With the NBA season commencing next week, I figured it was a good time to share some thoughts about the upcoming season. Now, I certainly could sit here and bore you with the same nonsense everyone else is talking about (i.e. Phil Jackson selling his soul to his girlfriend by going back to coach the most disrespectful player he ever came in contact with, but I digress), but I'm keeping an eye on a few other things.

1) The Riley/Van Gundy situation in Miami. You gotta love Good Old Riles. When the team looks like their probably going to be in the lottery for the next 5 years, he'll move upstairs and be the team president. Then Stan squeezes water out of a rock two years ago and gets them to the 2nd round of the playoffs. It was one of the great coaching jobs I've seen in the NBA in a long time. Stan gets the most out of Lamar Odom, enabling Riley to use him as a chip for Shaq. The, last season, Stan coaches them within a whisker of defeating the defending NBA champions in a Game 7 of an Eastern Conference final. How does Riley repay him?? Make him spend the early part of the summer dealing with rumors that Riley is going to fire him and take over. Nice boss. Stan Van Gundy has been one of the three best coaches in the NBA for the last two seasons, yet because Riley needs another coaching ring to validate his massive ego, Stan enters the season with a very short leash. And the most ridiculous part of all is that if Riley can just keep his mouth shut and stay upstairs in the front office, he'll deservingly get a mountain of credit for building a championship team if this team wins it all.

2) Forgive me if I'm not feeling all the love everybody else is with the Isiah Thomas-Larry Brown marriage. Before I proceed, I must warn you that I am not a very big Isiah Thomas fan, but I give him credit for bringing in Brown because it took guts, especially since Brown is going to take his job. Remember, Isiah in less than two years has left a rash of mistakes in his wake. While many of his personnel moves are debatable, his bosses had to be less than enamored with his butchering of the Chaney firing/Fratello hiring. They also were probably not all that thrilled when he made pointed comments to the media pushing Dolan favorite Allan Houston to retire. Combine that with the enormous amount of money he's lit on fire, and its not a push to say that there is not a ton of slack left in his rope. Enter Larry Brown. Larry is a brilliant basketball mind, maybe the best. But he's an insatiable whiner and there's only one thing he hates more than losing... taking the blame. Now, I'm not all that sure how much money Isiah's making, but I bet is nowhere close to what Larry is making. And when this team folds like a cheap suit, and they will, Isiah has been set up perfectly to be the fall guy. If Isiah takes anything out of this Knick experience it will be to pick your friends better.

3) Its official. The balance of power has clearly shifted back to the Eastern conference. 4 out of the best 5 teams in the NBA are in the East. The Spurs are clearly the odds on favorite entering the season. The next four teams on my list are all in the East. They are, Detroit, Miami, Indiana, and New Jersey. If you look at the 2nd best team in the West, your candidates are Houston, Dallas, and Denver. I think New Jersey is much better than all 3 of those teams. Remember, the Nets won 15 out of their last 20 to end the season and that was without Richard Jefferson. They're deeper and bigger than last year. If their big 3 and Kristic all can stay healthy, I give them a legitimate chance to go to the Eastern Conference finals.

Most people I know are quite particular where they take a dump, and I'm no different. I actually have designated certain areas "NDZs". An NDZ is a "No Doody Zone". This whole concept originated one night at a Nets/Lakers game after eating some bad dressing in a seafood salad. Lets just say that I learned a very valuable lesson about the less than sanitary conditions in the Meadowlands arena's men's rooms. Fast forward to this past Friday night. I have my wife and two daughters at a Devils game. It was somewhat exciting, being the kids first ever live sporting event. In the middle of the second period, my 4 year old asks me to take her to the bathroom. No problem, lets go. Half way up to the bathroom, she casually mentions that she has to make a doody. Panic sets in. I don't want her doodying (is that a word?) in an NDZ, but I also don't want her to be one of these kids who's uptight about taking a dump. So, I just smile and say nothing, realizing that I'm about to embark on one of the grossest ventures of my entire life. We get to the bathroom stall and I tell my daughter to stand with her back to the bathroom stall and touch nothing to "give Daddy a chance to set up." I proceed to clean the amalgum of urine spewed from each drunk Devils fan who graced that porcelain that evening. It would have been nasty with an industrial sponge and rubber gloves, but with some toilet paper and my hand, it was absolutely revolting. I started the evening being grossed out by the NDZ and finished the evening CLEANING the NDZ. And I smiled the whole way through it. In a sick, twisted way, I'm proud of that.