News; Figuring out the East's beast among season-opening queries

Nothing like coming right out of the box with the Eastern Conference version of King Kong vs. Godzilla as Boston and Cleveland square off for the 2009-10 season opener.

A healthy Kevin Garnett has returned from knee surgery and is back in the Celtics lineup that is now deeper with the free-agent additions of Rasheed Wallace and Marquis Daniels. The Cavs, of course, did a little off-season shopping of their own, accessorizing the LeBron James collection with that big bauble named Shaquille O'Neal. The winner here gets to strut around as Beast of the East, at least until the end of October.

Can the King and I make sweet music? Most of the time, the defending champions give themselves a few weeks or months to determine whether the chemistry that won last season can be re-created in the lab. But the Lakers wasted no time swapping out Trevor Ariza for Ron Artest and now they'll get to spend the next six months looking over their shoulders and wondering when Dr. Jekyll will turn into Mr. Ron-Ron. Nothing like opening night at the Staples Center on Tuesday against the Clippers for the ring ceremony to get a peek at the early marriage of the new happy couple. No, not Lamar and Khloe. We're talking Kobe and Artest.


So are we chopped liver? Well, practically nobody believed in them all of last season when they were rolling up an impressive 59-23 record. Then nobody believed they'd get past the Celtics in the second round of the playoffs. Then nobody thought they could beat Cleveland. Then right up until Dwight Howard missed those two free throws at the end of Game 4, Orlando actually had a real chance to take down the Lakers and win a championship before a world of disbelieving eyes. Now they've unloaded two-fifths of the starting lineup (Hedo Turkoglu and Courtney Lee) that got them to the Finals, plugged in Vince Carter and are back to facing doubts again.

Can the Answer shoot down the questions? He may not play in Memphis' season opener against his former teammates in Detroit due to a partially torn left hamstring, but that's only the least of the concerns surrounding Allen Iverson. The bigger question is whether the former MVP and three-time scoring leader can sublimate his ego to become a smaller part of a young Grizzlies team that is trying to finally take a real step forward. With shot machine Zach Randolph already thrown into the mix that supposedly has Rudy Gay and O.J. Mayo as the main ingredients, this could be a recipe for disaster.

Can they go back to the future? The Spurs and Hornets are a couple of teams that wouldn't mind flipping the calendar back a couple of years to recapture the old spark. The Spurs haven't been this enthusiastic since their last championship in 2007. They've brought in wing man Richard Jefferson to boost their offensive production. But the bigger news is that Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili are all healthy again. Meanwhile the Hornets were a rising West power two seasons ago, but fell off and flamed out last year. They swapped Tyson Chandler for Emeka Okafor in the middle, but never saw their new center (toe injury) on the floor once in the preseason.

Did anybody get the license number of that truck? The last time most of the world saw the Rockets, they were putting up a gallant fight against the eventual champion Lakers in the second round of the playoffs. They were, in fact, the only team to push Kobe & Co. to a seventh game in any playoff series. But since then, the Rockets' hopes have been flattened. No Yao Ming for the entire season. No Tracy McGrady for at least a month. So Ron Artest took a quick glimpse at the wreckage and fled to the Lakers. Welcome to Houston, Trevor Ariza.

How long will this Booz cruise last? After spending his summer indicating he'd rather be elsewhere, Carlos Boozer is back again with the Jazz and vowing to be productive in the middle of the lineup. But with the team having spent big money to keep Paul Millsap in the fold and Boozer slated to become a free agent next summer, it might only be a matter of time before he's sending out those change of address notices from Utah.