Where is the love? Why do so many pundits and taking heads consider these guys to be a flash in the pan? As Martin Luther King Day arrives, the Portland Trail Blazers have the second-best record (31-9) in a brutal Western Conference, along with the third-best overall record in the NBA. They have twice beaten San Antonio and Oklahoma City and come up victorious against Indiana, Miami, the Clippers and Golden State. Yet all of those teams continually garner more confidence from
I covered the Lakers in 2010-11 when they were chasing a third straight title and four straight Finals appearances. It was a strange experience. That group started the season 13-2, feasting on a home-heavy, fairly soft schedule. But from there, warning signs started popping up. They had several multiple-game losing streaks, and dropped games to some absolutely hideous teams (the 19-win Cleveland Cavaliers, for example). Those Lakers, save a brilliant run of 17 victories in 18 games coming out of the All-Star
Throw a dart at their schedule, and at any particular moment the Denver Nuggets could look like the worst team in basketball or a monumental success. They opened 1-4, won 10 of their next 12, then not long after dropped eight straight. In the aggregate, Denver is more or less what people figured — a good-but-not-great team capable of making the playoffs, but certainly no lock to do so. The bigger question for the Nuggets going forward is whether they made the
When the Cavs signed Andrew Bynum last summer to a creatively structured, heavily incentivized contract, it was seen as a low-risk, high-reward move capable of pushing Cleveland at the very least into the lower half of the Eastern Conference playoff ladder. Clearly that last part isn’t happening. At least not with Bynum around. The Cavs have suspended Bynum indefinitely, and according to multiple sources are shopping him heavily. The good news? Aside from completely ruining Andrew Bynum Fathead Night on Sunday at
First off, play this video. It is my Christmas present to y’all, and you are guaranteed to laugh at least once while going through this column. And never forget: Laughter kills the blues. You may end up shaking your head, too, because it is an extremely subjective thing to be ranking so many top-tier players who are currently having top-tier seasons. I’ve been saying through the first third of the season that this is a four-man race this NBA season, and the
Doing a radio hit over the weekend, I was asked who has the best chance to upset either Miami or Indiana in the Eastern Conference playoffs. In reality, for either to lose a series before the conference finals will require injuries, a lack of attention to detail essentially unprecedented in postseason history, or both. For the record, we settled on Detroit as a potential apple cart upender, because the Pistons do have – for a sub-.500 team, that is – a lot
There comes a time each day when I need to take a break from basketball. On Tuesday night, there was no better time than after watching the battle between Damian Lillard and Kyrie Irving in Cleveland, an absolute thriller of a game that ended with Lillard sinking his eighth 3-pointer with 0.4 seconds left to improve the Portland Trail Blazers to an NBA-best 22-4. So I shut down the telly, reached the for latest issue of Time Magazine, and learned that Pope
The Clippers are hardly the Knicks/Nets dumpster fire through their first 25 games. They’re not a sub-.500 bunch with a new coach working in the shadow of the old like the Grizzlies, or a sexy preseason Finals pick currently positioned outside the top 8 out West like Golden State. Nope, the Clippers are firmly planted in the playoff picture, coming home for six of their next eight after polishing off a seven-game road trip with a win Saturday in Washington. Chris Paul