It’s been over half a year since any of us has seen any real competitive basketball (Euroleague or EuroBasket does not count I’m afraid) and even those with a faint memory of what the teams looked like will finding themselves scratching their head when they witness their teams being unveiled during the holiday period. With a host of high profile players ‘amnesty claused’, others exiled in lands far away and locked into leagues they can’t get out of, and a trade deadline that goes well into the season – expect the NBA season to provide many unexpected turns and twists. It’s hard therefore to provide NBA 2011-2012 prediction given this situation and considering teams have had only 15 days to prepare and 2 preseason games to try things out. Nevertheless here are 11 predictions for the 2011-2012 NBA season:

Much of the buzz around the Staples Center is currently revolving around the Clippers – but expect that to change when Superman arrives to Laker Land

Prediction 1: Playoff Teams From Eastern Conference

Miami Heat
Chicago Bulls
Boston Celtics
Orlando Magic
New York Knicks
Atlanta Hawks
New Jersey Nets
Philadelphia 76ers

Prediction 2: Playoff Teams From Western Conference

Oklahoma City Thunder
Dallas Mavericks
LA Lakers
LA Clippers
San Antonio Spurs
Memphis Grizzlies
Utah Jazz
Portland Trailblazers

Prediction 3: MVP
Chris Paul – If anyone has been following the career of Chris Paul closely, they will know that the 6’0 floor general out of Wake Forest has taken a below average team like the New Orleans Hornets and made them playoff contenders year after year in the tough Western Conference. He probably should have been the MVP the year Kobe Bryant won it as a “Lifetime Achievement Award”, but with bigs like DeAndre Jordan and Blake Griffin to throw alley-oops to, Lob Angeles should be one of the best teams this year with CP3 to thank.

Prediction 4: Coach of the Year
Vinny Del Negro – See above.

Prediction 5: Sixth Man of the Year
James Harden – Between the beastliness of Kendrick, the athleticism of Russell Westbrook, and the pure skills of Kevin Durant lies a player on the Oklahoma City Thunder that packs all three abilities into one. His name is James Harden and with his team likely to feature one of the best records in the NBA, it would be no surprise to see Harden walking away as the sixth man of the year.

Prediction 6: Most Improved Player
Tyler Hansbrough – The North Carolina product took some time to get his limited physical attributes to fit in to the NBA game, but the hardworking forward showed his potential in the playoff series against the Bulls. His will and relentlessness has made Hall of Famers out of lesser players (see Dennis Rodman) and expect Hansbrough to deliver results this year both on the stats sheet and off it.

Prediction 7: Defensive Player of the Year
Dwight Howard – This award should be retired until D12 starts losing his athleticism because currently it’s not even close.

Prediction 8: Shock Trade of the Year That Will Turn The NBA Landscape On It’s Head
The STYTWTNLOTH award will no doubt involve Dwight Howard and his impending trade to LA Lakers. Not only will it make the Lakers the favorites once more out in the West, but it should also turn the Magic into a dangerous team capable of disrupting the norm out in the East.

Prediction 9: Miami Heat: All Sizzle, No Steak
27 out of the 30 ‘experts’ on ESPN have Miami Heat to win it all this year with others seeing Oklahoma as favorites out in the West. Miami’s off-season is puzzling for me as their only notable addition was Shane Battier. They didn’t exactly need a small forward with LeBron James, Mike Miller and James Posey arguably their first, fourth and fifth player best player and all playing that same position. The plan apparently is to have Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Shane Battier closing out games. That’s fine and dandy but neither of those three can really guard a quick PG or a low post scorer, which was their problem in the first place. Chris Bosh gained some weight and looked decent in preseason action guarding Dwight Howard, but he’s not the tough-nosed anchor in the middle that is going to win you a championship.

