Links of the Day (October 15, 2010)

• When are you glad your team just missed out on drafting Dirk Nowitzki? When the guy who falls to them is Paul Pierce. I'd like to think I would have said that before the championship, but I can't say for sure that I would have.
• I'm not ready to go this far, but I do expect that the Lakers won't be as good as they were last year, nor as good as many are expecting them to be. It's a weird thing to say about the defending champs who are bringing every key player back, but Kobe and Bynum already have injury concerns, Odom played all summer, and their big free-agent splash was Matt Barnes. Dismiss it as a hunch, but that's the way I feel. I wonder, though, if last season had ended differently, would I perceive LA as hungry for revenge and Boston as the team who had had its last hurrah, instead of vice versa?
• Bill Simmons ranks NBA teams based must-seeability. I bring it up because my buddy Dave, a possible RwH reader, asked me a similar question recently: He was contemplating a Wizards five-game season ticket package (he lives in D.C.), and only one of the games could be from the Celtics-Lakers-Heat trio. As a Celtics fan, Boston was a no-brainer, but he wanted my opinion on the other four. My list: Oklahoma City (Kevin Durant is the kind of player who makes you contemplate having children just so they will have a chance to see him), Chicago (mainly for Derrick Rose, but also to heckle Joakim Noah), New York (should be a ton of fun to watch this year), and the Los Angeles Clippers (for Blake Griffin). My personal list would have Minnesota on it instead of the Clippers (obviously) and I think I would have mentioned Washington if Dave lived in another city (for John Wall). I also contemplated Houston, simply because I've never seen an NBA team play consistently hard as last year's Rockets did. Throwing Yao back in the mix will slow their pace down a bit, but who doesn't like watching Yao? He Tingting, Lin Jie, and Han Bin, that's who.
• CBS wants to improve "One Shining Moment." Easy fix: Bring back the Teddy Pendergrass version. I know Luther Vandross is a legend, but no one sang it like Teddy.