Look at the Bulls and Spurs the past couple of years- No. 1 seeds, no titles. I love watching the games, but the NBA has the most meaningless regular season of any of the four major North American sports. 50-60 games sounds about right. Of course, it’s far more likely that the season gets stretched to 100 games than gets shortened to 60, and for a very simple reason- money. More games, more tickets, more TV, more money.

If you think Jeremy Lin would have helped why don’t I remind you of his last performance against the Heat: 1-11 shooting, 3 assists and 8 turnovers. Knicks don’t match up well against anybody because they are a terribly assembled team.

The Knicks got “steamrolled” LAST year because their starting PG missed the entire series, their starting SG played half of game 1, and their starting PF missed 2 games. Add the fact this team had no training camp together, a coach change mid season, turmoil to key players personal life (Amare’s brother), & didn’t discover a PG til mid season & suddenly you should realize that the Knicks shouldn’t have even made the playoffs….they actually overachieved in my opinion. None of those things will be a factor this season & Shaq is right. If Melo goes into this season with a chip on his shoulder coupled with the team now having their 1st full training camp together, coach they actually want well in place & no roster questions….the Knicks DO match up best against the Heat & are the biggest threat to them repeating as champs.

Anyway, I see the Knicks getting a 4th or 5th seed in the East this year with the new defensive identity they’ve adopted, especially with the addition of Camby who can easily fill in for Chandler for 15 minutes a game. Keep in mind that the Magic (6th seed last year) and Hawks (5th seed last year) weakened themselves to build for the future, and I’m not sure if Indiana (3rd seed) became worse over the offseason, so Knicks could improve in the standings in large part due to their competitors worsening.

But, that means they won’t see the Heat until later in the playoffs – assuming they make it past the first-round – so their mindset shouldn’t be solely on the Heat. I see the Celtics as a difficult matchup for the Knicks as well.

Each NBA team playing the 29 other teams on average 2.8 times per year (basically 3 times per year) sounds about right – they play once, then make adjustments and play again, then make adjustments to the adjustments and play a third time.

I agree, all the headlines here try too hard to be funny.

Except for the perfect NFL, 16 game schedule, All sports would benefit greatly with a reduction of about 30%.