Prelude: Warriors achieve bombshell success with superstar swap for The Greek Freak.

BREAKING NEWS: The Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks and Milwaukee Bucks have agreed on a blockbuster seven-player trade that includes a league-record 5 year, 253 million new contract for the league MVP of just three seasons ago, Giannis "The Greek Freak" Antetokounmpo.

It was long feared and rumored that the Warriors would make a play for the superstar forward and they got the job done. Three years removed from the second of repeat NBA Finals appearances, Antetokounmpo told reporters at the Warriors jersey reveal for #34 how, with all due respect to the organization that drafted him after several teams had passed him by, he failed to see as bright of a future for the Milwaukee Bucks, a team that had not even made the Eastern Conference Finals in the last two seasons after bowing out to the Spurs, 4-1, in their second NBA Finals encounter that had been Antetokounmpo's MVP run.

To convince Milwaukee to accept the offer and to honor the salary cap rules, the Warriors parted with several future draft picks, including some from the New York Knicks in exchange for the services of Draymond Green, whose contributions to the Warriors have slipped in recent years since their era of contention with the Spurs. Green will form a rough-rider trio with Mitchell Robinson & DeMarcus Cousins, fresh off an impressive rookie campaign for LaMelo Ball at the helm that took the Knicks not only to the elusive post-season but also the second round before losing to the Celtics.

The big ticket item that sealed the deal was Klay Thompson, as the separation of powers saw the split of the Splash Bros in Golden State. One season removed from tearing his left ACL that saw Thompson show flashes of his pre-injury star talent, the deadly sniper will surely make some noise in Wisconsin. Many fans have pondered over Klay having his own team to lead forward, and now we'll see it happen. He joins Khris Middleton in Milwaukee, along with Brook Lopez, but not with point guard George Hill (who's agreed to join the rising Mavericks). The Warriors also parted with sophomore stud center, James Wiseman, a promising big man that will help soften the blow of losing Giannis. Also going to the Bucks is Eric Paschall.

Golden State's return for Draymond Green was two second round draft picks, along with Danuel House and divisive prospect Kevin Knox, III, who'll look to enter the next phase of his development with Coach Kerr and hopefully console the sad Warriors fans in Klay's stead. Keeping Andrew Wiggins--who'd long been rumored to be the one leaving--will also help the Warrors make a strong starting lineup. Golden State will be boosted by the well-known kinship of Giannis & Steph Curry, the bonafide leader of the team. Parting with Thompson is definitely a sore move, but it has necessarily secured the future of Golden State. As Curry begins to exit his prime years, the Greek Freek is just now entering into his own with stellar production.

Prelude: League approves rule changes, reassigns divisions & reseeds playoffs.

The NBA's Board of Governor, at whose helm is Commissioner Adam Silver, in cooperation with the Players Assocation, had a busy summer with plenty of exciting changes to show for it. "We always want to offer a product on the basketball court that is most competitive, exciting and fair to all teams. Parity is the goal," Silver said. The first announcement of new division reassignment took effect as team organizations soon on-the-move received official notice of the positive vote. The vote is believed to make for more competitive divisions.

Secondly, teams will now only have six seconds to cross the half court boundary before being whistled for a violation. This rule change is expected to increase tempo of the product to hold fans' interest better and reward the opposing team's defensive effort and penalize the offense for not being able to advance the ball in what the league describes as "a timely manner", as in recent history on several occasions there has been countless near-violations, were it not for the eight-second duration bailing out the offense due to a desperate long heave of a pass. The next rule change will revert what has become the "World vs USA" rookie/sophomore players during All*Star Weekend back to being "Rookies versus Sophomores" as the league has cooled on the idea of foreign talent matching up against American talent, given the prevalence of foreign talent in today's game. Going back to basics on the concept will also re-focus on the development of two-years players against promising rookie talent.

Finally, and most exciting of all, is a restructuring of the playoffs. The noise finally got too loud to ignore any longer, as re-seeding the playoffs for competitive balance over viewership concerns has been a hot topic for years, given the ebb and flow of the eastern conference. Who wants to see the Lakers or Clippers knock the other out before the NBA Finals? Push will naturally come to shove, but we could potentially see the Spurs against the Lakers/Clippers for the NBA Title--not just for the Western Conference crown. Moreover, it would eliminate a one-sided, usually four-game sweep of a mediocre #8 seed by the dominant #1 seed. This rule change resonates as a timely move, honestly, given the bombshell news of Giannis Antetokounmpo heading to a western conference team.

The rule change will instead honor win/loss records of the top 16 highest-performing teams, with relative advantages in bracket placement like we've had so far (i.e. we won't see the #1 & #2 win/loss teams squaring off in the first round). It almost guarantees that if the best teams play well, they should meet at the end--not somewhere in the middle like in years past. It could also showcase cross-conference match-ups, as we could wind up seeing a total of 9 contests between two teams that normally only see each other twice in the regular season before seeing potentially seven more cross-conference games in the NBA Finals. The division reassignment will also alleviate travel burden on teams far away from the other that wind up facing each other. Moreover, the NBA Finals (usually a travel-heavy affair) could possibly have both the Lakers/Clippers or Knicks/Nets or Mavericks/Rockets staying home for seven games, eliminating most home court advantage and travel altogether. It is also believed the re-seeding decision will encourage teams in the running for a playoff spot to compete even harder, and for those teams that may have given up, to enter the fight since there is now a chance to face an inner-conference opponent, or perhaps a rival team out west. And who doesn't love rivalry games?