Prediction 10: Eastern Conference Winner
Chicago Bulls – The Bulls were handily beaten by the Heat last year but it was a series where LeBron James played out of his skin and a time in Derrick Rose’s career where a loss like the one he suffered is only going to make him better. With Richard Hamilton in the mix, the Bulls can stop relying so much on Rose for buckets down the stretch, which should make the team all that tougher to handle. The one thing about Richard Hamilton is that he is one of the best players in coming off picks and creating scoring opportunities that way – something that negates the athletic prowess of the Heat’s stellar perimeter defense.

Prediction 11: 2012 Champions
LA Lakers – This is a gamble, because it assumes that Dwight Howard will indeed be traded to the Lakers like many expect. Not many people are talking about the addition of Jason Kapono, but I expect him to have a great year and he’s a piece the Lakers have been missing for many years. The point guard position is still a problem, with Derek Fisher an ankle twist away from campaigning to take David Stern’s job and Shannon Brown off to Phoenix – but with Dwight Howard clogging up the middle, that deficiency should be limited somewhat. Also don’t underestimate a rested and hungry Kobe Bryant, who has in the past performed at his best with his personal life under the microscope. If Metta World Peace has a solid season and Mitch Kupchak delivers behind the curtain, then expect the Lakers to go all the way with a motivated Mike Brown guiding the way.

That wraps up our 2011 2012 NBA preview and predictions. For thoughts and reactions, sound off in the comments below.

nba lockout 2011

Pigs are flying. Hell has frozen over. Add any other cliché that you can think of to symbolize the occurrence of something that seemed nearly impossible.

Yes, it has finally happened. The NBA lockout has finally met its demise and I couldn’t be happier.

The 2011-2012 season is set to begin on Christmas Day, Dec. 25. In my mind, it’ll be as very merry of a Christmas as I could ever imagine.

The intoxicating smell of the pine wafting off of the Christmas tree. The beauty of wrapped presents sitting in a neat little stack. The Yule log burning on the television screen. The stocking overflowing the crap that I’ll never use. The shriek of sneakers as they skid along the Staples Center hardwood. The only thing that could make Christmas any better is a soft blanket of snow lying upon the ground, but that’s as unlikely in Southern California as LeBron James winning a ring.

I apologize to people who are waiting for mentions of religious things on Christmas Day, but that’s not how I roll.

As a life-long Lakers fan, I’m just glad to know that I will enjoy the pleasure of watching the purple and gold play before next fall. Mike Brown will get his opportunity to follow in Phil Jackson’s footsteps and Kobe Bryant will get another shot at earning the Lakers one more championship banner.

That’s all good and dandy, but there are some folks out there who aren’t taking so kindly to the NBA’s return.

The one thing that has really irritated me throughout the 149 days that the NBA Lockout consumed was the haters out there who have apparently flushed any faithfulness they had for the league down the pooper.

I understand the concept that trying to act like you don’t care is a way of rebelling against the league’s greed, but don’t kid yourself. You know that as soon as games are back on and players like Dwayne Wade and Kevin Durant are flooding the headlines of your favorite sports website, you’ll fall off the hard-liner bandwagon in no time.

The NBA isn’t going to lower ticket prices because a few crazies decided to boycott the games. Players aren’t going to give up their luxurious way of life because fans displayed their frustration via Twitter. The owners will never, ever change their mindsets because a few lower class Joe Schmoes lost their jobs due to a lockout. If both sides were willing to give up millions of dollars in revenue and salaries throughout the first month of the season while arguing over one percent of the basketball related income, there’s no telling what their limit is.

If it wasn’t that big of a deal, no one would have cared throughout the first five months. So please, just get over it and get back to enjoying the sport that many of us have grown to love.

Go Lakers! Celtics and Heat suck! Kobe’s the G.O.A.T.! I’m done.

NBA

Let’s begin with how the outcomes are different. In the NBA we see:

• a cap on the salary that can be paid to an individual player.
• a cap on the payroll of an individual team.
• and a cap on the pay to all players.

