At this point of every season, even 66-game ones, I like to offer a little prayer of thanksgiving: Thank heavens that’s over! If you want to know who I ranked first, instead of copping out again with a 12-way tie, the answer is San Antonio. If you want to know who proved themselves to be best, that would be no one. Not that the regular season was going to tell much about the elite teams, unless one went 60-6. For all the opinions spouted from
LOS ANGELES — I didn’t set out to major in Kobe Bryant, having long since graduated when he showed up here at 17. Things just led that way. I covered his father, Joe, whom he called Jellybean, as a 76ers rookie in the 1970s. I knew the family from Baker League games, where I met Joe’s gregarious father, Big Joe. After not having seen Joe for decades, I ran into him at the 1995 Adidas camp at Fairleigh Dickinson where his
As the drama builds for the ultimate honor that Sheridan Power Rankings (Wednesday Edition) can confer, the leader going into the last week is…. What leader? I can’t think of anyone who should be No. 1, or at least who deserves to have it to itself, so I have a five-way tie for No. 1. No one has led anything lately. Chicago has the best record, plays the best ball night-in and night-out and would be an easy pick… if Derrick Rose didn’t keep
Dwight Howard’s decision to stay another season didn’t turn out to be such good news for the Magic, after all? Gosh, who’d have thunk it? Before zeroing in on the Magic, I should note, in fairness, it’s hardly the NBA’s only dysfunctional organization. Actually, as a former GM noted the other day, dysfunction is the rule, not the exception. Take the Lakers. They’ve been as sharp as anyone despite a sibling rivalry between Jim and Jeannie Buss, with father Jerry supporting Jim and former coach
We have a little shakeup at the top of the rankings, or say good-bye to the Thunder (now No. 3), Bulls (5) and Heat (6). And our newest leader, and The New Team No One Wants to Meet in the Playoffs is…. The Spurs? OK, there’s a stipulation. This is only if Gregg Popovich brings his whole team, since he doesn’t always. While the other good teams have been taking it between the eyeballs, the Spurs coach saw his team win 11 in a
LOS ANGELES — If we’ve yet to see if the road to the Finals still leads through Los Angeles, the road to Los Angeles still leads through the Lakers. The once-and-perhaps-future local kingpins beat their new local rivals, the Clippers, 113-108, moving 2 1/2 games ahead of them in the Pacific Division, locking up the season series, 2-1. Even if it was a Clipper home game, one-third of the crowd was rooting for the Lakers, greeting Andrew Bynum’s put-back for a 2-0
Shortly after its debut, Sheridan Hoops’ Power Rankings (Wednesday Edition) gave the top spot to Oklahoma City. The Thunder then lost their next two games, after which we here at SHWE vowed never to put them at No. 1 again. What we meant was we wouldn’t put them No. 1 until the end of the season or we ran out of teams to put there, whichever came first. Right now, it’s not even close, if you approach it as we—actually, it’s just
Checking back in on that Battle for L.A. we were telling you about…. As in, “What battle?” The Lakers are still the Lakers, more or less, even if we still don’t know what they’ll wind up as, more or less. The Clips are no longer the Clippers, even if Clippers have always gone back to being the Clippers with mass desertions, heads rolling, lawsuits, etc. For the moment, the air has gone out of the Clips’ euphoric breakout—remember Lob City?–even with the team on