The Association is about to hit the home stretch of another strong season; here are the year's best stories so far.
The Lakers Are At Five Minutes To Midnight
Image by Mark Blinch / Reuters
Under normal circumstances, your sport is in trouble when its most high-profile team is 17-24. That's not the case in this year's NBA; with the league still in the midst of a renaissance, swimming in spectacular but unselfish stars on competitive teams, the most captivating story is a bunch of accomplished veterans falling on their face. Steve Nash and Dwight Howard were supposed to help Kobe Bryant win another title, and the Lakers were supposed to win, like, a TON of games. Chris Sheridan, who is a very smart dude and a basketball writer with decades of experience, had them pegged at 70 wins. Right now, they're on pace for 34, and most people are beginning to concede that they probably won't make the playoffs in a hotly contested Western Conference. The Lakers are like if Zero Dark Thirty came out and it was actually Movie 43. Their internal strain is visible on the court, and it's just so transfixingly weird to watch Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, Kobe Bryant, and Steve Nash getting casually whomped by, like, the Raptors. It's as if we could've watched Kate Winslet's face when it slowly dawned on her that she had no way to get out of being in Movie 43.
Right now it looks like there's nothing for the Lakers to do but trainwreck their way until the end of the season. They already discarded coach Mike Brown for Mike D'Antoni. If anything, it made the situation worse; Howard apparently doesn't like D'Antoni's system. It'll be hard to trade Gasol, because they've been messing with his minutes and role for the last two seasons, and he's been so bad that the Lakers have no leverage now in making a trade. Howard's trade value is about as low as could be; there's only a half-season left on his contact, and he still doesn't seem to have recovered from last season's back injury. Their best option might just be to do nothing and hope Dwight gets his act together. Which, actually, worked for another team with a talented malcontent...
Carmelo And The New York Knicks Are Finally Making It Work
Image by Ray Stubblebine / Reuters
Although the Knicks have cooled a bit from their hot start, that's sort of like saying fire is cooler than the sun — they're still second in the East and they still have the league's third-best offensive efficiency rating despite the predictable drop in what was an unreasonably high three-point percentage. Most importantly, and excepting that little episode in which he may or may not have tried to fight Kevin Garnett after Garnett may or may not have told him his wife tasted like Honey Nut Cheerios, Carmelo Anthony has been a smart, consistent player who's having the best season of his career. With Melo as a top-10 guy on a well-coached team that has one of the league's best centers and a raft of handy role players — Iman Shumpert's back, Ray Felton will be back soon — the Knicks have a realistic chance (as realistic as anyone's, anyway) at upsetting the Heat in the Eastern Conference. Speaking of which: