With two thirds of the NBA season gone, it’s time for contenders – whether they be for the lottery, the playoffs or title itself – to make a run. And as a result we have seen the Spurs, Rockets, Jazz and even the Charlotte Bobcats reel off multiple-game win streaks.Â

But this week we pause to take a deeper look into the NBA and focus on 2 players and 2 teams that had a standout past 7 days;

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teams of the week

Cleveland Cavaliers

With last month’s trade deadline rapidly approaching, the reigning Eastern Conference Champions had lost 4 of their past 7 games.  Instead of contending for the crown with Boston and Detroit, they were locked in a battle with Toronto for home court in the first round. And whatsmore, key guard Boobie Gibson had just been added to their long and growing injured list. The Cavs looked weary.

But instantly, Danny Ferry’s 11-player trade reinvigorated this team. In the 7 games since, the Cavs have won 5, including 3 Ws this week against Minnesota, Chicago and New York. Sure, most playoff teams would be able to go undefeated against these 3 opponents, but since the trade there is a freshness and a liveliness inside the Quicken Loans Arena once again.

Despite his MVP-level numbers (averaging 39 points on 52% shooting, plus 7 rebounds, 10 assists and 2 steals on the week), this hasn’t all been because of the on-court the play of LeBron James. This new Cavs outfit is still feeling each other out; it’s just that you don’t gear any excuses about it like there are presently coming out of Phoenix and Dallas.

Delonte West, Ben Wallace, Joe Smith and Wally Szczerbiak all still look odd in their new Cavs uniforms. Mike Brown is working hard keeping the gameplan simple. The crowd is generously responding to the effort and commitment of the newcomers. And of course, LeBron has been truly phenomenal; shrugging off the sprained ankle he suffered against the Celtics last Wednesday week with a string of superhuman performances.

The way James has stepped up over the past week to ease the impact of this potentially tumultuous mid-season transition signals the latest stage in his development as a team leader. Remember, he went to the Finals with Larry Hughes and Donyell Marshall; they achieved amazing things together.

LeBron didn’t want them gone. But he didn’t complain when they were traded away. He didn’t say the newcomers were better. But he immediately gave them his approval.  It was a mature and subtle approach from a young man who – let’s face it – has played with different teammates every year he’s been in the league.

On the day after the deadline, the Cavs hosted Washington with an 8-man lineup including Eric Snow, Dwayne Jones, Kaniel Dickens and Billy Thomas. But they also had LeBron. Had he wanted to, James had a perfect excuse to concede this ballgame, but his is a personality that accepts responsibilty. He doesn’t want to let his franchise down.Â

And over the past 7 games, his 4 newest colleagues have been playing excellent basketball, enough for the casual fan to look past the fact the Cavs remain a long way from where they need to be. But the fact remains their frontcourt rotation, even when fully fit, has enough limitations that opposition coaches believe they can exploit. Their current starting backcourt has size and ballhandling issues and their chemistry off the bench will likely be a work-in-progress for the remainder of the season.

Yet all this is the hard part. The easy part is being a franchise that possesses one the game’s top 5 players (by any measure) on court for 40 minutes a night. And make no mistake, LeBron is carrying this team at the moment. He already has it free of charge, but he is earning the trust of his new teammates. All he expects in return is for them to re-pay him when he asks them. In the playoffs.

So instead of being afraid of a likely 4th seed, the revitalized Cavs are now looking forward to their potential second round matchup against Boston with a renewed sense of confidence and belief.

New York Knicks

On Tuesday, ESPN gave the world another reason to believe their ‘S’ in fact stands for ‘speculation’. The usually well-respected Chris Sheridan gave us a ridiculously under-researched piece about how Isiah Thomas – New York’s President, General Manager, Coach and general whipping boy – was going to be sacked.

On Wednesday, Thomas coached the Knicks. To a 119-105 defeat against Cleveland.  In game where the desperate hometown fans dispensed more love to the opposition than they did towards their own team.

What ESPN and the broader media in general continually fail to consider when banging off another of those anti-Thomas rants that serve only to make the writer feel superior is that his relationship with the Knicks isn’t about short-term issues like winning basketball games. If it were, he’d have been sacked long ago.

This week, for instance, the Knicks lost 4 games in 6 days – defeated by 6 points in Atlanta, 24 in Orlando, 12 at home to New Orleans and 14 by the Cavs. But the fact is that this is simply not big news in New York City.

The Knicks are a team that, after years of mis-management under Scott Layden, were never going to be fixed easily or quickly. And in Isiah Thomas’ first season in charge, they qualified for the playoffs. What James Dolan and the suits at Cablevision want is the same thing that Thomas wants – a team that is a legit championship threat, not a marginal playoff participant.

And that’s the core problem. Under Thomas’ tenure, the Knicks have actually regressed from 39 wins in 2003/04 to an average of 29.7 wins in the 3 seasons since.  In 2007/08, they’re currently sitting at 18-43, the 3rd-worst record in the entire league. Even if you are one of those managers who works on a 5-year plan instead of 3-year one, this is far from acceptable.

And it’s not as if Thomas has eliminated the bad contracts and salary cap mistakes of the past. The Knicks’ historic (and hysteric) payroll situation is legendary – he is paying in excess of 96m in salaries this season, the second highest in the league (Dallas, who won 67 games last season, is first at 101m). By comparison, the salary cap is 55.6m.

