New Season, New Beginning

With the 2017-2018 NBA season coming up, a lot of changes have been made in the NBA. Free agents, trades, and even NBA logos and jerseys have been changing and buzzed about for the past couple of months. Recently, the NBA and Nike signed an agreement, revealing the new jerseys for this upcoming season. Each team will now have a new and improved jersey with a Nike logo and any brand, or company, that each team will represent.

Additionally, in terms of trades and rumors, there have been blockbuster trades done this past summer. Lakers D’Angelo Russell signed with the Brooklyn Nets; Paul George is heading to OKC Thunder; Chris Paul is going to the Rockets; Kyrie Irving is headed to the Celtics; and most recently, Carmelo Anthony is headed to the OKC Thunder to join Westbrook, and George. Fans and social media have been going crazy over these trades, saying that Free Agency was much more interesting than the NBA Finals.

Despite there being more blockbuster trades, we’re only going to talk about the craziest trades that have happened this past summer. One of them being the Paul George trade and Kyrie Irving trade. Originally Paul George released a statement saying that he would much prefer joining the Lakers in 2018 Free Agency. However, the Pacers managed to trade him to the Thunder mid-way through the summer. Paul George has already shown interest in joining the Lakers. However, his main goal, like all other NBA players, is to win. Paul George said in an interview regarding his state in OKC, “If we get a killer season in Oklahoma, we make the conference finals or upset the Warriors or do something crazy, I’d be dumb to want to leave that.” (Sports Illustrated).

On the other hand the Cavaliers had an up and down season. Despite winning a title a couple of seasons ago, the Cavs didn’t have enough strength to muster and defeat Kevin Durant’s Warriors. Since then, it has been all disaster for the Cavs. There were no trades and acquiring new players was hard. The GM of the Cavs stepped down, as well. At this point Kyrie thought about being traded, which he did eventually. There have been rumors LeBron also wanted to leave and join the Lakers next season; obviously, it isn’t confirmed yet. Regarding Kyrie’s trade to the Celtics, he said, “I have nothing but love for Cleveland. I have nothing but love for the time I spent there. It’s nothing about that” (WEEI Sports Radio Network, Alex Reimer).

With the new season coming up in a few more weeks, everyone is anxious to get to see their favorite players play on different teams. There’ll be new faces, as well as familiar faces.