A lot has happened since our MVP rankings were published on Wednesday. The Heat have not lost five out of six, blowing a chance to surpass Indiana in the Eastern Conference standings, and the Los Angeles Clippers won their 10th in a row Friday night by defeating Utah as Blake Griffin reached 20 points for the 25th consecutive game. I had Griffin ranked third and James ranked second behind Kevin Durant in the latest edition of the MVP ranks, and now I
Thanks to all those who voted in our poll last week asking whether Kevin Durant or LeBron James is the stronger MVP candidate. The final results were astonishingly close, with Durant taking over Tuesday night as he was scoring 42 points against Houston and winning the poll with 47.10 percent of the vote to James’ 46.33. Is this a preview of what the actual voting will be like? It probably was, and the challenge for the NBA front office in late April and
This keeps happening: I watch the Knicks lose, then I switch the channel and marvel at an ex-Knick leading his team. It happened again Monday night, when New York was losing to Dallas on Dirk Nowitzki’s lucky bounce at the buzzer, and one click of the remote control brought me to Clippers-Pelicans, where Jamal Crawford was burying another seven 3-pointers. Crawford was once a Knick. So was David Lee. And Zach Randolph. And Channing Frye. Any of those guys might make a nice
We’ve been waiting all season for LeBron James to pull a Kevin Durant and go for 40 or more points, and the wait has ended. Did LeBron’s 42 against Dallas last night earn him some love in these rankings? Well, sort of. IMHO, James is the best player in the NBA. But “best” player does not equate to Most Valuable, as the operative word when determining that award is “valuable.” A year ago, Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe felt that Carmelo
It is time to ask the rhetorical question: Is the MVP race over? Has Kevin Durant wrapped this thing up already by guiding the Oklahoma City Thunder to the highest win total in the NBA (30 games over .500) despite the absence of Russell Westbrook? It was about this time a year ago that LeBron James started creating the separation that would ultimately make him the near-unanimous choice (Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe was the only voter who cast a ballot
Back from Vegas, I took in the Lakers-Knicks game at Madison Square Garden on Sunday and listened to a dejected Pau Gasol lament a lack of effort and espouse his frustrations over a lost Lakers season. You can be damn well sure he is looking forward to the trade deadline, waiting to find out if he’ll play a single meaningful basketball game before summer arrives. But once summer does arrive, the big Spaniard is going to have a lot left in the
Adam Silver is a nice guy, or so I’ve come to believe. There are those who will tell you the exact is opposite, but they say so in a whisper. They are not what is known in NBA headquarters as an FOA (Friend of Adam), and thus they fear and loathe him the same way so many basketball fans fear, loathe … and hate, yes hate, outgoing commissioner David Stern. Fairly or unfairly, Stern has become a lightning rod for every grievance
This is the final edition of the MVP Rankings that will be published from our corporate headquarters in New York this month. As I promised in the preseason, I am heading to Las Vegas to gamble on basketball and write about it on this site, diary style. Wish me luck. I know, I know … they build great big hotels in Vegas because of folks who head out to the desert trying to get rich quick. Myself? Not really trying to get