Even 15 years ago, keeping track of a U.S. sports team from the other side of the world would have been a dicey proposition. The first sport-specific bloggers were just firing up. (This was even before Bill Simmons.) Not every newspaper paid close attention to its website. (I worked at a place where the managing editor brought up “our web presence” at every managers meeting in that era, and that was when the rest of us would roll our eyes.)

Even espn.com was just getting cranked up. Or that is my recollection of the period, anyway, which is hazy because I was almost never online, to tell the truth.

And five years before that? Say, 1990? For someone in Abu Dhabi who wanted to follow the NBA, we would have been hunting for newsstands hoping to find two-day-old U.S. newspapers. Calling friends at home and asking, “who won the game on Sunday?”

But now … I can’t be at Staples Center, but I can see NBA video clips online, I can choose among bloggers (hello, Brothers Kamenetzky) and study boxscores posted about 10 seconds after a game ends …

And I have a new take on the Lakers, the Miami Heat and the NBA, and how this season isn’t quite coming off the way we anticipated it would.

–Turns out the Heat won’t instantly rule the world the way we thought they would. Dwayne Wade and LeBron James are having difficulty putting up numbers in the same game. Chris Bosh is clearly a third banana (think “Lamar Odom-style third banana”), a guy who averaged 20 and 9 for the first part of his NBA career who will be lucky to average 15 and 7 on this team. (My regrets, to fantasy-leaguers who drafted him high, but you should have seen this coming.)

Miami is 5-4 and has lost twice at home and twice to Boston, and the team has issues. Now, don’t overreact and say the Heat will never be really, really good, or even great, and maybe even this year, but this team is not going to win 70 games. It may not even win 60.

–The diminished Heat changes the Lakers’ approach to the season, and perhaps not in a good way. A month ago, most of us thought they had no chance, none, of finishing with the best record in the league — and securing home-court advantage throughout the playoffs. But now they do have a chance, and that should now enter Phil Jackson’s calculus on how they play. Short-term, he needs to consider making the effort to have the best record. (Think of how Game 7 of the Finals might have unfolded last year if that game had not been in L.A.)

Which means perhaps more minutes than he would like for Kobe Bryant, especially. Kobe averaged 31 minutes in his first eight games, which would be his lowest total since before he could legally drink (1997-98) and a full seven fewer than last season. Normally, that would be a good thing, resting a 32-year-old guy with a post-op knee and all those miles. But if the Lakers have a shot at Best Record, and they would seem to, maybe Phil has to play Kobe more (he went 41 minutes last night in the Lakers’ first loss). Until it becomes clear (if it does) that the Best Record is unattainable. Then you dial it down and just make sure you’re seeded in the upper half of the Western Conference playoffs.

–We have at least two more teams in the championship mix,  the Celtics and the Orlando Magic. We gave lip service to those two teams as contenders, but did we really believe it? Nah. The Magic would just overpower Boston’s geezers and the erratic Magic. But either one of those teams — especially the savvy Celts — could take out the Heat even before the Finals. Absolutely. Plus, we have to look at Oklahoma City, for sure, and maybe even New Orleans and Portland and consider them capable of stopping the Lakers in the playoffs.

Anyway, this season is not as preordained as it felt, a month ago. It is not Lakers-Heat in for the championship, with Miami probably winning. The Heat is 5-4, can’t play defense, can be torn up by strong players under the basket (Paul Millsap, 46 points?) and has a dysfunctional defense. Maybe LBJ & Co. figure it out next week or next month, but it might not be till next year.

And I know all this because of the Internet Age. Two decades ago, I might still be wondering what the Lakers did last Sunday.