Thursday 17 October 2019 17:40, UK
As the start of the season beckons, a cross-section of notable basketball superfans tell Sky Sports what they are most looking forward to about the NBA in 2019-20.
Kieran Donaghy is best known for a trophy-laden Gaelic Football career that saw him win four All-Ireland Senior Football Championship medals, 10 Munster Championships and three National League titles with Kerry. He was also voted National Footballer of the Year in 2006.
But Donaghy is a dual-sport star. In addition to still playing Gaelic Football at club level, he is also the starting guard/forward for the Garveys Tralee Warriors, current champions of the Irish Super League, the top level of basketball in Ireland. He was also voted Player of the Year in 2005 and is the only player to have that honour in both codes.
On top of that, Donaghy is extremely active in grass-roots basketball, running a camp every year where NBA luminaries like shooting coach Dave Hopla, who has worked with Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and Stephen Curry, share their expertise with Irish youth players.
This NBA season is going to be brilliant. Kawhi Leonard has saved the league in many respects. What he did in Toronto last season will keep the Raptors alive and buzzing for a very long time. I don't think he owed them too much more after carrying them through the playoffs and bringing them a championship.
Until last season you knew the Golden State Warriors, if they stayed free of injury, were going to win a lot of games and were odds-on to win the championship. But last season, they lost key guys down the stretch and got caught by the Raptors. This year we have so many one-two combos around the league - along with serious teams like the Philadelphia 76ers and Milwaukee Bucks all contending.
In going to the Clippers, Kawhi has made a move that allows him to write his own story now and he'll be playing for a great coach in Doc Rivers in Los Angeles. That'll be an interesting combination and I'm keen to see how they work out. Rivers is a very energetic guy and a straight talker and Kawhi seems to be the sort of guy who reacts well to that.
I love the Clippers roster. Lou Williams is great coming off the bench. Patrick Beverley is one of my favourite players in the league.
The moves the Clippers have made have really ratcheted up the city rivalry in Los Angeles. Clippers-Lakers is a game we're all going to watch every time they play. I think interest in watching NBA games will go through the roof.
Six or seven teams can legitimately consider themselves title contenders this season, that's a situation we haven't had in the NBA for a long, long time. There's real excitement about all these teams going against each other. If Kawhi had gone to the Lakers, Brooklyn, we wouldn't have this wide-open race for the championship.
Instead, we're back to a situation that reminds me of the old days with Larry Bird and Kevin McHale and the Boston Celtics going up against Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Lakers with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen's Chicago Bulls pushing them both.
The NBA has never been this accessible before and I think kids are finding the game a lot cooler than when I was young. Footballers would laugh at me for liking basketball when I was a kid. These days the young footballers I meet know more about the NBA than I do. They know about free agency, draft prospects coming up, I'm blown away by their knowledge of the sport.
Technology has made the league more accessible too. When I was young I used to get video cassettes of games sent from America. It took about three weeks to get to Ireland. We had to go down the video store to get the man to convert the tape from American format to Irish so we could watch it. Then we'd watch that one game on repeat for about a month! Now you can watch what LeBron or Westbrook did overnight, all the crazy plays, when you're on the bus on the way to school.
The game has never been more popular in Ireland. I'd love to see more games in Europe, four teams playing each other across several countries.
I'm tied to the Chicago Bulls, I'm a Jordan guy. That was my generation. But this season, I'm very much leaning towards the Clippers with Beverley and George, players I really like. If Pat Beverley is fit and playing well, he can play an important role in helping the Clippers to the championship.
If you needed an NBA player to turn out in GAA - or if you needed a right-back to play for Manchester United - Patrick Beverley is the guy you are looking for. You can't teach what he has. Show me a coach who can teach a kid to have Beverley's intensity, hunger, never-say-die attitude, will to win and application. He's not worried about what other people think of him. He's just out there winning for his team-mates.
Other teams in the league might not like him I guarantee if you ask his team-mates, they'll say you can't get a better team-mate than Patrick Beverley.
