When the NBA begins the preseason today and then when the regular season goes on, we are a little afraid of what’s going to happen with the referees. They have been having big trouble coming up with a good contract for the referees for the last little while. While we can hope for an agreement to be reached, it doesn’t look very good at this point. For the moment, it looks like we’ll have to deal with replacement referees and that’s it. This is too bad, because there are lots of better possibilities and the replacements aren’t necessarily as good as the real ones. We like our officials and we hope that they will be back soon to lead us through the season. When they see that they are being slowly replaced, maybe they will wizen up.

The main Rocket who will be back on the court this year, hoping to get the team into an unlikely contention is Tracy McGrady. He was one of the best players on the team for several years, but he’s been having a lot of trouble for the last couple of years with injuries to his knee and ankles. He went through surgery a few months ago and now he’s going to be back in the lineup, because he says that his rehab is going quickly and smoothly. It will take awhile to see how well this group is going to be running this season since they have so many injuries to the main players. It looks like they’re going to struggle, but it’s not for sure yet.

The foot surgery that Yao Ming had a couple months ago seems to have helped things to a certain extent. He says that the bones are healing as hoped and that this is good for the long-term for him. Meanwhile, for the short term, he says that he will not, absolutely not, play during 2009-2010. He will be at most of the Rockets’ games on the sidelines, so that he can keep his mind in the game. But he’s going to have to stay off that foot in a lot of ways. It’s too bad for the Rockets, because it’s starting to look like the lost season for them. They would have loved to play Yao, but they know that they can’t rush the healing again, because they ran into big problems with that last time around. So he’s going to take his time and he realizes that his style of playing might change permanently too.

Only a few weeks remain before the NBA season begins and the early rounds of pre-season big talking has already begun. This time it is the LA Lakers bragging, though admittedly they have an organization to brag about. After winning the championship, they got the tough forward Ron Artest to join the team. The only guy who has been able to successfully guard Kobe is now on their team. Artest has come out with a statement saying that fans should blame him specifically if the team isn’t able to win the championship again. Let me say that again: he is to BLAME if the team doesn’t win it all. What an interesting year it will be, because it’s all riding on him. Nevermind that 20 other guys could have real importance on this team and could mess things up or accomplish big things. It’ll be an exciting year either way.

LeBron James is apparently going to play in a film comedy coming up in a year or two. It’s kind of odd, because usually professional sports players aren’t the best actors outside of their antics on the court. James has been doing a great job on the court. His newest book tour, including stops on Jon Stewart and other TV and radio shows, has been interesting in how relaxed he’s been about it and how well spoken he is. People generally don’t know how sports players are off the court, but he seems very genuine and it’s been a great job. Hopefully, his movie will be better than SpaceJam and other similar kinds of movies these days.

Last Friday, Air Jordan was finally entered into the basketball Hall of Fame. This is his rightful place, that’s for sure, and it’s been known almost from the beginning that he’d end up there. Ever since the jump from the free throw line to a dunk. Ever since his fadeaway jumper that won so many games. Ever since his 6 championships in Chicago. But he gave a speech that surprised a lot of people. Especially those who didn’t know him very well. People who talked with him a lot back then knew that he had a certain amount of rage that fueled his play and that he never forgot a slight. Is this how you get to be a top NBA player? We’ve heard stories for many years about how MJ was very lonely at the time because he could never get away from his legend. Now we hear that he can be annoyed by competition. Oh well, we knew it couldn’t all be true. He was still a great player and a good role model (at least his public image).

The Memphis Grizzlies received a boost yesterday when they signed a major scorer named Allen Iverson. It was a nice change for a team that has been needing new people all this time. They don’t have much else on their team, though they have some makings that could bring them into the playoffs and possibly even further in the next few years. It’s going to be interesting to see what the team can put together ultimately and they’re going to be working to get into the upper levels where they have been aiming for years. They probably wont get a championship out of it this year, but in some future year it might actually happen for this team that’s waited so long.

Stephon Marbury seems to be finished with the NBA. He put down a message on his Twitter where he declared that he was done and had had a great time. What’s he going to do now? He seems to be on his way to doing some TV shows, including Starbury TV, which is kind of an odd show title. It’s kind of fun to think about this, but we’ll still miss having him in the NBA. He’s played so well for many years, although his decline in New York was rather surprising. Meanwhile, he will be working on getting his clothing line marketed a bit more and it will be an interesting time for him. Marbury is a good player, but it’s unfortunate that his ending in the NBA was so big and a little bit undignified from the rest of his career. But good luck to him in his new work!

The Houston Rockets seem to have found their way back into the NBA. It was practically asked a couple times this offseason whether the team might be better off relegated to the 2nd league. But then the smarter of us informed those other bloggers that there is no second NBA league; this isn’t Premier League Soccer, after all. But the team was looking like it was going to have such a tough time that they would simply have to wait out this season. They had lost Artest to free agency. Their team had also lost Yao to injury. He had to have surgery on his foot this summer and it was expected to take him out for the whole season. The prognosis has become better now, because apparently he might be able to jump back into the game this season as time moves forwards. In other words, he’s progressing much faster than had been expected and it’s far from the possibility of the career-ending injury that had been possible before.

Greg Popovich reports today that the Spurs will be back at relatively normal strength this season. Tim Duncan, while getting older and having leg injuries here and there, has taken it easy this summer in order to heal more fully. The team’s best player is now a healthy guy who needs to be back in the game as soon as possible to help this team. At the same time, Manu Ginobili has been relaxing a bit this summer too, in order to get past his own set of injuries. He might be a bit out of shape when he comes back, but it’s not completely clear what his playing level will be. The additions of Antonio McDyess and Richard Jefferson are among the good changes that will give this team a lot of potential while moving forward.