Layne Murdoch / Getty Images

My God, it’s great to watch Chris Paul again. The Hornets/Heat game last night might have been my favourite game of the whole season. Dude was the best player on the court for those 48 minutes, and that court had a few pretty amazing players on it.

I’m sure you’re aware the Hornets are 5-0. And it hasn’t been an easy schedule – Milwaukee at home, Denver at home, San Antonio on the road, Houston on the road, and Miami at home. Plenty more impressive than Atlanta going 6-0 against MEM/PHI/WAS/CLE/DET/MIN, right? Or the Lakers beating HOU/PHO/GSW/MEM/SAC/TOR? Yeah. Shoals is right, New Orleans is the biggest story in basketball.
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Luis M. Alvarez / AP Photo

There were seven games on the schedule last night, but the Knicks and Magic didn’t play because Madison Square Garden is not safe. I’ll start with the one game that came down to the wire:

The Wizards beat the Sixers 116-115 in overtime. It wouldn’t have made it to overtime if not for Cartier Martin (representing the D-League) tying the game with a last-second three-pointer that could easily have been an and-one. John Wall could not have been introduced better in the Wizards’ home opener and proceeded to put up a monster line: 29 points (on 16 shots), 13 assists, a franchise record-tying 9 steals, and, gulp, 8 turnovers. Since there are always fun numbers in overtime games, check out some other stats: Lou Williams started 0-8 but finished with 30 points on 16 shots (15-17 FT!), Elton Brand had a super-efficient 21 and 9, and Jrue Holiday had 14 points and 13 assists. I wanted a second overtime, but I was happy that Wizards fans got this win and EXTREMELY happy for Mr. Martin.
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It’s a new season and Outside The NBA is going to be TOTALLY DIFFERENT this year.

…erm, not really. My schedule is going to remain the same as it was last year. I’m going to watch basketball at night, read about basketball during the day, and write about basketball in between.

The format’s going to be new, though. The majority of my writing will live in this space: LeBlog James. This is where I’ll recap what I’ve watched, make observations, drop stats, recommend links, share gems from my Twitter feed, etc. It’s also where I’ll post a feature every day. It’s not exactly going to be a recap column and it’s not exactly going to be a “James rants about the NBA” column. It’s a blog. By me, James. LeBlog James. It’ll generally be posted in the afternoon.

The podcast will keep going as its been for the past few weeks – recorded Thursday before the doubleheader, posted Friday. It’ll continue to sound a billion times better than it did last year, as we’re using the studio at the College of Sports Media.

John Bennett, who’s hosting the podcast now, is going to be on board as a writer, too. Julian Guy-McCarvill will have a weekly column that’ll no doubt be full of statistics and hate. Eric Wagman will be writing and podcasting at least until he leaves Canada to become a spy – I hope someone pisses him off early this season as much as Turkoglu did last year.

Aaaaanyway, let’s get to last night’s fun. It was a great, great second night in the NBA. Even better than the first, I’d say. As awesome as it was to see the huge nationally televised games and the Blazers’ 4th-quarter explosion against Phoenix on Tuesday, there’s nothing like some extreme League Pass ADD on a Wednesday featuring 13 games that are all worth checking out. Can’t tell you how much I missed the simultaneous good finishes and #leaguepassalerts.
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The NBA season is almost here.

First of all, WOOOOO!

Second, um, hello. I come to you with my predictions for the season, along with reasons I’m excited about each and every team that I’ll be watching on League Pass from this week till mid-April. We know how difficult it is to prognosticate in October and that injuries and trades will change everything, but hey, predictions are fun! Feel free to call me out when some of the things I say look hilariously dumb a month or two from now. Here we go:

Eastern Conference

1. Miami: 66-16 (last season: 47-35)

I might actually be selling them short with 66. They’ve got weaknesses (old and slow bench, subpar centers) but their strengths are so strong that they should win most regular season games fairly easily.

I can’t imagine trying to gameplan for them. We’ve seen that it takes a total team defensive effort to limit LeBron and Wade separately. Now, they’re together, with Bosh?! They’re going to punish teams on the break and get to the line a billion times a game. It’s going to be amazing to watch.

Excited about: Finding out if they care about winning 70+, seeing if Spoelstra gets creative with his offense, and discussing LeBron’s on-court brilliance instead of his off-court madness.
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Today’s the day. After 6 months of anticipation, after a scare when it looked like it might not happen, the greatest day of the fall is finally here. Fantasy draft day. Yes, I am one of those people who cares way too much about my fantasy team. I’m the guy who’ll shit-talk even when losing. I’m even the guy who’ll argue about fantasy draft stuff in public occasionally. I’m the guy who checks the pool for comments 5 times a day. Let’s NBA! Continue Reading

Terry Gilliam/AP Photo

I’ve heard a lot about how tough it is to make predictions this season. Well, here’s an important term for 2009-2010: mediocrity. Outside of the top and bottom 3 or 4 teams in each conference, pretty well everyone is stuck in it. So yes, it’s going to be a tough year to predict in some ways. But you can count me among those to say that this year the difference between good teams, great teams and shit teams will be more noticeable than ever. I was originally just going to just rank the teams without win totals. Why? Limit the damage, baby. Limit the damage. Unfortunately, I’ve been told I need to do wins/losses too. So, totals in brackets after the pick. Continue Reading