He's heating up

Come on, NBA Jam?  You know you have said that line, at least 185 times in your life if you grew up a super nintendo, arcade or sports fan in general.  Well, no video game here, but the upcoming NBA season is going to be one of the best season the league has had in years.  I might be jumping the gun here, with baseball still having 1/3 of their remaining schedule left to play however, with football mini camps opening, I thought we would talk something other than Brett Favre will he wont he.

For starters, of course, this has been one of the NBA's busiest offseason's in recent history.  With King Lebron on the market, as well as many other top notch players, the NBA seemed to steal more backpages then usual this summer.  The Eastern Conference this year is going to be a wide open race.  The Heat are the overwhelming favorites at less than 2-1 to win the nba championship next year.  They do have three great players, but I am gonna go out on a limb here and say that lebron james is not a winner flat out.  If he develops his game like scottie pippen did and become a solid "robin" to dwayne wade, then absolutely they have the best chance.  However, I have heard alot of people comparing this to jordan winning three titles in a row with pippen and rodman and players x and y filling out the rest of the bulls roster from 96-98.  People making these comparisons need to becareful.  First, Jordan had the sixth sense that I'm not sure lebron has.  Wade has shown himself to be clutch, but can his body handle the wear and tear of a nine month season if they make a run deep into june? 

My point in writing this article is that the East is going to be wide open next year.  Realistically, the top four teams are going to be in dogfights starting with the second round of the playoffs.  You can not discount the celtics after adding both Jermaine and Shaquille O'neal to bolster their front line.  As for Orlando, you can't sleep on what I believe is the best Center in the game, Dwight Howard.  It is imperative that he continues to develop his low post game ( Hey Ewing can you please teach him a better drop step, and a baseline jumper).  But considering he is an eraser on defense, and the team has been playing with the same core for a few years now, and are well coached, Orlando has a decent chance to come out of the east and they are 10-1 to win the nba championship.  The last team who has a chance, and its a smaller one, is the Chicago Bulls.  They have a lot of talent on their team, and adding carlos boozer this off season may be up there as the best signing after what Miami did.  Boozer is perfect for that team.  He has another big man Noah who does not need the ball and will rebound with him.   Boozer can be the scoring big man, and open things up for rose, hinrich, and deng.  The bulls remind me of the atlanta team a few years ago that surprised everyone by taking the celtics to a 7 game series, I could see them testing the #1 seed Heat like that in the second round of the playoffs. 

Enjoy your day, weekend, Lets hope the mets sweep the phillies otherwise its officially football season!