Nothing makes you feel the impending arrival of a new basketball season like the appearance of preview magazines on the newsstand racks.   There’s a little rush I seeing each new one slowly find it’s way to the store.

So far I’ve gotten the college basketball editions of Athlon, Lindy’s, Sporting News, and Yahoo Sports (which seems to mirror the format of the CBS Sportsline magazine from the past few seasons, looks like a rebranding)

I’ll have full reviews coming but so far I’m enjoying Lindy’s the most out of the 4.  It has a great layout particularly for smaller conferences that gives you a wealth of pertinent information and it’s one page newcomer summaries for each conference are fantastic reads.   Ups go to Athlon for including some college fantasy basketball rankings.

The draft lottery went down tonight and I immediately found myself missing Dan Patrick’s presence as the lead commentator.   While he was never an NBA guy per se, he lent a certain level of cred to the event.

I respect what ESPN is trying to do with Doris Burke but some of her segments were borderline painful.

The Chicago Bulls were the big winners, grabbing the top pick even though they only had a 1.7% chance to win it.  Makes me feel better about quitting it all to pursue a professional keno career if those type of odds can win.

The Bulls will be choosing between Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley..either way’s a good choice but  there is that special something Rose has that makes me think he’ll be going #1.

The seemingly obvious sacking of Avery Johnson as head coach of the Dallas Mavericks earlier today was nonetheless still shocking.

With any coach, there reaches a point where absent tangible championship results (and sometimes even with) when the players begin tuning you out.  It had reached that point with the Mavericks and Avery and a change was necessary.  Both parties will ultimately yield more success apart than continuing a fractured, strained relationship.

As a self-admitted Spurs diehard, I’m somewhat selfishly pleased to be able to fully root on Avery again as he no longer will be coaching a bitter division rival (please go to NY Avery!)

Site’s been in hibernation during the offseason..but with tipoff around the corner the site will be undergoing a change as well.  Before then however, we’ll begin with some reviews of preseason basketball mags beginning tonight.

Momentum is picking up in the Pacific Northwest for a potential new Sonics arena that would be located on land owned and built by the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe.   SonicsCentral first reported on it here and this afternoon the Puget Sound Business Journal released a story about the feasibility study run by the Tribe on the cost and potential of a 18,000+ NBA capable facility.

Given the existence of a completed feasibility study, it would not be surprising if talks between the Sonics and the Tribe are at an advanced stage with an official announcement any day (pure speculation on my part however).

Great article out of the Orlando Sentinel focusing on the Billy Donovan situation.  The Magic are a class organization and I’m in total agreement with their insistence that Billy Donovan must be the one to break the deal if he wants out.

While Kobe Bryant’s flip-flopping trade demand saga has been a walking wet dream for ESPN and wanna-be GM’s, I see no chance he’ll be playing anywhere else but LA.   He knows LA is the market for him and Bryant is just exercising is own power of influence to shake things up.

Kobe’s a Laker next year, period.

Great story from The Hoya (Georgetown’s student newspaper) about the halftime shoes switch the Hoyas made against Vanderbilt (when they were down 32-24).

The new shoes (Jordan XX2’s in Gtown blue and grey) look tight but superstition is superstition and the Hoyas went back to what had brought them that far.