Look at the amount of low-scoring games that are taking place night after night and look at how many injuries are being accrued. How many all-stars have are currently hurt right now? By my off-hand count, at least four: Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, Al Horford and Manu Ginobilli. I’m sure I’m missing one or two guys as well.

But watching these sloppy games just isn’t fun. Who wants to see the Toronto Raptors play three games in three nights? I don’t even think the fans would appreciate that.

Our Raptors reporter Ryan Wolstat pointed out in today’s Sun that the Raptors had a full practice on Tuesday for the first time in almost two weeks. The next scheduled one is almost two weeks away too! How is this good for teams?

There’s no time for rehabbing players — and there’s a lot of them — to get back into rhythm before stepping into a game.

Look at the Raptors’ Aaron Gray. He was an off-season addition who has missed time with a leg injury and also some minor heart surgery. He hasn’t had a chance to even get a real practice with his new team in and somehow he’ll be expected to step on the court when he’s fit. How is that good?

A sport like baseball can live with a play-almost-everyday schedule because it doesn’t involve the level of exertion that other sports do.

Like I said at the beginning of the NBA season that this year would wear on both its fans and its players. I don’t think I could have been more right.

I’ve also changed it up a bit, not just previewing what I think of each team. You might say that it’s a bit more condensed, you know, like this freaking ridiculous NBA schedule. I could also make the joke that I’ve changed my system, unlike the NBA did after sitting on their asses stubbornly for months at time.

Also let’s face it; I’m not going to call it the 2011-12 season because only a week’s worth of games – as condensed as they may be – isn’t enough to waste those extra characters.

So, without further ado, here’s what will happen during this NBA season.

-We’re going to see a lot of injuries. Players haven’t had training time to ease into the season and will face a barrage of games. This will lead to…

-We will see a ton of NBDL callups. Hey, somebody has to play the third game in those back-to-back-to-backs, right? And don’t expect older teams like the Celtics, Lakers or Spurs to be trotting out their stars for a second longer than they think they have to.

-The Miami Heat will win it all. They’re better than everyone and don’t have a clear rival to oppose them. We will make fun of LeBron’s fourth-quarter failures, but he might not even be needed to come through this year.

-Speaking of LeBron, he’ll win the MVP. If only because I expect Dwyane Wade to miss a week or two. Carmelo Anthony should win the scoring title and finish second in MVP voting.

-Derrick Williams will win rookie of the year. Kyrie Irving has too much of an uphill battle playing for the Cavs.

-The Thunder will collapse under the weight of enormous expectations. This Durant-Westbrook dynamic is just not healthy. Can they really win it all?

-The Lakers and Mavericks aren’t in trouble. Both are older, both lost their first two games, but both will make the playoffs. They just won’t be very high seeds.

-Derrick Rose won’t repeat as MVP. Why not? Because now we know what to expect of him and will be disappointed if the Bulls don’t finish atop or near the top of the East.

-The Clippers won’t be as good as people think. Two reasons: Their coach is Vinny Del Negro and their starting shooting guard is an over-the-hill Chauncey Billups, who normally plays the point.

-We’re going to see some good movement at the trade deadline. Teams are going to be looking to shake things up as the new pieces of the CBA puzzle fall into place. Plus, players coming back from China will be looking to sign with contenders that might need to shuffle things around.

-Dwight Howard will finish the season in Orlando. There’s no way they can deal him before hosting the all-star game, then it may be too late. Plus, there’s not a lot of trade suitors out there right now. The Nets are most likely, but Brook Lopez – their key trade chip – is injured.

-More stars than usual will miss or skip the all-star game. Who wouldn’t want some extra days off this year? It’s a joke that all-star weekend wasn’t scrapped entirely.

-There will be more tanking than ever. The reasons: This draft is going to be super loaded, teams are going to be legitimately bad, it’s justifiable to sit banged up players, the condensed schedule means that players will be playing poorly anyway.

-Don’t expect any back-to-back-to-back posts about the NBA on this blog. After nearly blowing up their season to get a new system, it was a slap in the fans’ faces to come back with only a few minor changes. I’m outraged at how piss-poorly David Stern is running this league, from the lack of urgency in negotiations, to the prolonging of the lockout, to the condensed schedule money-grab, to the vetoing of CP3-Lakers deal. It’s all a huge f***ing joke.

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While I could rail on about how they just lost two months worth of play and solved almost nothing. But I’m sure you’ve already read about that elsewhere.

I could tear into them about how they jam-packed 66 games into 124 days, gave every team at least one back-to-back-to-back stretch and some seven-games-in-nine-days marathons, yet still kept the all-star back. But not right now – there’s plenty of time to ream the schedule makers when players are being rested and the injury lists grow to unheard-of proportions.

Or how about the fact that two superstars have already demanded trades – one a trade to a specific team – while they still have a season left on their contracts. But was anyone really surprised that this sort of thing would still happen?

Nope. Today’s post is about how ridiculous David Stern and the NBA are acting with this whole Chris Paul fiasco.

