The 2008-09 NBA season is almost here, but of course it’s football season so no one really cares. Be that as it may, I’m going to do a season preview anyway. I’ll start with the Eastern Conference this week. Last season, the eight playoff teams were Boston, Detroit, Orlando, Cleveland, Washington, Toronto, Philadelphia and Atlanta.
Boston returns as the defending NBA champions and while they were able to keep the “Big Three” of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen together, they did lose one of their best defenders in James Posey to the New Orleans Hornets. If they are able to play with the same type of intensity they played with last season, they could still represent the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals. Detroit has been the cream of the crop for several years now, but its window may be closing. The Pistons have a new head coach and they are getting a little long in the tooth. They’ll still have some say in who will come out of the conference because they are too experienced to take that big of a step backwards in one season.
Unlike in years past, several teams got better this offseason. The Orlando Magic still have the best center in the game in Dwight Howard and even with his offensive limitations, they won 52 games last season. Cleveland still has LeBron James. Washington will be without Gilbert Arenas for at least the first month of the season, but the Wiz should be used to that by now. Toronto added Jermaine O’Neal and if he can manage to play a full season, the Raptors should contend in the East. The Philadelphia 76ers added Elton Brand and if he’s fully recovered from that Achilles injury, they will be among the top teams in the conference even with their lack of outside shooting. The Atlanta Hawks had an interesting offseason highlighted by Josh Childress leaving for Greece, but they re-signed Josh Smith and added veterans Flip Murray and Maurice Evans. It only took them 37 wins to get into the postseason last year, but now they have to contend with a Larry Brown-coached Charlotte team, a Mike D’Antoni-coached New York team and a (hopefully) healthy Dwyane Wade in Miami. We’ll get to see if last season was just a fluke or if this Hawks team is good enough to be a factor in the East.
Read more from C.C. at http://coco-vents.blogspot.com. C.C. can be reached at cfelicec@yahoo.com.
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