Dissecting The 2012-2013 NBA Schedule

By Derek Page

For the first time since way back in the 2010-11 season, the NBA is going to proceed in having a normal, 82-game season for 2012-13. Gone are the back-to-back-to-backs and ridiculous number of games over the span of a week. Now, both NBA teams and fans around the world can get back to their regularly scheduled regular season this fall after the mess that was the shortened 2012 season.

Freshly released Thursday evening, the schedule for the 2012-13 NBA season features plenty of highly anticipated matchups, homecomings and everything in between. Without further ado, let’s dive in to next season’s NBA schedule:

Opening Night

Opening night for the upcoming season will be on Oct. 30, with the Boston Celtics and Miami HEAT opening the season at 8 p.m. EST followed by the Dallas Mavericks at the Los Angeles Lakers at 10:30 p.m. EST. Each game will be televised nationally on TNT.

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Danny Ferry’s Overhaul Gives Hawks More Options

By Lang Greene

The Atlanta Hawks have been one of the most successful NBA franchises in recent history, recording five consecutive playoff appearances. However, it has been the club’s inability to advance past the second round of the postseason during the streak which has garnered the majority of attention. The widely held belief was the team’s core had reached their ceiling as a collective unit and changes needed to be made.

The first change for the organization came in June when the franchise announced the hiring of Danny Ferry to take over as the team’s president of basketball operations and general manager.

Ferry hit the ground running and started implementing his plan of getting the Hawks over the proverbial hump, first by dealing six-time All-Star guard Joe Johnson to the Brooklyn Nets and then trading starting small forward Marvin Williams to the Utah Jazz.

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Toronto Raptors Plan For The Playoffs

By Stephen Brotherston

Like many other NBA organizations, the Toronto Raptors used the Las Vegas Summer League as an opportunity for a little team-building and in-house propaganda. For those players not trying to make an NBA team, Vegas is a low pressure environment in which to wave the flag and set some early expectations for next season. The message the Raptors are sending is that it’s time to get back to the playoffs.

“We had dinner last night with a few of the guys and some of the coaches and (making the playoffs) are the expectations,” Landry Fields said. “Coach Casey spoke about that briefly, but that’s our goal for this year and hopefully we get there and anything can happen.

“Speaking with Kyle (Lowry) and with Coach Casey, things are looking up and the whole atmosphere and chemistry that we have going on starting right now is very beneficial for us this season.”

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Coach: Evaluating Summer League Performance

By Anthony Macri

Summer League Performance Evaluation

Evaluating talent in a single tournament or short-term competition setting can be treacherous.  A tendency creeps up on many coaches and evaluators, not to mention fans, to look at statistics or some measurable production value.  This approach is short-sighted and ultimately fails to tell the proper story of the player being evaluated.

Instead, anyone trying to gauge the performance of a player in a setting like this would do better to look for a few specific things on the floor.  These items may not be objectively measurable, but in such a small sample size as five or six games, data is largely irrelevant anyway.

Here are four things that I look for in such an evaluation opportunity:

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Orlando and Vegas Summer League All-Stars

By Joel Brigham

The NBA’s Summer Leagues — both the Orlando and Las Vegas versions — are a lot of work for everybody involved, even though die-hard fans are really the only ones that make the games appointment television.

Still, there’s plenty to learn from what goes on at both Summer Leagues, and the following is a list of the best players from the last few weeks’ worth of play.

One note—only players who contributed in most of their team’s games are on this list. Players like Wes Matthews and Kawhi Leonard made appearances, but more as tune-ups rather than for experience. They’re not on this list because they just didn’t play in enough games, but there are still plenty of excellent young players on this list who did.

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