Ladies and Gentleman, it's official. The NBA regular season matters. It matters a great deal. After having a week to absorb the 39 point trouncing the Boston Celtics delivered to the Lakers in game 6, I began to reflect on the 2007-2008 NBA season as a whole. While I have many thoughts on what was the best NBA season in recent memory, one thing stood out from the rest.

Simply put, home court advantage is a beast. However, while the importance of home court in the NBA playoffs and all major sports is nothing new, this season showed that advantage above and beyond.

I can't count how many times I heard the line "they held serve, now it's our turn to go home and do the same" in a post game interview. I'm almost glad the season's over, because if I had to hear that line again I might have puked all over my 50-inch plasma. Since when does the NBA need to resort to tennis analogies?

But, I digress. How about some stats?

2008 NBA champion Boston Celtics playoff record
* Home: 13-1 (.929)
* Road:  3-9   (.250) – the worst road winning percentage of any champion in NBA history.

Looking at only recent NBA playoff history, the combined playoff records of the previous eight champions (2000-2007) was 51-29 (.638). Included in that bunch is an impressive eight road wins by the San Antonio Spurs in 2003 and a perfect 7-0 by the 2001 Los Angeles Lakers. A far cry from the Celtics 3-9 disaster this season.

Watching the Celtics play on the road was like watching Fredo arrive in Cuba with $2 million in cash in Godfather II: scared, nervous, out of his element and needing a strong drink just to calm his nerves.

So what happened? It's really anybody's guess. It may just point to the increased parity in the NBA, as evidenced by the tightest regular season race in Western Conference history, but that still doesn't explain the Celtics road woes.

How does a 66-16 team, with an impressive 31-10 road record, manage to go 0-6 against two teams, Cleveland and Atlanta, which were a combined 82-82 this year? Was there something in the water? An NBA conspiracy? Who knows. But, what I do know is that the implications for the 2008-2009 season are huge.

As we began to see in the Western Conference already this year, we are going to see top-notch, playoff caliber basketball in the NBA regular season from day one next fall.

Top Western-Conference teams will be eyeing the Eastern-Conference standings on a daily basis and vice-versa, with everyone, looking to grab the number one seed for all the playoffs, not just their own conference.

Inter-league matchups will be intense, and star players will probably log record-breaking regular season minutes. Kobe Bryant will probably break the record for technical fouls, Tim Duncan and the Spurs will start playing their A-game in October instead of January, and ticket sales will reach an all-time high.

All I have to say is, I am looking forward to the show. Can we fast forward to Halloween?