What was learned from Christmas

1.  Once again I'll say this, the Lakers are still very good.  They went against a Bulls team who had the advantage of not having to integrate many new players in and didn't have to learn an entirely new system, and they barely lost.  This would be pretty impressive naturally but with Bynum out it's outstanding.  The Lakers are absolutely still contenders.

2.  The Heat are the team to beat.  They play defense, they run the floor, they can move the ball well, they can isolate you, they get the ball inside, their in great shape, they get second chances, and they don't give them up.  The Mavericks may be the defending champions but the Heat are the team to beat.

3.  The Knicks still have the same glaring flaws, and some new ones.  First of all, they may have added a great shot changer in Tyson Chandler, but that doesn't make up for the fact that pretty much no one else on that team understands that defense matters too.  Additionally, they have terrible backcourt play (worse than last season) during the celtics rally in the fourth courter the real problem was their offense wasn't facilitated well at all.  They pretty much had Melo running the point and I think anyone understands someone who can't pass can't play point guard.  Additionally, Dantoni is a bad coach.  Some say he is a great offensive coach but he's not even that good of an offensive coach, Dantoni's teams score a lot because they have terrific offensive players.  First Carmelo Anthony, and Amare Stoudamire are supposed to score a lot, what would be impressive is to get them to play defense.  Additionally, late in the game he made poor decisions, why Jared Jeffries, one of their few players who plays defense, was not in late in the game, confuses me.  Even though they came out with the win, Dantoni won by just having a very talented team, not good coaching.

4.  The Celtics are still good.  They may have lost but honestly, the Celtics looked like the better team.  First of all, on that last play Carmelo wasn't really fouled, but even if, they were extremely competitive with the Knicks despite being without one of their best players in Paul Pierce.  They may not end with the greatest regular season record but watch out for them in the playoffs.

5.  The Thunder will be very good this year.  No need for explanation, they will be one of the best in the west.

6.  Mark Jackson is a very good coach.  They did get killed but quite frankly, the Clippers are a much more talented team than the Warriors and there is nothing that Mark Jackson could do about that, but he had Biedrens looking better than Jordan, and David Lee looking better than Blake Griffin.  This is really the first times I've watched the Warriors actually be effective in the half court set.  Generally Warriors games look like high skill pickup games and Jackson appears to have already changed that culture.  Additionally, they were able to play defense on a very good team, and that was a smart and ballsy decision to pull a Hack-A-Shack on Deandre Jordan.  I really liked what I saw out of him and I think he will be a great coach.