With Final Push, Dragic Can Lead Suns into Playoffs, Clinch Most Improved Player

In these rankings, much like in life, you’ve got to be lucky to win.

You can be the same exact person, with the same skill set and attitude, but if that ball doesn’t bounce the right way, you don’t get the recognition you deserve.

Take UConn coach Kevin Ollie.

If 7-foot freshman center Amida Brimah, who hasn’t played more than four seasons of organized basketball in his life, doesn’t complete a ridiculous three-point play with less than 25 seconds left in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, UConn doesn’t get past St. Joe’s.

The Huskies finish a middling season with a first-round tournament exit, and Ollie is thought of as a middling coach.

Instead, six wins later, the second-year coach is being hailed as one of the best in the game, and rumors are swirling about NBA teams coveting him.

It’s the same way at the office.

You can chip away, meet your numbers every month as a salesman, but you don’t win the Employee of the Month Award if that snowstorm doesn’t hit, and you don’t have that hernia spreading 35 pounds of salt across the parking lot.

See? It’s all about luck.

As the NBA season hits its homestretch, each Most Improved Player candidate will need a little bit of luck to win the Kels Dayton Memorial Trophy at season’s end.

Specifically, they will need the Phoenix Suns to miss the playoffs.

If current rankings leader Goran Dragic can push Phoenix past a more talented Memphis Grizzlies squad in the West, he will probably take home the award. The Suns would be the most surprising playoff team in years, and Dragic is their leader and best player – kind of like the Shabazz Napier of the Suns.

If  Phoenix falls short, it will open up the door for Clippers big man DeAndre Jordan or Pistons center Andre Drummond. At least that’s the way I see it.

There’s not much Jordan or Drummond can do individually. It’s all up to the man in the sky, or the rabbit’s foot, or Frank Sinatra – whatever controls luckiness.

And if things break right, they will get that hernia they so desperately need.

On to the rankings.