Mike Giuffrida

Image source: clutchpoints.com The opening day of NBA player-signing and trading came with a huge bomb-drop as LeBron made his new decision to take his talents to Los Angeles and the storied Lakers franchise.   While this did not come as a surprise to many, it nonetheless shifted the league’s balance of power to the already-loaded Western Conference.   LeBron has proven in the last eight seasons that his mere presence is enough to carry a team to the championship.   At a time when team basketball and torrid, small-ball shooting is dominating the league, the King is still able to muscle his way through, so to speak.   As a result, not a few experts are predicting the Lakers to make it to the Finals as early as this coming season.   Of course, the West is a different creature altogether.   What has proven effective in past seasons for LeBron-led teams may not work in a stacked conference that features the reigning champs Golden State as well...

Hollywood had its roots as a thriving agricultural community, and when it was established in 1853, there was only a single adobe hut on land outside Los Angeles.   Today it’s the center of the movie industry in the United States, a part of LA in the western state of California. By the 1870s, an agricultural community was flourishing in the area, and crops ranged from grain to hay to subtropical bananas.   In 1887, a man named Harvey Wilcox decided to sell some farmland he owned, hoping builders would put up houses there.   His wife thought the name Hollywood would be great for the housing development, although it should be noted that no actual holly trees grew in the state and she merely liked the sound of the term. As there’s some disagreement around who first named the place Hollywood, another account states that the name was coined by H. J. Whitley, the Father of Hollywood, where he and his wife Gigi reportedly produced the name in 1886 while on their h...