Furthermore, this latter cap has been reduced from around 57 percent to about 51 percent of Basketball Related Income (or BRI) by the latest agreement. In sum, salaries in the NBA are clearly restricted, and the latest agreement increases these restrictions.
In contrast, baseball players do not have a cap. And that means:

• an individual can make as much as any team is willing to spend.
• teams like the New York Yankees can spend more than five times as much as the Kansas City Royals.
• there is no cap on how much the players can collectively earn.

So how come the baseball players negotiated such a sweeter deal? And why can’t the NBA players’ union stop the owners from using players’ money to solve the owners’ problems? One possible explanation can be found in the NFL. Though the NFL is the most successful professional sports league in North America, the players have generally done poorly in negotiations with owners. NFL players not only face a very hard payroll cap, their contracts are not even guaranteed. (See our podcast, “Billionaires vs. Millionaires” for more).  Mike Leeds and Peter von Allmen – in their textbook on economics and sports – offer a simple explanation for what we see in football.

Some NFL players are clearly stars who are likely to play for many years (i.e. Tom Brady). The majority of players, though, are not stars, and face fairly short careers, 3.5 years on average in the NFL. Consequently, the non-stars are not willing to hold out for a much better deal, since their window is so short, and whatever extra benefits gained would likely not accrue to them as much as to the select star players.  In other words, NFL players never have much leverage in negotiations because most players are not willing to shorten their careers further by withholding their services.

Baseball players, however, have historically been willing to hang together and walk off the job. And one example might illustrate why baseball players are different. In 2002 (the last time baseball had a difficult labor negotiation) David Ortiz was 27 years old and had yet to hit more than 20 home-runs or log more than 500 at-bats in a single season. In other words, he was not considered a star. The next season though, Ortiz hit 31 home-runs for the Boston Red Sox and finished 5th in the balloting for MVP in the American League. Across the next four seasons, Ortiz always finished in the top four for MVP and always appeared in the All-Star game. In sum, Ortiz was transformed from a player who was not considered an integral part of the Twins to a star for the Boston Red Sox.

The Ortiz experience illustrates a key difference between football and baseball. In the NFL, if you haven’t made it by the time you’re in your late-twenties, chances are you’re not going to become a breakout star earning All-Pro money. But in baseball, that Ortiz story is more likely to happen. Therefore, even your average players are more inclined to reject any plan to restrict earning power – especially the earning power of stars. Also, baseball players have on average a bigger window of playing time than do football players. The average career for a major leaguer is 5.6 years. NBA players face an average career of 4.8 years, right in the middle of the two.

So is basketball more like football or baseball? It appears it is much more like football. As noted in Stumbling on Wins, NBA players peak around their mid-20s.  So by the time an NBA player is 27, he is generally past his peak. And if he is not a star at that point, just like in football, it is highly unlikely he is ever going to be a star.

In other words, most of the players on the executive committee of the union– like Derek Fisher, Maurice Evans, Keyon Dooling, Roger Mason, James Jones, Matt Bonner, Etan Thomas, and Theo Ratliff (i.e. everyone on the committee not named Chris Paul) – know that no matter what they do, they will never be an MVP candidate. So when the owners ask the players to agree to a deal that restricts the earning power of stars, most members of the union have a tough time sacrificing (i.e. holding out) for a deal that leaves star pay unrestricted. Consequently, the NBA is the only sport with a cap on individual salaries. So while LeBron James is probably worth more than $30 million to his team, the cap on individual salaries holds his pay to less than $20 million.

In sum, the NBA owners are able to divide and conquer the players. Since the players in the NBA have different career prospects, they are unable to stay unified. So it is not surprising that over the past 30 years the players’ union in the NBA has agreed to a payroll cap, a cap on individual salaries, and with this last agreement, a clear cut in pay. And because the NBA will remain a league where most players will never be stars, we can expect NBA players in the future to keep losing when it comes to negotiations with the owners.

