A look back at the 2007-08 NBA regular season

We usually have to wait until May and June to get this kind of excitement in the National Basketball Association. But this past regular season provided six months of endless drama that make this year already one of the most memorable.

This month, the second and third rounds of the playoffs ensue, and the excitement increases on a daily basis. But as we watch teams play like there’s no tomorrow for a chance at an NBA title, let’s not forget just how great the NBA has already been.
With that in mind, here are my top five storylines for this past NBA regular season:

1. The floppers
It seems as if every year there are teams that are supposed to be good that never seem to get it together. This year there were three: the Miami Heat, New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls.
We start with the Heat because there’s never been a team that has fallen from grace so quickly. Just two years ago, the Heat were NBA champions, and this year they ended up with the worst record in the NBA.

Despite the lack of moves they made in the offseason, the general consensus was that a team with Hall of Fame coach Pat Riley and two superstars in Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O’Neal would have enough to be relevant in the weak Eastern Conference. Wrong.
Shaq aged quickly, Wade never seemed to heal from his lingering injuries and the Heat’s supporting cast showed just how bad they were.

I should’ve known the Knicks were going to be bad again, but there is so much talent on that team (or, at least, that’s what their contracts indicate) that somehow I let out hope they can be a playoff team.

But the Knicks proved once and for all that the mix of players on that roster doesn’t work.
The Bulls seemed like they were on their way to NBA elitism after sweeping the Heat and putting up a good fight against the Detroit Pistons in last year’s playoffs. But lingering talks about a Kobe Bryant trade seemed to damage the psyche of the young Bulls, and they never recovered.

2. Youth movement
What makes any sport great is how it recycles itself every so often with young talent.
This year’s NBA was no different. Deron Williams, Dwight Howard and LeBron James showed this year that they are well on their way to becoming some of the best the game has ever seen.
But perhaps the biggest surprise of the season was the young New Orleans Hornets, led by MVP candidate Chris Paul. All year long, we doubted whether they could sustain their run through the talent-heavy Western Conference, but young players like Paul, David West and Tyson Chandler have made the Hornets a championship-contending team when everybody felt they’d be an afterthought in May.

3. The Rockets’ streak
No matter what this team does in the playoffs, what they did during the regular season is something the sports world won’t soon forget.
On March 18, the Houston Rockets ended a 22-game winning streak — the second longest streak in NBA history. What made it most impressive was that 12 games into their streak, the Rockets’ superstar center, Yao Ming, was put on injured reserve for the remainder of the season because of a foot injury. They could’ve given up and hung their heads, but the Rockets proceeded to win 10 more games to accomplish greatness.
The result was a streak that spanned three months when they won 11 games against teams that eventually made the playoffs.

4. The talent-cluttered West
This year’s Western Conference gave us arguably the most competitive brand of basketball ever.
You had the reigning champion San Antonio Spurs, young up-and-coming teams like the Hornets, Portland Trailblazers and Utah Jazz, and playoff-tested teams like the Rockets, Phoenix Suns, Los Angeles Lakers, Dallas Mavericks, Denver Nuggets and Golden State Warriors — most of them playing for playoff seeding up until the last day of the regular season.
Plus, the Lakers’ acquisition of Pau Gasol made other teams have to catch up. So the Suns acquired O’Neal, the Mavericks traded for Jason Kidd, and the Spurs shored up their bench with Kurt Thomas and Damon Stoudemire, guaranteeing one of the most exciting playoffs ever.

5. The Celtics’ turnaround
The most prestigious franchise in NBA history seemed to be on a constant decline ever since Larry Bird’s bad back in the late 80s. And last season, when the Boston Celtics finished with the worst record in the NBA and failed to grab a top-two pick in the draft, things hit rock bottom.
But Danny Ainge acquired perennial All-Stars Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to join superstar Paul Pierce and form one of the best trios in NBA history.

We knew they’d be good, but not this good. Allen, Pierce and Garnett have played as if they’ve been teammates forever, Boston has been the top defensive team all year, and the supporting cast has become one of the league’s best, catapulting the Celtics to the league’s best record.
With a regular season like this, we can only wonder what the NBA Playoffs have in store.

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