It’s the final stretch, lets take a quick look at what’s going on around the league:
Tankapalooza 2012 has begun. This is the time of year players sit out with mystery ailments, random D-league players all of a sudden get huge minutes and teams try really hard to look like they are trying without really trying. So far Golden State is 1st in the league in playing below their potential to try and get a high draft pick.
It’s real tight in the west. The #3 and #9 teams are 5 ½ games apart and it looks like Houston, Denver, Utah, and Phoenix will be in a dogfight for the last two spots right until the end. With Grant Hill now out for the season it’s probably safe to say that Nash’s last year as a Sun won’t end in a playoff berth.
The playoff race isn’t as exciting out east, it’s basically New York and Milwaukee fighting for the last spot, while everyone else in the east is either tanking or fighting for playoff position.
Speaking of the Knicks, Jeremy Lin is out for the rest of the season as well as Amar’e Stoudemire. This will make the race for the 8th spot a lot closer than it should have. This will also be considered the biggest bust of a season in perhaps all of Knicks history if they don’t make the playoffs as expectations were so high going in to the season.
At some point Kevin Love is going to get sick of scoring 25 points and grabbing 15 boards every game but never winning.
Kobe started off 1-15 last game but hit the final shot and everyone in L.A. said how he’s the greatest and most clutch guy in the league. (this, my friends, is called sarcasm-ed.)
Everyone has been looking at a Thunder/Heat finals, but I’m starting to get the feeling we may have a Spurs/Bulls finals. The Spurs made some sneaky good moves in the last few weeks and may have their deepest team ever. The Bulls keep winning even without Derrick Rose and his supporting cast looks much better than last year.
Lamar Odom still sucks. What happened to him? I’ve never seen a non-injury related falloff like his in my entire life.
(make sure you’re checking out Jay’s podcast)