James Donald was a physical education teacher in the Akron public school system for 28 years, primarily at Riedinger Middle School where he became LeBron’s gym teacher for James’ sixth, seventh and eighth grade years. Mr. Donald witnessed history late in LeBron’s eighth grade year when, during the annual student-faculty basketball game, LBJ executed his first-ever dunk. Mr. Donald kept the rim, featured opposite, as a memento of the event.

It was like it was meant to be. He had the perfect steal. Got the break away. I was probably about 20 feet behind him, thinking there’s no way I’m going to catch him or even run after him. Then the last three steps he just elevated and took it home. It was a total surprise. And he could already get over the rim. He was probably over the rim ten inches. I think the game came to a stop for just a second and he jogged back to the other end of the court. That was the exclamation point, like, ‘Hey, we beat you guys.’”

The latest discussions between the two sides involve Bryant playing in three exhibition games for Virtus Bologna, and the action would be entitled the “Kobe Cup.”

Seriously.

Here are the details from Emilio Carchia of Sportando.net:

Claudio Sabatini and Rob Pelinka are still working silently to bring Kobe Bryant to Italy during the NBA lockout. The last idea is to organize three exhibition tournaments in Bologna, Roma and Milano with three teams for any stage. All the games would last 24 minutes with two quarters by 12′. Sabatini wants to involve also a foreign team because his idea is to sell the TV rights also abroad. The winner of the mini-tournament will lift the prestigious Kobe Cup.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

Sabatini, the owner of Virtus Bologna, has thoroughly embarrassed both himself and his team by being so vocal in the negotiating process throughout the entire ordeal, and he’s said that the parties have been “very close” to a deal on several occasions.

Obviously, the phrase has lost meaning considering the fact that Bryant appears no closer to landing in Italy than he was when all of these discussions began.

At this point, it’s become laughable that there are even updates on the situation considering that Sabatini had previously said that he was going to stop making public remarks about everything until it was resolved, but the information continues to flow out regularly.

There is obvious appeal for Bryant to play in Italy after he spent a great portion of his childhood there, but Pelinka is going to be extraordinarily careful in any possible deal that he works out for his client.

Let’s just call the possibility remote until we hear otherwise.

LeBron James And Dwyane Wade

Last night, LeBron James And Dwyane Wade joined their fabulous ladies, Gabrielle Union and Savannah Brinson to host a dinner kicking off the South Florida All-Star classic. See pics of the attendees inside….

Tons of sand celebs are in Miami right now for the South Florida All-Star classic, a celebrity basketball game benefitting Mary’s Court Foundation.  The foundation was established in honor of FIU coach Isiah Thomas’ mother, the late Mary Thomas.

lebron james

Last night, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade hosted a dinner to kick off the South Florida All-Star classic at STK in Miami.

Dwyane Wade

They were joined by good friend Chris Bosh, who will also participate in the South Florida All-Star classic.

Chris Bosh

LeBron attended with his fiancee Savannah Brinson, who complimented his black and white pattern.

LeBron James

But even if much of what he said was over the top by design in order to pressure both sides into a deal, it is clear we are approaching a major crossroads in the talks to end the NBA lockout and save the 2011-12 season.

“There are enormous consequences at play here on the basis of the weekend,” said the NBA commissioner after four hours of talks between the league and its players’ association wrapped up in Manhattan.

The two sides will meet again on Friday and on the weekend, with the NBPA expected to bring in heavy hitters like LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony for the first time in what will be major sessions, the first since the lockout began on July 1st.

According to Yahoo! Sports, the owners finally moved on demands for a hard salary cap on Tuesday, though restrictive stipulations were inserted in its place.

Ken Berger of CBS Sports said the owners stuck to that line of thinking Wednesday.

If they are going to budge on a hard cap, they will do so only if they punish the players in other areas.

NBPA president Derek Fisher alluded that the two sides aren’t all that close to a deal, but are meeting simply because if they don’t, they will run out of time to get a season.

“I think it points more toward the calendar than actually being able to measure progress,” Fisher said.

