It’s cold. It’s dark. It’s the week before the Super Bowl. Which means it’s officially the middle of the NBA season.
It’s this time of year that everyone talks about when they mention the dog-days, the dreary, drowsy, my-body-can’t-get-out-of-bed days. When games run into one another and the excitement of the playoffs (or the hopes of the lottery) seem a long, long way away.
Let’s take a look at 2 players and 2 teams who had a standout week over the past 7 days.
teams of the week
Orlando Magic
Sometimes, after enduring a demanding, demoralising, demeaning road trip, teams return home so exhausted and frustrated that they never recover. The balance of an entire season can be stigmatised by the hangover experienced during the long days of travel and long nights of hostile crowds, bad calls and back-to-back losses.
But, other times, teams are able to come away from a challenging inter-conference road swing with a renewed sense of toughness and a revived bout of self belief. Such has been the case for the Orlando Magic.
Earlier this month, Orlando played 4 games in 5 days, all on the road, and all against challenging Western Conference opponents.  And this road trip was part of a miserable start to 2008 for the team, which had turned the year comfortably in first place in the Southeast division. But by January 12th, they had dropped 5 of their 6 contests for the month, and were only 2 games ahead of the Washington Wizards in the standings. Things looked bleak.
This is when Stan Van Gundy stepped up. Rather than trying to forget, or deny, the challenges they had faced on the road, Orlando decided to embrace them, to own them. By making it difficult for other teams to come into the O-rena and win. By using their familiarity with the local rims to generate high-percentage shots. By attacking the basket and putting the onus on the officials to give them the home-town calls.
As a result, the Magic were undefeated this week. They beat the red-hot Portland Trailblazers at home on Saturday, won the game at the buzzer on Monday against the tenacious Detroit Pistons, and cruised past the over-matched Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday.
And it wasn’t the usual suspects of Dwight Howard (16 points, 11 rebounds, 3 blocks) and Rashard Lewis (16 points, 39% on threes) doing all the damage, either. In the absence of Jameer Nelson, Orlando’s ad-hoc starting backcourt of Maurice Evans and Carlos Arroyo played superb defense and contributed timely buckets throughout. The Magic bench lead by Keyon Dooling, Keith Bogans and Brian Cook provided the ideal mix of points, rebounds and energy. And the NBA’s most unappreciated player, Hedo Turkoglu, averaged 24ppg shooting 54% from the field and 60% from the arc (plus 6 rebounds and 6 assists per night). Superb.
Orlando are back to 10-games over .500, and just 3½ behind Detroit for 2nd place in the race for home-court in the second round of the playoffs.
Atlanta Hawks
If you had told the 2006/07 Atlanta Hawks that by the halfway point of this new season they’d be in 7th place in the East, have the 7th-best team defense in the league (by points allowed and by opponent FG%), and have taken a key step to resolve their ownership struggles, they’d probably have been delighted.
But instead, the 2007/08 Hawks are actually struggling quite alarmingly. Their on-court leader has been mis-firing offensively all season, their former-starting center is arguing with their coach, and they have lost 4 straight games and 5 of 7 since having a Win overturned on appeal 2 weeks ago.
Atlanta’s current record of 17-21 may be good enough to rank them ahead of Chicago and New Jersey (for the time being), but as the season enters the second half, the challenges faced by all teams – especially fragile ones like the Hawks – become intensely magnified.
This week, Atlanta couldn’t withstand the emotional trip to Toronto where rookie Al Horford was boo’d and jeered, they couldn’t stem the confidence of the young Portland team that beat them at home in OT, and they couldn’t keep up with a Denver Nuggets team playing without Carmelo Anthony.
The Hawks, as is typical of young sides, have trouble setting the tempo and end up playing the type of game that suits their opponents and exposes their own weaknesses. Against smart, physical teams, they inevitably get frustrated and caught up in all the jumping and the fouling. Against active, high-scoring teams, their turnover-prone, low-percentage shooters end up committing lots of turnovers and taking lots of low percentage shots.
It’s undeniable that Atlanta possess a tremendously talented roster – former 5th overall pick Shelden Williams came off the bench for just 4 minutes of court time this week, and the little-used Lorenzen Wright would probably be a 6th man in New Jersey, Charlotte or Miami. And as coach Mike Woodson tells himself continually, when you’re dealing with this quantity of youth in a pro-sport setting, any progress is good progress. For instance, this season, the addition of Anthony Johnson’s experience and ego has been a true success to their formerly troublesome point guard position, and the impressive growth shown by Marvin Williams at forward and Horford in the middle has been ahead of all expectations.
Nevertheless, the Hawks’ list of problem areas remains long. They need more consistent contributions from their bench, they need better ball control and offensive execution, and they need to learn the difference between playing defense in the paint and blocking shots. Atlanta have a long way to go before they become anything more than a team of nuisance value to the real franchises in the league.Â
players of the week
Baron Davis
Forget the fact they sound like the name of a 70’s pop group, Baron Davis and the Warriors have taken the league by storm over the past 12 months. Davis, now in his 9th season out of UCLA, is simultaneously playing with maturity and freshness, with veteran knowledge and youthful fearlessness that underpins his immense basketball skills. And it’s great to watch.
Baron’s on-court presence combined with Don Nelson’s structure (and yes, for all the spontaneity, there is sound basis to the way Golden State play) has made the NBA fun again. And not just for himself or his fellow teammates, Davis’ love for the game has reinvigorated the entire franchise and Golden State fan base.
These Warriors certainly aren’t unbeatable (just look at their loss to Minnesota on Monday, or their 4th quarter collapse in Indiana the previous week), but when you think they can’t win, that’s when they do their damage. And Davis is front and center of everything they accomplish.
In their 4 games this week, Davis played 167 out of a possible 192 minutes, averaging a stunning 25 points, 6 rebounds, 7 assists and 3 steals. He scored 40 in the United Center against the Bulls. He racked up a triple double against Jason Kidd, holding him to just 6 points. He jacked up shots, he picked pockets, he found guys open under the rim. He laughed and jawed and pointed and holler’d.
And he did it all with a smile on his face.
Ricky Davis
The trouble with being blessed with astounding athletic gifts is that, when the body ages and the skills start to fade, you often realise far too late that you don’t have any fundamentals to fall back on. Such is the sad case of Ricky Davis.
When Davis was traded from the going-nowhere Minnesota Timberwolves to the Wade-and-Shaq infested Miami Heat late in last summer, he was absolutely delighted. No more losing streaks, no more criticism, no more Kevin McHale. Life on Miami beach would be sooo much better.
But now, Davis must feel he brought the dark clouds of despair along with him. The Heat are mired in an unhappy, unending and unexpected 15-game losing streak, Shaq is back on the injured list and may never return, and he still has to share a locker room with Mark Blount.
This week, Miami lost all 4 games, and Davis averaged just 6 points per on a team in desperate need of his offense, whether it be one-on-one free-lancing or simple spot and shoot; anything to take defensive attention away from Dwyane Wade. But instead, Davis made only 9 of his 28 field goal attempts (32%), making 3 total threes and 3 total free throws on the week, to go along with 5 assists and 10 turnovers. Ouch.
The margin of defeat may be getting smaller (7 points, 4 points, 7 points and 1 point), but that doesn’t make it any less painful. Perhaps even the reverse.Â
What’s worse, the fun, happy T-Wolves have won 2 in a row.
