King Kaufman's Sports Daily

NBA preview: Shaq and Kobe made the offseason headlines, but once the games count, the championship road goes through Detroit and San Antonio.

Nov. 1, 2004 | It was the biggest L.A. divorce since Tom and Nicole, the difference being that everyone saw it coming. The Shaq and Kobe show is no more, Shaquille O'Neal traded from the Lakers to the Miami Heat, and Kobe Bryant, out from under the rape charge that hung over him all last year, totally in charge at the Staples Center.

The Lakers jettisoned coach Phil Jackson for Bryant's benefit too, bringing in former Rockets head man Rudy Tomjanovich, who will coach the team and look after Kobe's cars.

For years Bryant and O'Neal had struggled for control of the Lakers, each insisting that if he were just given the chance to be The Man, the Lakers would be an even better team than the one that won three straight championships in 2000-02 and the Western Conference title last year.

Now they both get their wish. Bryant will be the man in Los Angeles and Shaq will be the man in Miami, and neither team will be anywhere near as good as the Lakers of the last five years. Well played, gents!

The hype is that Shaq moving to the Eastern Conference offsets the imbalance of power that's favored the West since the late '90s, but it doesn't. The East has made some strides in the last year or two, and of course the champion Detroit Pistons came out of the East last year, but the bulk of the good teams are still in the West, and once you get past the Pistons, the Pacers and, maybe, the Heat, you have a bunch of teams that look like they'd struggle to make the playoffs in the West.

The Pistons were a great story last year, a shutdown defensive team without a superstar that proved you can grind your way to a championship, the key being Rasheed Wallace, added in a trade late in the year. Wallace, famous for being a nutjob and a malcontent in Portland, became a solid citizen in Detroit, not to mention a solid scoring threat.

Wallace signed a new contract to stay with the Pistons, and now that he has that in hand there's always the danger he'll revert to his unstable ways. There's also always a chance for any champion to suffer from a hangover. But that aside, the Pistons have to be the favorite to win the East again.

In the West there are a lot of teams with hopes. The Rockets hope Tracy McGrady can team up with Yao Ming to contend for a title. The Mavericks hope Erick Dampier will be the center that's supposedly been the missing ingredient in their title hopes. The Nuggets, Grizzlies and Jazz hope to build on their surprising success of a year ago. The Suns hope Steve Nash can return them to the playoffs. The Timberwolves hope Kevin Garnett can have another crazy-great year and lead them even deeper in the postseason. The Kings hope their championship window hasn't closed.

They're all going to have to beat the Spurs, though, who only have to hope that playing in the Olympics didn't wear down Tim Duncan. Half a dozen teams have the talent to make a run at the conference title, but they'll have to beat the Spurs, who have a young backcourt -- Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili -- that's only getting better, and have added shooter Brent Barry to pull defenses off Duncan.

The NBA has realgined this year, dividing each conference into three five-team divisions. The expansion Charlotte Bobcats join the East, with the New Orleans Hornets moving to the West. The playoff format remains unchanged, except that now three division champs will get the top seeds in each conference instead of two. The next five best teams will be seeded four through eight, but the team with the better record, not the higher seed, gets home court in playoff series.

An important thing to remember about the new alignment is that, within each conference, the schedule is almost balanced. Teams play four games against their division rivals, and either three or four against teams in the other two divisions in their own conference, plus a home and home against teams from the other conference. What that means is that teams don't get punished for being in a tough division.

Here's a preview of the 2004-05 season, or, as I like to call it, the preseason, which begins Tuesday night. Please take note of the usual plea that you not use this column's always-wrong predictions as the basis for wagering.

Next page: The West: The T-Wolves are in trouble. Plus: Wow, the Southwest is going to be tough