RISING
1. The scoring-champ race. Three points. As of now, that’s all that separates Kobe Bryant (1,616 points in 58 games for an average of 27.86 points per game) from Kevin Durant (1,786 points in 64 games for a 27.91 average). Had Bryant, over the course of the season, made one more 3-pointer, he would be at 1,619 points, which would bump him slightly ahead of Durant in terms of scoring average.
Bryant has one game left, on Thursday in Sacramento. He has averaged 26.9 points against the Kings, the sixth-most against any team over his career. Durant has Sacramento (against whom he averages 28.3 points) and Denver (29.6) remaining. That means Durant is in the driver’s seat, but Bryant must make up only those measly three points.
In the end, it might be a more entertaining battle for fans and media members—both players, who faced each other on Sunday, have said that winning the title is not a big deal. “You guys know I can get it,” Bryant told reporters. “I’m not really tripping about it.”
2. The Pacific Division race. Back on March 23, it looked like there was no real reason to count the Clippers as a challenger to the Lakers in L.A. The Clippers had lost three straight and were 3.5 games behind the Lakers, with rumors being floated about the job security of coach Vinny Del Negro.
But give the Clippers credit—with their come-from-behind win over the Hornets on Sunday, they posted their 14th victory in their last 17 games, which has kept pressure on the Lakers to keep winning. The Lakers can wrap up the division with a win in Sacramento on Thursday, but should they lose, the door will be open for the other team in L.A.
3. Monty Williams. There is a new ownership group for the Hornets, and while there had been some trepidation about what might happen with the front office and coaching staff in the wake of the sale of the team, Williams has certainly made a strong case for keeping his job. He has established himself as one of the league’s brightest young coaches, and has shown here at the end of the season that the Hornets might have been a pretty good team had they been healthy—with star shooting guard Eric Gordon back from a knee injury, the Hornets have gone 5-2. Thanks to Minnesota’s late nosedive, the Hornets are likely to head into the 2012 NBA Draft with two top 10 picks, making the future fairly bright for Williams’ bunch.
FALLING
1. World Peace. Just when everything had been going so well for Metta World Peace, the player formerly known as Ron Artest, he goes and delivers an ugly blow to James Harden’s skull and gets ejected from the Lakers’ win over the Thunder on Sunday. MWP has averaged 15.9 points, 4.0 rebounds and 3.2 assists in his last 10 games, shooting 49.6 percent from the field. That had to make coach Mike Brown and his Lakers teammates feel pretty good about what they might get out of World Peace, who struggled for much of the year, in the postseason. Then came the elbow, and it will likely cost World Peace a five-game suspension, minimum—it would not be surprising to see the league come down hard on him, and knock him out for 10 games.
With only one regular-season game remaining, the Lakers will be without their starting small forward for much of the first round of the playoffs, and perhaps much of the second round, too.
2. New Jersey. A total of 35 seasons in New Jersey will come to an end on Monday when the Nets host the Sixers, and it will not be a finale awash in glory. The Nets will close out in Newark, their temporary home for the past two seasons, with one of the NBA’s worst records and one of the league’s saddest attendance figures, as they prep for their escape across the river to Brooklyn, where they’ll open the Barclay’s Center next season.
The franchise had one brief spurt of glory, a decade ago, when Jason Kidd, Kenyon Martin and Richard Jefferson helped lead them to the Finals twice, but beyond that, it has been a woebegone franchise, with more coaches (17) than playoff appearances (16) in 35 years. Of those postseason appearances, only six lasted beyond the first round.
3. Warriors’ draft. Everything seemed to be going so well at halftime of the Warriors’ game against the Timberwolves on Sunday. They trailed by 16, and looked like a pretty good bet to drop their ninth straight game, which would have moved them into a three-way tie with the Nets and Raptors for the sixth-worst record in the league. But then the depletion of Minnesota’s roster began to outweigh the depletion of Golden State’s roster, and the Warriors rallied to win by five. That keeps the Warriors at 23-41 and holding the eighth-worst record in the league.
Golden State has a vested interest in losing and falling behind the Raptors and/or the Nets in the standings—they owe their draft pick to the Jazz, unless that pick falls in the top seven. Some good scheduling is in line for the Warriors because, if they can lose their last two games, Toronto and New Jersey close the season against each other on Thursday. Someone has got to win that one.
RANK 'EM
(last week’s rankings in parentheses)
1. San Antonio Spurs (1).
2. Chicago Bulls (3).
3. Miami Heat (4).
4. Oklahoma City Thunder (2).
5. L.A. Lakers (5).
6. Indiana Pacers (7).
7. L.A. Clippers (6).
8. Memphis Grizzlies (8).
9. Boston Celtics (9).
10. Atlanta Hawks (10).
11. Denver Nuggets (12).
12. Dallas Mavericks (14).
13. Utah Jazz (19).
14. Orlando Magic (11).
15. New York Knicks (15).
16. Philadelphia 76ers (16).
17. Phoenix Suns (17).
18. Houston Rockets (13).
19. Milwaukee Bucks (18).
20. Portland Trail Blazers (20).
21. Detroit Pistons (25).
22. Toronto Raptors (21).
23. New Jersey Nets (22).
24. Golden State Warriors (23).
25. Minnesota Timberwolves (24).
26. New Orleans Hornets (26).
27. Sacramento Kings (27).
28. Cleveland Cavaliers (28).
29. Washington Wizards (29).
30. Charlotte Bobcats (30).
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