And it’s not getting any better anytime soon. The Knicks have just one player, raw big man Randolph Morris, whose contract expires this offseason. They are paying a total of 10.6m to players who are no longer actually playing for the club, and another 44m in players who arguably shouldn’t be – Stephon Marbury, Eddy Curry, Jerome James, Jared Jeffries, and Malik Rose. That’s 55 million dollars right there.

This is not a healthy situation. And these depressing numbers are obvious and inarguable reasons Thomas takes so much heat for his decision-making running, coaching, and management of the Knicks. And that’s just the basketball side of things.

So why does he still have a job? Because Cablevision know that by paying one man to do 3 jobs, they have saved not only some of the money they’ve spent on their playing roster, and at the same time they are preventing any confusion as to who is responsible for any and all bad decisions. It’s no longer a case where Lenny Wilkens or Larry Brown can be scapegoated into being responsible for the failure of Thomas’ good ideas. The buck now stops with Zeke.

Also, Isiah actually does know how to identify draft prospects, an area where even respected general managers are surprisingly patchy. It makes sense to keep Isiah around at least until the lottery is drawn, since New York’s terrible record gives them a good chance at a top 3 selection in the 2008 Draft. In Nate Robinson, David Lee and Renaldo Balkman, Thomas has drafted cleverly over recent years and – so long as he doesn’t end up trading them away for expensive veterans like he did with Channing Frye (for Zach Randolph) – he is building a team with young, valuable, affordable parts.

Presumably, for somebody else.

players of the week

Kevin Garnett

In many ways, the rampant and passionate MVP-debate between Kobe and LeBron is a wonderful thing for Kevin Garnett, the leader of the team with the best record in basketball.

Firstly - as an NBA opponent - it allows him some media freedom to continue doing his wonderful, intense, joyous thing in the privacy of his new home town, to the adulation of his new home fans. And second, it means that - as an NBA fan – he will be able to enjoy the head-to-head battle between 2 of the game’s elite players for years to come. A fully fledged sporting rivalry is one of the few things that excites both the general public and the network executives in equal measure.

This week, Boston became the first team to qualify for the 2008 playoffs, defeating Charlotte, Atlanta and Detroit to extend their winning streak to 6 games, and their lead over the Pistons in the standings to 4.

And this week, the Big Ticket averaged 22.7 points, 10.3 boards, 3 assists and a steal. He shot 55% from the field and 77% from the line. He had 1 turnover in 32 minutes against the Bobcats, 16 rebounds and 20 points against the Hawks, he scored 30-plus for the first time in Celtics colours yesterday against Detroit.

The C’s broke out to a 10-1 lead, but by midway through the second quarter the Pistons had pegged the defecit back to 3. Then Garnett had drew a foul, made 2 FTs, a layup, a jumper a rebound and a dunk in the space of 79 seconds for a personal 8-0 run to push the Celtics away again. He’s a warrior.

After sitting out 24 days and missing 9 games with his abdominal strain, Garnett is back to lead Boston into the postseason. They want the #1 seed. They want home-court advantage. They need to give themselves every opportunity to maximise the opportunity from that massive pre-season gamble that cost them 7 players and netted them one of the most unique NBA specimens of this generation.Â

This is why Danny Ainge opened the bank for PJ Brown and Sam Cassell, why Doc Rivers has been easing KG’s minutes back into the high-30’s, why they valued the tie-breaker against Detroit so highly this week.Â

Make no mistake, the unmitigated transformation that’s taken place in Boston this season is all down to one man. It’s the same coach, the same uniforms, the same banners, the same legacy. But everything is different.

And it’s the man in the middle of the defense, the middle of the action, the middle of the huddle, the middle of the photographs that’s the reason.

Marko Jaric

If you’ll excuse the phrase, the ubiquitous wolves have largely vanished from outside Kevin McHale’s door recently.   Considering what Chris Wallace did with a blindfold, a safety pin and Pau Gasol a few weeks ago, the relative value of the players and picks that Minnesota gained in exchange for KG last summer seems like a king’s ransom.

Rather quietly, the TWolves are growing into their stereotype as a young, well-balanced team with optimism and a future. Certainly they’re nearer to making the playoffs than Memphis are. And possibly the Clippers.

However, the shadow of the past can still be seen hovering over the pretty finger-paintings being made by the children of the present. Despite nabbing Randy Foye and Corey Brewer in the past 2 drafts and trading for Sebastian Telfair and Kirk Snyder in the past the 9 months, the Timberwolves have a man called Marko Jaric still on their roster.

This week, he played in 3 of the TWolves’ 4 losses, and scored a total of 2 points on 1 of 10 shooting. Ouch.

For some reason, Jaric is still playing an average of 12 minutes per night, despite being so obviously superfluous to either Minnesota’s current needs or their future plans. And Jaric is earning $6 million this season – more than Foye, Bewer and Rashad McCants put together.

So why keep him? Why not buy him out like they did with Theo Ratliff and tried to do with Antoine Walker? If he’s so obviously unhappy, why keep him around and risk damaging either the chemistry of the team or the development of the kids.

It’s just as well his contract expires this summer.

Oops, no it doesn’t; he’s signed until 2011. Thanks, Kevin.