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KD had a helluva summer. He should have a helluva NBA season, too. (Flickr/GAMEFACE-PHOTOS)

Nuclear winters, like Kris and Kim, are so yesterday.

If you’re a fellow NBA junkie, the past several days have been filled with suspicious joy — a happiness imbued with a faint fear that this delicate dream of a 2011-12 NBA season could collapse at any given moment. But as we read news outlets churn out rumors about Dwight Howard, Chris Paul and Rajon Rondo as if they had them stored up for a time such as this, it becomes easier to let down your guard and embrace the season to be.

As a fantasy basketball blogger, I’ll admit that the coming season fills me with 99 percent cheer and 1 percent fear — cheer because I get to participate in and write about the game I love again; and fear because of the rust I’ll have to work off while knowing the window for educated preseason analysis will only be open sometime after Dec. 9 and before Dec. 25.

So, it’s with a curious mix of joy, fear and disbelief that I present to you my updated rankings of the top 150 fantasy basketball players for the 2011-12 NBA season.

By now you’ve surely heard or read that the NBA lockout is all but over. This is, of course, fantastic news.

Now the question is: What does this mean for fantasy basketball this season? (Boy, does it feel good to be able to write “this season” without a cynical smirk plastered on my face and a bitter tear in my eye.) We’ll delve deeper into the fallout through the coming weeks, but here’s a quick rundown of some of the important things to keep in mind for now: (continue reading…)

These guys...

The NBA owners and players reached a tentative agreement to end the lockout and start the season on Christmas Day.

Here are the key dates under the tentative agreement:

Dec. 9: Training camp opens
Dec. 9: Free agency begins
Dec. 25: NBA regular season begins

Read up on this joyous development here:

CBSSports.com

ESPN

Yahoo