A long standing complaint I've had is that NBA.com has been consistently bad for many years. It was always too busy looking, packed with fluff, no real content, and focused only on marketing. That's starting to change. The site is more organized, offers more content, and even though it still loads a little slow, I'm finding more useful stuff there.
Today the site got about 30 times better. Why? Because now David Aldridge started writing a daily column/blog for them.
Here's what I hope to do when we get all the bells and whistles attached: Give you a daily dose of what's going on around the league. That's information, informed speculation, interviews and, yes, some trade talk. It will always be factual. It is always subject to response and criticism. I welcome both. When others break big stories, I'll link to them. I'll have a Blogroll up soon with some of my favorite basketball-centric sites and writers, and hopefully, we'll be able to link to some of my podcast interviews and sound.
Perfect timing too - just before the trade deadline action starts heating up.
Aldridge is one of my longtime favorite writers/analysts. I enjoy his style, he has an intelligent perspective on the league, he's not afraid to talk rumors, and I actually trust his sources (as much as you can trust any sources). Side note: I met him once many years ago and I can say that he's the same off the air as he appears on it. A good quality.
He starts off by making the point that the Class of '09 might (from a certain point of view) be even better than the class of 2010. Sounds loony, I know, but he makes some solid points and talks about the state of the NBA's finances in the process. A good read.
Back to the NBA.com site, I also found an interesting chart in their Celts/Cavs preview article.
Celtics' Efficiency
| Player | First 29 | Last 8 | Diff. |
| Ray Allen | 17.3 | 12.5 | -4.8 |
| Kevin Garnett | 22.1 | 19.6 | -2.4 |
| Kendrick Perkins | 14.7 | 12.6 | -2.2 |
| Paul Pierce | 17.5 | 23.6 | +6.1 |
| Rajon Rondo | 19.1 | 12.6 | -6.5 |
The numbers back up what we've been seeing with our own eyes. Rondo has been struggling, Ray has been slumping, and Pierce has been trying to carry the load. Sure, we need more from the bench, but it wouldn't hurt to have the starters back on their game as well.