Can you smell that? It smells like freedom — like Star Wars, winter crispness, bacon, Big Red and the movie “Aliens.” It smells like all the good things in this world rolled into a tight bundle and smothered with cheese dip.

Friends, it is the smell of the 2007-08 basketball season starting up, and by gar, it's been a while.

I love the NBA, and I love living in this city when the NBA revs up. But mostly, I love sitting on my big, fat butt on my big, fat couch in front of my big, fat TV on Thursday nights and watching the NBA on TNT and “Inside the NBA.” It gets my Jiglees going.

A Jiglee is kind of like Chunk's “Truffle Shuffle” from “The Goonies.” Except how I do it is, usually before each Spurs game, I go out on my front lawn and shout through a big bullhorn “Prepare to be sexified!” Then I shake what my mama gave me, run a lap down the street shouting, “Spurs!” and then plop on my couch just as the game tips off.

And on those occasions that the Spurs are on TNT, I give the routine a little twist. I can't really get into the details of that twist because my wife has ordered me not to. But on Nov. 15, when the Spurs play the Dallas Mavericks on TNT, cruise by my neighborhood for the full Monty. So to speak.

As for the crew of “Inside the NBA,” they are the best sports analysis team ever. Period. No question. Any sport.

Don't give me cracks about crotchety Howard Cosell, dainty little Bob Costas, that moron Bryant Gumbel, “Fox NFL Sunday,” the old NBA on NBC or those lousy excuses for NBA broadcasters and commentators on ESPN.

They got weak kung fu and all pale in comparison to the sweet majesty of his smoothness Ernie Johnson, master mouth Charles Barkley and the fleetness of feetness Kenny Smith.

These guys know the sport of basketball better than any group currently announcing the game. They have great and easy-to-understand play-by-play breakdowns on the games. They serve up copious amounts of levity within their analysis that never fails to make you smile.

Best of all, these guys have the chemistry of the “Three Musketeers” and can make you laugh like no other combination of sports commentators ever has.

Granted, the courtside teams for TNT are not as sharp as their studio cohorts, but damn, come on. Craig Sager, anyone? The man has a fashion sense on par with Moses. Marv Albert, David Aldridge and some of the others aren't too bad. They lost Steve Kerr to the Phoenix Suns, but the show has not missed a step from 2006-07.

You can check out the show's full schedule at nba.com/schedules/national_tv_schedule/.

In the meantime, scram, I got a Jiglee to do and a game to watch.