It's time to go fill out your brackets and enjoy the show! I filled out one today and plan to fill out at least one more in the coming days. Does anybody have any upsets that they feel strongly about? Good luck to everybody!

What were your thoughts so far? What do you think of the piped crowd audio? The sound in general? Plans for crowd participation? Has Adam Silver done a good job thus far in bringing basketball back?

It's lacking some excitement for me, but pleased to have basketball back in any way shape or form.

Apologies for the title, it's not worded that well but I don't know how to word it better. In addition to the CBA cutting ties with the Rockets, Tencent will no longer report on the team or show their games. The Rockets have been China's favorite NBA team ever since Yao Ming was drafted by them in 2002. He is now president of the CBA, but that doesn't say anything about what input he had into these decisions. The Rockets are also one of the main contenders for the championship going into this year since Russell Westbrook was traded to them over the summer. They also have the storyline of Westbrook and former teammate and longtime friend James Harden being reunited after three seasons together on the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Here are a few articles/references about the subject:

ESPN article

Yahoo Sports

Tweets by Tencent's former Rockets reporter

ESPN article about team owner Tillman Fertitta tweeting disagreement with Morey

Edit to add another article: Chinese consulate in Houston statement

NYT article

Nike pulled all Rockets gear from their Chinese web store

An open letter in support of China from Joe Tsai, owner of the Brooklyn Nets, posted on r/nba. Original on Facebook linked at the bottom

Rockets star James Harden says 'sorry' to China over Morey's tweet

NBA reporter Shams Charania says the league is not punishing Morey

Slate article about the incident

For those of you not following the NBA too closely you might not be aware but tonight the Magic play the Heat. For about the past month or so the two teams have been battling out for the final seed in the Eastern Conference Playoffs. I'll re-cap why this is so important for the Magic since they're the team I support and maybe some Heat fans can hit back with a reply for why it's so important to them.

1. In the 2011-2012 season the Magic entered a dark period called the "Dwightmare" where their best player who had led them to an NBA final Dwight Howard began stirring up drama within the organisation. Dwight was traded in the offseason to the Lakers giving serious deja vu of Shaq's time in Orlando. Since 2012 the Magic have consistently been cursed to mediocrity and missing the playoffs.

2. Magic star Nikola Vucevic (a player acquired from the Dwight trade) has been constantly underrated and disrespected by people around the NBA. After 7 seasons Vuc has finally made the All Star team and has led this team to exceed the expectations set at the beginning of the season. It is also important to note that Vuc has not made the playoffs either since 2012 when he was playing with the 76ers.

3. The Magic are 0.5 games behind the Heat, whoever wins this match will take the 8th seed from the other and likely bring a lot of motivation and momentum into their next games therefore being more likely to make the playoffs.

There's many more storylines to this match than I've put in here but I feel that this gets the main gist of why it's so important to fans of the Magic.