Ice, ice, baby.
Yes, it was a particularly fitting halftime act the Milwaukee Bucks booked Saturday night as they lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder to drop even further behind the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference playoff race. Boylan’s boys dropped two games below .500 and three games behind Gang Green.
Our hopes are fading, but the Bucks – losers of eight of their last 11 games – still have an outside chance to make up that ground and catch the Celtics, over whom they hold they tiebreaker. Chris Bernucca will have a column on this subject today, but can we please, please get a Boston-Miami first-round series to make the East playoffs interesting?
Milwaukee has 10 games remaining and still must travel to play at New York, Miami and Oklahoma City over the next 18 days, so we’re not exactly expecting the Bucks to get the job done. Boston will play six of its final 10 games against lottery teams, and recent victories over Cleveland (stopping a five-game slide) and Atlanta have given the Celtics some cushion to retain the No. 7 seed and set up a first-round meeting with either the Pacers (insomnia cure) or Knicks (Honey Nut Cheerios 2.0).
All that the Bucks will be able to do against Miami is get physical with LeBron James in the hopes that he loses his cool, gets ejected and thereby allows them to stay competitive for at least one game. God help us.
Anyway, in the week since these rankings were last posted, we have seen the end of Miami’s winning streak, the latest manifestation of Pat Riley Hates The Celtics, the demise of Florida Gulf Coast University and the rescue of the Cypriot economy. And really, who could have asked for a better week than that?
Tomorrow is April Fool’s Day, and Skip Bayless is leading the parade through the streets of Bristol. The guy in Milwaukee who booked The Artist Formerly Known as Bob Van Winkle is the honorary Grand Marshal.
Before we continue, a reminder (especially for those who are new to these rankings, an archive of which appears at the bottom of the next page): Ballots from the NBA office should arrive via e-mail in the next week or so, and mine won’t be returned until the morning after the final night of the season (personal rule). Then – and only then – will the MVP rankings really matter.
But they’re still fun, and there is still some shuffling going on beneath Mr. Unanimous.
So onto the ranks we go …