Let’s just start with the fact that it is a massive failure when any league has to own one of its own teams. That’s the case with the New Orleans Hornets right now and with the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes – a subject for a future blog post should the league not sell after this season, as they have said they would even if it involved moving the financially failing club.

So, for all the wrasslin’ fans out there, or anyone who even knows a little bit about the WWE, David Stern is playing the evil commissioner almost as well as Vince McMahon did.

He’s vetoing trades and undermining Hornets’ GM Dell Demps’ authority left and right. He’s allowing teams to discuss trades up to the point that they’re sent to the league – like any deal – and shot down. And he’s hurting his entire league by allowing rumours to circulate about stars being moved, essentially making them feel unwanted by their current squads and then forced to show up to training camp the next day.

Twice Paul has been on the verge of being sent to Los Angeles – to both the Lakers and Clippers – and twice the NBA has stepped in and shot down the attempts. Twice the deals were actually fair and twice they failed.

Hell, for the Lakers trade, they actually said that the deal would be “bad for the league.” Are you serious? Putting a star in a big market while also helping two mid-market teams? How is that bad for the league?

It is completely unrealistic for the NBA to think that they can get anything more for Chris Paul in this market than what they’ve already been offered. With CP3’s list of teams he would actually re-sign with, there is already a very limited market for him. That market shrinks when you add what the NBA considers a fair value for him.

The league should never step in to stop a team from making player moves, even when it does own it. The last time I can remember the NHL vetoing something was when the Devils tried that super-sneaky, super-long deal with Ilya Kovalchuk that fudged his cap number severely. Has Gary Bettman ever had anything to say about the Coyotes making a trade? Not that I know of and not that he should.

Ultimately, David Stern has damaged his legacy in the past year more than anyone could have thought. When we think about Stern’s rule of the NBA, this sad last chapter will leave the foulest of tastes. And there’s no way that he can possibly recover.

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There are a lot of questions that should be asked, so why not throw them out here and then not expect a reply from the NBA or the entity formerly known as the union.

-Why wouldn’t these two sides start sitting down with each other seriously back in August, when the players seemed too busy because many were touring the states, playing charity event or pickup games at places like Rucker Park?

-Why wouldn’t the owners realize that they’re also losing money too and damaging their product and its reputation by cancelling games and possibly an entire season. Did they not see how their sister sport, the NHL did? After all, many of these teams play in the same buildings and even have some of the same owners.

-Why didn’t the players start the decertification process earlier if they were seriously interesting in it? When the NFLPA decertified, it was long before games were at risk of being cancelled giving it a realistic chance of helping them get a deal. This move by the NBPA now puts this entire season in serious jeopardy by getting the courts involved.

-Why didn’t the owners offer up a better deal? The proposed 50-50 split in Basketball Related Income seems fair to just about everyone on the outside, but it would be a massive loss for the players, who were getting 57% in the previous deal. I don’t see why the owners couldn’t accept the 52.5% deal the players were offering and then set the deal for only three or four years, then come back to the table.

-Why didn’t the players offer a counter proposal at their press conference? The NBA’s final proposal, as posted by the New York Times, didn’t seem too terrible and featured a system that would have helped level the playing field in the league. So why did the NBPA push the proverbial button and blow things up? Could they not have thrown back a proposal based off of that deal?

-Why were none of the league’s proposals even put to a vote by the union? The NBPA seemed to act like most sports unions, catering to its top stars while somewhat ignoring the middle class. So what if one of these deals was better for those guys, the majority of its constituency? Well, we’ll never know now.

-Will more players head over to Europe and China now to play? One would think that with the season on the verge of cancellation, a mass exodus to the European leagues could start very soon.

-Will a deal get done in time to save the season? Considering the decertification process will tie the two sides up in court for a while now, the best case scenario may be a season like 1999: Shortened to half the length in games, but still seriously compressed. Then, we’d see a lot of out-of-shape players playing a lot of back-to-back-to-back games. That’s not fun for anybody and even further punishment for fans.

Follow me on Twitter @danbilicki

Thanks to this bickering over a percentage point or two (OK, I realize that could mean about $125 million going one way or the other), we missed out on the Dallas Mavericks raising their championship banner and handing out the most gaudy championship jewelry sports has ever seen. We missed out on what likely would be the final season as an apex predator that Kobe Bryant will have. And he would be facing one of the best two-headed scoring monsters around in Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.

And we missed the snore-fest that would have been Houston-Utah.

Instead, we had footage of Durant playing flag football, rumours of a French team gunning for Joakim Noah and not a single update in negotiations.

The road that we’re currently on is only going to get darker. The longer these two sides fail to compromise on the biggest issue at hand – basketball related income – we’re going to see more and more games cancelled.

At the beginning of all of this, Grantland columnist Bill Simmons wrote an NBA source said that between the time that a deal was finished and the regular season could start, the time would likely be a month. After all, we’d still have to go through a truncated version of free agency – like the NFL had – as well as some short period of camp and probably a couple of pre-season games.

So, if you have some hope for the Association opening in time for those massive Christmas games, when casual fans usually start flocking to the NBA in time for the stretch run, you better be hoping that this deal is hammered out within a month.