NBA Nba Previews

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

ORLANDO – It wasn't Stan Van Gundy, or any of his assistants, who stopped Orlando Magic practice Friday morning to make a coaching point, correcting newly-acquired power forward Brandon Bass and making sure he understood clearly his defensive assignment on a particular play.

It was center Dwight Howard. Coach Stan Van Gundy just stood back and nodded his approval. He liked what was happening.

"Our returning guys are taking more of a leadership role, trying to make sure everyone is on the same page, and that's our biggest challenge right now,'' Van Gundy said. "We're putting a lot of new pieces together.''

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

The Lakers are coming off of a championship season, and are the favorites to take home the title again in 2010. But with the virtual trade of Trevor Ariza for Ron Artest, along with the media circus created by Lamar Odom's whirlwind marriage to a reality television personality, they've certainly inserted enough wild cards into their stacked deck to make even the most die-hard of fans question the team's ability to repeat as champions.

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FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

Cool things happen when a team trades for a center who has at least one MVP trophy on his mantel.

Wilt Chamberlain got traded, and won a championship. He was traded again, and won another title.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was dealt, and won five more crowns.

Bob McAdoo got traded, and later won two rings.

Bill Walton was shipped away, and eventually got another title.

Moses Malone was traded. You guessed it. He won a championship.

Shaquille O'Neal was dealt. He won a ring to add to the three already on his fingers.

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FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

Brothers and sisters, repent your sins. Cry unto the Lord that he will be merciful and spare you rebounds and point differential. Lo, the Spurrian nightmare has indeed returned, and the Earth will quake when they cry vengeance.

That's a fancy way of saying, "Dude, the Spurs are really good -- again. Check yourself."

Looking at how the Spurs responded from their most embarrassing playoff exit since the turn of the century is inspiring. To see a team's owner commit to paying the luxury tax in a massive economic downturn is impressive. To see a management group aggressively pursue a multi-positional upgrade through trading older established assets is what every team's fans want to see. And to see a team take a flyer on a player passed up by every other league thanks to injuries makes you happy to watch basketball be played.

It's also downright terrifying.

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

Kevin Pritchard has, amazingly, gone from "favorite NBA genius" to "evil, demented mastermind who garners shifty and angry eyes from people who root for other teams." I'm not sure when that happened -- I believe it was in his second consecutive year of draft-fleecing when people finally stood up and said, "ENOUGH!"

Of course, the Trailblazers are still beloved (again, I think) and are, without question, the pre-eminent NBA team on the rise -- even though that's probably a bit of a misnomer considering they won their division last year. Well, tied. I mean, they won, but I'm pretty sure everyone would take Denver > Portland in terms of performance coming down the stretch in 2009.

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

The Celtics are a good team. This is, by most accounts, an understatement.

Boston finished with a record of 62-20 last season, despite the fact that the heart and soul of its defense, Kevin Garnett, missed 22 of the team's final 26 games with a knee injury.

Garnett missed the playoffs as well, but that didn't stop the Celtics from taking the eventual Eastern Conference champions to seven games in the second round, before their title defense ended two rounds earlier than they had expected for most of the season.

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

Denver's previous coach wasn't bashful about title talk.

"To win a championship, you've got to talk championship,'' Michael Cooper said on several occasions as members of the media attempted to keep from snickering.

Let's just say Cooper, who compiled a 4-10 interim coaching stint before being silenced in January 2005, didn't do much more than talk championship.

Now, the guy who replaced Cooper is doing a lot of such spouting. But nobody is snickering.

"I believe this team can win a championship,'' said George Karl, who has led the Nuggets to five straight playoff berths since taking over.

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

It has become popular nowadays to take a movie or idea that was popular 20 years ago and revitalize it, tweaking it for a more modern touch, in order to attract both new and old audiences. It incorporates the base elements of the original and then features a modern "twist" in order to seem "hip."

In a lot of ways, that's the story of the 2009-10 Dallas Mavericks. They're not the same old Mavericks, but they're not the new Mavericks either.

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

Time at the peak isn't supposed to be this short.

The Hornets jolted the West in 2008, nearly taking the first seed in the conference one season after missing the postseason entirely. After waxing Dallas in what would become Avery Johnson's final playoff series there, the Hornets went all the way to Game 7 against the defending champion Spurs. The Hornets lost, and didn't get close in 2008-09.

You can believe one of three things. The Hornets' short triumph could be over, more flash in the sky than formation of a new star. The Hornets could have experienced just a brief setback, a defeat at the hands of a bad match-up and an injury-riddled season. Or, the Hornets could have just ran into some structural problems in need of fixing, which they possibly have this summer.

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

Carlos Boozer is still with the Jazz.

Well, at least he was 10 minutes ago.

Heading into the season, Boozer's status is the biggest issue surrounding the team. He said during radio interviews during the summer that he wouldn't mind ending up in Chicago or Miami, and that Jazz officials told him they were looking to trade him.

The forward, though, didn't get moved. And now he's saying that, if the Jazz keep him throughout the season, impressive things can happen in Utah.

"If they keep us together, we can be very good,'' he said.

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