The return

I grew up in Lexington, Kentucky watching basketball, playing basketball, getting all up in basketball.  I’ve always loved sports (among other things) and I wouldn’t say basketball is my favorite.  I don’t have a favorite sport (although cricket is easily my least favorite sport) but what struck me last summer was that the NBA is a small enough pool of people that by now I know most all of the people in the fishbowl—indeed, some of these people I’ve been following since they were in high school.  For example, when I first started paying attention to pro basketball Larry Bird was still a fresh face in the league; since then I’ve seen him win MVP’s as a player, coach and general manager.  I've seen virtually his entire professional life.

Though I am a regular sports watcher, I want to sharpen my focus to the NBA.  Over the next few months I will give projections and recaps of the upcoming playoffs, keep an eye on the draft and continue to follow the moves, trades, signings, etc., on through the summer. I won’t be able to give the eyeball test to the NBA Summer League but I’ll look over the stats, try to ascertain which players are shining out or disappointing.  Also, I want to take a look back at last year’s transactions, give a 20/20 hindsight grade on who succeeded and who flailed badly.  I have little interest in pre-season so I generally pay little attention to basketball then preferring to watch the baseball post-season and NFL instead; but I suppose this year I’ll try to keep up. 

For decades, I’ve followed the personalities, the strategies, the projections, the standings and the stats.  The stats, as in baseball, have gotten continuously intricate and more interesting.  Do the intricacies reveal more about the game?  Not sure I’m convinced of that but I enjoy analyzing them just the same.  I don’t have a favorite team, I tend to follow any/all teams and throughout the course of a season I’ll pick out my favorites to watch.  (This year the Phoenix Suns were the team I most enjoyed watching and keeping up with and I gotta say Goran Dragic deserves more MVP votes that I reckon he’s gonna get)

Still figuring out my observational style but I think I’m more into studying the teams as opposed to individual players and the compositions of the teams (payrolls, draft choices, trade options, etc) more than the in-game strategy.  I’m interested in the teams within the larger context of the league itself and the players within the context of their team.  I dig the stars and the eyeball test is certainly a must as a fan, but the eyes can be deceived while the numbers are just numbers.  That said, I have the sinking feeling that over time statistics will only reveal the limitations of statistics.  

I watch NBA and I write so my mission is clear: I will write about the NBA.