“It points to the realities that we face with our calendar and that if we can’t find a way to get some common ground really, really soon, then the time of starting the regular season at its scheduled date is going to be in jeopardy big-time.

“I can’t say that common ground is evident, but our desire to try to get there I think is there,” said the longtime Laker. “We still have a great deal of issues to work through, so there won’t be any magic that will happen this weekend to just make those things go away. But we have to put the time in. We have a responsibility to people to do so.”

Not the most promising words in the world, but, again, there are a lot of things to be ironed out before the talks can take a major step forward.

As Stern said of the coming discussions: “I’m focused on, let’s get the two committees in and see whether they can either have a season or not have a season.

“(It’s) a period of enormous opportunity and great risk.”

The risk is that if a deal isn’t in sight in a few days, it will only be a month until the scheduled start of the regular season and there won’t be enough time to have free agency, training camps and exhibition games without some real contests being wiped out. Already, 43 pre-season games have been cancelled.

On Monday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough likened Obama to the Miami Heat’s LeBron James.

“Things seem to be of an ad hoc nature,” Scarborough said, “whether you talk about a stimulus program you throw on Nancy Pelosi while he stands on the side of the court or a health care bill that they fight for a year and a half that they throw to the House and the Senate while the president stands on the side of the court. And again, a year and a half into the most heated ideological debate of his presidency, Democrats were coming on this show having no idea whether he was for or against the public option because he revealed his hand to nobody. He’s always on the side of the court.”

Scarborough then cast Obama in the role of LeBron James, whose team lost in the NBA Finals last season to the Dallas Mavericks in part because he underperformed.

“And when this president said in 2004, Mark Haleprin, ‘I’m LeBron, baby,’ he meant it,” Scarborough continued. “He’s disappeared in critical times. And just like LeBron in the finals.”

Jennings began his anti-Kobe campaign after Bryant emphatically capped off his Drew League debut by hitting a game winner over James Harden when he tweeted “Kobe drop 45pts with the game winner. Yea where he at next I’m playing I need THAT,” accompanied by a picture of him wearing a black shirt that read “Nobody Likes a Snake.”

kobe bryant

A couple days later, Jennings retracted his tweet; praising Bryant as the best player in the NBA and claiming he was joking.

As the storm began to settle, the very much one-sided Jennings and Bryant feud took another twist when the face of Under Armour basketball took to Twitter once more: “He [Kobe] wasn’t born and raised in LA. You gotta be from LA to play for Drew. Show me a birth certificate.”

By questioning Bryant’s hometown in his latest quip, Jennings has sparked a whole new issue, one I’d like to discuss.

Where is Kobe’s true “home”?

For those who don’t know, Bryant was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and spent seven years of his childhood in Italy before returning to Philly, becoming a legend at Lower Merion High School.

But ever since Bryant was passed up by his hometown Sixers when they selected Allen Iverson with the first overall pick and Bryant dropped down to #13 where he was swooped up by the Hornets and traded to the Lakers; Los Angeles has been Kobe’s town.

To dispel Jennings’ theory, let me ask you this: which athlete do you instinctively associate with the city of Brotherly love. For me, it’s Allen Iverson, the man who was able to grind out a decade of individual excellence for the city, rather than Bryant, the man who was born in the city. Similarly, when you think Los Angeles, Kobe Bryant, the life-long Laker, comes to mind and not Brandon Jennings, who was born and raised in Compton, California.

Bryant’s love-hate relationship with his hometown was documented in a poignant E:60 segment. Kobe believes his personality derives from the city’s hard-working nature: “the humor, the thick skin, all that stuff comes from here.” In the interview, Bryant revealed he still considers Philadelphia home after all these years.

Unfortunately, Kobe’s love for Philly is unrequited, partially because he was an instrumental part of the Lakers standing in the way of the Sixers’ championship aspirations in the 2001 NBA Finals. Throughout the segment, Lisa Salters, the narrator, and Bryant discuss why the city of brotherly love shows their hometown hero no love, with neither never truly finding a concrete answer.