The 10 Biggest Storylines to Watch This NBA Offseason

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Winning an NBA championship is only the beginning. First there are the parties. Then there is the massive hangover. THEN comes time when you have to do it all over again. Great teams win titles, singular—historic ones win titles, plural. We all know that Mark Cuban is willing to do whatever it takes, but will the Mavs still have the same hunger and drive now that they're the hunted rather than the hunters?

Yao Ming hasn't been out injured for two straight seasons, it just—actually, he has been out injured for two straight seasons. Yao has played just five games total after the '08-09 season when he played in 77. He's a free agent this summer, and vows to retire if he doesn't respond well from his latest treatment, but someone will take a flier on a career 19 and nine guy anyway, right? We'll see.

Following his Celtics' (still sounds weird) elimination at the hands of the Miami Heat, Shaquille O'Neal finally called it a career after 19 seasons and four NBA titles. The MDE couldn't get that one last championship (and couldn't stay healthy this last season), but with a possible extended vacation and some much-needed rest, who knows how he'll feel when next season gets around to starting? If MJ taught us anything it's that no retirement is etched in stone. Not sure whether we've seen the last of the Diesel (hey, at least we can hope, right?)

As the Spurs ran away with the League early on this season, it seemed that the rumors of their demise were greatly exaggerated. Sure, Gregg Popovich was his usual self-effacing self, but as they continued to build the League's best record, it was hard to accept that they WEREN'T contenders. (Meanwhile, Charles Barkley never wavered on the Mavs being the best team in Texas—well played, Chuck.) Well, the Bulls caught them for the best record, the freaking Grizzlies knocked them out of the playoffs in the first round, and...yikes.

Other than the voters, it doesn't seem like many people were happy when Derrick Rose was named MVP. Sure, his Bulls had the best record in the League, and yes, he carried the team when Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah missed tons of games early, and yes, sometimes he had to channel 2001 Allen Iverson to win games—in both output and efficiency. But hey, he won. So now comes the hard part—how do you top an MVP season? His Bulls losing to the Heat should provide plenty of motivation, let's see what he does with it.

Not sure whether you noticed amidst all the Heat-la, but Kobe Bryant didn't play in the NBA Finals this year. In fact, he didn't play in the Conference Finals. And while the team that swept out his Los Angeles Lakers went on to win it all, one imagines it was small consolation to the League's most competitive player. Kobe will be 33 years old next season with nearly 50,000 minutes played. How much does he have left?

When the Knicks traded everything and the kitchen sink for Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups back in late February, it was supposed to be a franchise-changing move. And it was, right up until the new-look Knicks were swept out of the first round by the old-looking Celtics. "But the move wasn't for this year," Knick fans protested. Well then. So what happens when next year comes? Or the year after that, pending a lockout (keep reading)?

Neither Dwight Howard nor Chris Paul are free agents this summer, but there's a decent chance they've both played their final full season for the teams they entered the League with. Howard has already expressed his lack of interest in signing an extension, and Paul's future with the NBA-run Hornets is anything but solid. Get the Trade Machine going now and beat the rush.

Did anyone actually expect the Miami Heat to win an NBA championship in their first season together? Once they eliminated the Celtics and the Bulls it seemed all but inevitable, but before that there were the usual growing pains and struggles. A team many picked to win 70 games didn't even win 60, and after taking a 2-1 lead over the Mavericks in the Finals, they lost three straight games. So how do they respond? Do they say "Hey, we were a few lucky bounces away from a championship, we don't need to change," or do they take a long, hard look at themselves and retool? And most importantly, do Juwan Howard and Big Z come back?

This, of course, is the question on which all other questions ride. The CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) expired this year, and the owners seem willing to play hardball in order to get some draconian cuts—the elimination of guaranteed contracts being just one of them. And while the players have known about this for a while, the owners are always better prepared to ride out a work stoppage. The two sides are talking, but trying to bridge what feels like an unbridgable gap. A lockout seems inevitable. Which, after a wonderful playoffs and a ratings-bonanza Finals, seems like a terrible shame. Our best guess? The League parties like it's 1999 with a 50-game schedule—although even that may be optimistic.