The Heat pulled out a last minute win against the Celtics to extend their winning streak to 23 games. This gives them sole possession of the second-longest winning streak in NBA history, trailing only the 1971-72 Lakers’ 33 game streak.
Speaking of the Lakers and the number 23, they lost to the Phoenix Suns by that margin while Kobe and Gasol watched from the sideline. They remain a game up in the race for the 8th seed in the Western Conference playoff race.
How’s this NBA season working out for you?
Now having the pleasure/misfortune of watching the morning talking head shows on the various ESPNs, I’m a bit disgusted that the analysis of Andrew Bynum’s future with the 76ers is revolving around his hair styles. Apparently, his knees would heal faster if he didn’t change his hair so often. Or something.
You have six years in the NBA to show you’ve got knees, if you’re over 6’10”.
Andrew Bynum doesn’t have knees. I feel bad for the guy, but there you go. He’s never going to be the caliber of player that you need him to be for his size and his contract.
There’s only one player I can think of who came close to delivering part of his promise after it was demonstrated that he had no knees – Patrick Ewing.
(I still wouldn’t take Patrick Ewing, if I was a GM in the 80s. No matter how good he played even on those gimpy knees, those gimpy knees were death).
I have no issues with questioning the Sixers initial deal for Bynum OR questioning the logic in making an attempt to signing him going forward.
But the analysts were going off on how unserious he was taking the season, how he showed no heart or willingness to work… and the evidence of this? His hair styles. I’m not kidding.
The Warriors played well enough at the beginning of the season that their inevitable collapse will be very disappointing. The Lakers played badly enough at the beginning of the season to give me false hope that they wouldn’t make the post-season.
This has been an incredibly boring NBA season, which is saying something, because I generally find NBA seasons pretty boring. There is no real playoff race in the East (barely even any races for position), and the Heat are so dominant in that conference that none of the other teams really matter anyway. On top of that, there are probably 5 teams in the West who are better than the 2nd place team in the East, so as has been the case for some time, so again, the East, except for the Heat, is irrelevant. But in the West, only the Clippers and their switching places with the Lakers are an interesting story. The Thunder are still the Thunder, even without their 6th man, and the Spurs are still the Spurs, even if they have a lot of gray hair. At the start of the season, Houston looked like they might be interesting, with Lin and Harden, but they lapsed into mediocrity and boringness a couple weeks in. The Knicks, too, who at the start of the season looked like they might be able to compete with the Heat, what with the new team-oriented Mello, but alas, they’re really just an OK team in a crappy conference who have managed to pound the heat a couple times while the Heat weren’t playing well, and Mello is really still Mello. Yawn. Let’s just get to the playoffs already.
By the way, if I were Harden, I’d really enjoy this season in Houston when I get to score all of the points and not have to worry about passing the ball all that much, and in the off season, I’d tell my agent to work his ass off to get me traded to a team that has a hope of winning a championship during my playing career.
+1
Last year was interesting because it was the year we got to find out whether the Miami experiment might turn out to be a bust. There wasn’t much reason to think it would, but it was still possible.
This year, the only interesting question is whether the heat somehow collapse in the playoffs, and that’s only interesting in a can’t-look-away-from-an-accident kind of way (which is still interesting, not denying that). But it’s not going to happen, or at least, there’s not enough reason to think it might to make watching worthwhile. Not with two of the three or four most interesting players in the league who might try to make that happen out essentially for the season (I don’t expect Rose to be himself before next year, and possibly never again quite what he was before last spring).
Screw the NBA. The NHL has been where the action is, even with the lockout.
The Nuggets have been a lot of fun to watch this year — young, energetic, and relentless in attacking in the paint. No doubt this run will end in the first or second round of the playoffs, when the refs make their standard playoff adjustments: the defense is allowed a lot more holding, and the three-second defensive violation rule is pretty much ignored.