last years total breakdown in Round 1, they still have better chemistry and talent than any other team in the league. They can beat the Spurs without even thinking about it. The problem is the one team out of every other team in the NBA that the Mavs can't beat is the Warriors. Hopefully the tweaks of Eddie Jones, Trenton Hassell, and Brandon Bass will be enough to knock that little problem child off this year. They looked great in Pre-Season when all the starters played. Devin looks improved as a leader much like Tony Parker did earlier in his career. The question marks are in the Center position. With Damp still hurt till December, and his usual long comebacks, will the Mavs have any depth at all in the center position. Diop can't play the entire game, and putting Dirk in there, only hurts our offense in stretches. The other big question mark for me is the starting shooting guard. It looks as if the greatness of JET will be on the bench this season. And a rotating starter of Stack, Jones, and maybe even Hassell will be back court with Devin. The Mavs need to concentrate on winning but not winning every game they can to the point of exhaustion by the end of the year. The Spurs will remain the lurking snake in the grass they always are. Other than them and the Rockets and Warriors, it seems pretty smooth sailing. PHX could always be a problem, but as the Spurs did so wonderfully last year in the playoffs, and expose them as the one-trick pony show they really are, i don't fear them in a series much, just on a per game basis.

The Houston Rockets



Many people say this could be the year for the Rockets. So was last year and the year before that. However this is the most loaded this team has been in a while. New couch Rick Adelman will cast out a lot of van gundy's defensive mind numbing play style for a more up tempo old school Kings offense. McGrady now has plenty of ball handlers, which frees him to be T-Mac and not a point guard. The Spurs may have made the biggest blunder in the draft by giving Luis Scolia to the Rockets for Jackie Butler? Scolia went on to be the MVP of the FIBA games this year and is impressive. He will prolly end up being a starting forward once he adjusts to the NBA. He's a rookie, but has played for along time overseas and has kicked many a NBA player ass int he Olympics. He's tough minded with no fear and is a younger stronger Ginobli. Spurs, what were you thinking? I would have waived Finley for him. The other thing that concerns me is Yao in Adelman's offense. Can he keep pace up and down running. We all know this is Yao's weakest spot. He gets winded and is always last one down the floor. I only saw on pre-season game so I don't know how this will play out but ESPN has them in front of the Mavs and Spurs for the year in terms of records. And finally Mike James and my beloved Stevie Francis is back on the team. Great to see those guys back. Especially since both have played with Yao before and know where he likes the ball sent to in the post. Looking forward to wearing my old Francis jerseys to a Rockets game!

And finally I leave with this piece of uncomfortable journalism. A young reporter who may be dead now, tries to interview one of my fav players of all time, Sam Cassell. Sam is the point guard for the LA Clippers, and this is one of the most cringe inducing interviews of all time.