NBA note

A few things about the season preview: Like most mags, I'm ranking the teams by playoff seeds, which means the Atlantic Division winner will be a three seed regardles of how well Indy, Detroit or Cleveland do in the Central.

I kinda hate season previews because you look stupid in May. Last year I did the NBA preview for the Washington Post. I said there was no way in hades that KG and C. would finish with less than 55 wins and I said that Seattle would be a cellar-dweller, although I id have the prescience to note that All-Star years from Lewis and Shuttleworth could make things interesting.

The point is, you just dont know, naa mean? The predictions you'll read don't take into consideration: injuries, midseason trades and things like that. Its merely looking at the current squads and opining. I do that well.

-- As always, everything you read in the previews is like Biblical Record. Any other nerds you see yakkin about my league are to be dismissed and mocked.

-- The illest one-two combo in the world right now is not pizza and wings, henny and coke, Shaq and wade or Depp and Burton -- its TiVo and the DirecTV NBA package.

I can't even begin to explain how this gonna change my life -- probably for the worse. For instance, when I was a wee lil lad I used to tape bunches of games. Fab Five had its own tape. UNLV had its own tape. Gtown had its own tape. Kenny Anderson had his own tape. Magic had about 10 tapes. Thurman and the Bills had a box of tapes. Barry Sanders and Randall Cunningham had their own tapes. Iwas on the phone with Pops the other day and he said he was doing some cleaning and ran across my tapes and it was like the Library of Congress for games.

Well, after a while, programming VCRs got old and tired. The last stuff I tapes was the SportsCentury marathon.

What that did, though, is cause me to miss stuff all the time. I have religious meeting twice a week and theyre at night. That means I was always missing games. Other times, I'd fall asleep on Laker games. So, of course, I missed that crazy 4th quarter where LA came back from like 35 down to beat the Mavs. My nigg Tony called it one of the greatest games ever, I was drooling on my pillow, either dreaming about J-Lo's goods or Paparazzi's potato pasta while that was goin down.

But you shouldve seen me yesterday. I already have every Laker, Wizard and Iverson game programmed for the next month. Which means I dont have to worry about viewing them. If I got ish to do, then I'll handle my ish. Come home at whatever time and play the game on my TiVo. And I get to fast forward anytime that Brian Cook or Jared Jeffries are on the floor. I'll be able to watch entire games in like 30-40 minutes.

PLUS, when TNT is showing Knicks vs Spurs, I dont have to watch that garbage. I can flip to Nets v Cavs. that solves those times you look at the sked and wonder, "Why is this game not being televised."

I sat in my chair with an un-homo boner all night yesterday. One thing, though: I'm not that dope with the remote yet. I missed Redd's end-of-reg three pointer, because i was watching Nuggs v Spurs. I gotta condition myself, now. Its a foreign concept to have access to every game being played that night.

PREVIEWS BELOW...