The NBA season is here and it has been one of the greatest Christmas presents for most basketball fans. There was a lockout for NBA for a very long time because the owners and the players couldn’t figure out a deal, many fans thought there wasn’t going to be a season this year because it seemed too late. However, the lockout is now over and the season has started. The first NBA games were on Christmas day which made many NBA fans happy and gave them one amazing present. The season is already half way in but the teams just started playing which means they have to play a full season amount of games in only a half season amount of time. This means that many teams are going to play many games back to back to back.
So far the season has been great and many teams are coming out strong. It is going to be difficult for many teams to play hard due to all the games they are going to have to play back to back which is going to make the players really tired, but it has not affected them too much so far. This means there is going to be a lot of traveling for the players which is an advantage for the fans who will get to go watch their teams play more often.
There are many teams that have excellent players this year. The one of a kind point guard of the New Orleans Hornets, Chris Paul, joined the power forward Blake Griffin and the shooting guard Chauncey Billups in LA, not the Lakers, the Clippers. Once Blake Griffin found out that Chris Paul was going to be traded to his team, he chest-bumped his teammate Deandre Jordan and said “Lob City”. By saying this he meant there were going to be alley-oops all day because Blake Griffin is know for throwing it down or dunking hard and Chris Paul is know for his amazing passes. Blake Griffin does regret calling his team Lob City and Chris Paul also doesn’t like the name because they say that that is not what they are thinking about, they want to win games not throw up lobs.
“It’s unfortunate,” Griffin said. “It’s one of those things where we understand it, but that’s not what we’re about. Before the game we’re not going out thinking, ‘All right, its Lob City tonight.’ We’re just trying to win games and trying to get better.”
“It’s something we can’t control,” Paul said. “We are a complete team, and we want to continue to be a complete team. That’s the only way we’re going to win games. It doesn’t matter if you get ten lobs and lose the game. It’s all about winning at the end of the day.”
At first, Chris Paul was trying to go to LA but it wasn’t the Clippers, he was actually trying to go to the Lakers. This trade almost went through until the NBA commissioner David Stern stepped in and canceled the trade that allowed Chris Paul to go to the Lakers. The Lakers were also trying to get Dwight Howard the center for the Orlando Magic. That also didn’t happen and was most likely a rumor.
Dwight Howard has “demanded” a trade and the Magic has given him permission to look at a few teams like the New Jersey Nets and the Dallas Mavericks. Howard claims that he doesn’t have a good relationship with his General Manager (GM) because they wouldn’t listen to his trade requests and other things in the past several years.
“I’m pretty sure if you go down the line of teams, every GM has a pretty good relationship with not just the best player but all the players,” Howard said. “If you don’t have a good relationship with the people you work with, how are you going to get better?”