“Really? You will teach me how to play?” he asked, not believing Since the last game of the 2018 finals, lots of teams have made roster moves and drafted players. The NBA draft came and went. Players signed deals with new teams. Now, the start of the season is approaching. This offseason, enough changes were made that nobody knows which team will end up on top in 2019. The biggest move in the offseason was the Lakers signing LeBron James and other promising players. They will be a totally new team. The Warriors got DeMarcus “Boogie” Cousins. Dwight Howard went to the Wizards. DeMar DeRozan went to the Spurs and Kawhi Leonard went to the Raptors. These moves will make the 2019 season a little bit more exciting. I think that the Warriors and the Celtics will play in the finals, and the Warriors will come out on top. I believe that the the Rockets will also have a strong team.. The 2019 NBA season is going to be an epic season. (above image and caption from 2014 story “You Did It Friend,” written by Connor Gorton and illustrated by Nahome Yohannes)
The NBA Finals
Steph Curry and the Warriors look to beat the Cavs in the finals for the second straight year. In most sports, including the NBA, there is a playoff bracket that the the champion has to complete to win the title. In the NFL, you cannot lose a single game in order to win the Super Bowl. For the NBA, it is a 7 game series format. Team A (the one with the best record) plays at home for the first two games. Then Team B gets two games at home. Then after that, the games alternate. Whichever team wins 4 games first wins the series. While this has been the system for very long time, the NBA is thinking about changing its format to having a play-in bracket or picking the top 16 teams from either conference instead of 8 teams from each conference. The Western conference teams this year were better and more fun to watch than the Eastern conference teams. In the Western Conference, the ball swings around more and it is played at a faster pace, with 3 point bombs a common sight. In the Eastern conference, the game is played at a slower pace, often with the shot clock running down as opposed to the Warriors fast paced style. Around three years ago, the Golden State Warriors established themselves as the NBA’s powerhouse. They won 2 out of 3 championships and the one that they lost was a fluke. This Finals could go their way, or the Cavs could claim the NBA throne. The Houston Rockets finished the season in front of the Warriors in standings which caused many to think that the Warriors’ brief dynasty was over. Instead, they will be playing the Cavs in this year’s finals. The Warriors are the only NBA team that you can watch on TV when the score is tied, then take a 2 minute bathroom break and when you get back they are winning by 15. The Cavs will not be able to keep up with them. In Game 3 of the Warriors Rockets series, Steph Curry scored 18 3rd quarter points on 7-7 shooting. That will simply be too much for the Cavs. Expect the Warriors to win in 5 games, because of their lightning fast runs and great third quarters.
NBA Tanking
By Austin Bjornholt [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), from Wikimedia CommonsWhen the Chicago Bulls announced that Cristiano Felício and David Nwaba would start in place of Robin Lopez and Justin Holiday, it was not so that they would win more games. It was exactly the opposite. In the NBA, every bad team tanks. Tanking is losing games intentionally so that you get a higher draft pick. When you get a better draft pick, you get a better player. When you get a better player, you have a better team. When you have a better team, you win a championship. When you win a championship, more fans come. When more fans come, the owner gets more money. Basically, tanking is for billionaire owners to get even richer. Tanking is supposed to be illegal, but the NBA doesn’t enforce the rule. During prohibition, law enforcement knew that speakeasies existed and didn’t do anything. When Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said that his team should lose games, Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, fined him $600,000. That may seem like a lot, but Cuban has a projected net worth of $3.7 billion. If you want to know why the NBA does not punish teams for breaking the no-tanking rule, you must know why the rule was created. In other leagues, like the NFL, there are powerhouses (like the Eagles) and teams like the Browns (0-16 last season). If the Browns play the Eagles, it will most likely not be competitive. The reason that the NBA established the no-tanking rule is that they hope that more fans come to games, thinking it will be too über-competitive. Again, when more fans come, the owner gets more money.
