Posts Tagged ‘Steve Nash’

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Limping Nash Tells Lakers’ Youngsters To ‘Let It Rip’

April 25, 2013  ·  6:20PM

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EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – With the number of walking wounded around here it was half surprising that the Lakers’ training facility hadn’t been painted green with a giant red cross on the entry doors.

Or that Corporal Klinger wasn’t running Thursday’s light practice for the few Lakers left standing.

Of course Klinger, the old M*A*S*H* character, might still have more name recognition in this town than the two players that very well could make up L.A.’s starting backcourt Friday night in virtual must-win Game 3 against the San Antonio Spurs at Staples Center.

Get ready for Darius Morris and Andrew Goudelock.

“Well, yeah,” Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni said, accompanied by a hearty chuckle, when asked if those two 2011 second-round picks will likely be thrust into heavy minutes. “And [Chris] Duhon. Go look at the rest we’ve got there.”

It ain’t much. The Lakers received  more depressing news on Thursday that will make the task of clawing out of a 2-0 hole excruciatingly difficult. Guard Steve Blake, who has played so well since Kobe Bryant went down with an Achilles tear two games before the end of the regular season, got the results of his ultrasound back and he’s out indefinitely with a moderate strain of his right hamstring.

Point guard Steve Nash had two epidural injections in his back Thursday and his chances of playing Friday night have come to this: “I have fingers crossed.”

And not to be forgotten is shooting guard Jodie Meeks. The Lakers’ best long-distance scoring threat is likely out, too, with a sprained ankle. D’Antoni, in fact, considers Meeks to be more doubtful than Nash, who said Thursday that he’s still in quite a bit of discomfort from both tweaking his hip-hamstring injury in the final seconds of the first half of Game 2 as well as “from getting a bunch of darts stuck in me” on Thursday.

He characterized his state of concern for not being ready to play Friday as “very concerned.”

“It’s really frustrating, very, very frustrating, especially because I was at the point where I was actually excited with the way I felt to start the last two games,” Nash said. “Even though I couldn’t sprint completely and I wasn’t moving as well as I’d like, I could still be effective and find a way to help the team and impact the game. And obviously, to tweak it before the half and for it to deteriorate set me back. So it’s another set of highs and lows.”

Metta World Peace, having coming back from knee surgery in record time, amazingly, Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol – no strangers to pain this season — are the healthiest key cogs that the Lakers have got.

D’Antoni said his big men will have to get the job done in the post, but that means that Goudelock, named the D-League’s MVP on Thursday, and Morris, who at least started 17 games filling in for the two injured Steves early in the season, will have to get them ball.

Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, the Spurs’ sensational guards that are just now feeling healthy themselves, and the rest of the Spurs will try to make sure they can’t and put a stranglehold on the series.

After Game 2, D’Antoni sought refuge in that old NBA playoff adage that a series doesn’t really begin until the road team wins. Well, if the Spurs win Game 3, it will all but end this series.

Nash, ever the optimist and always equipped with an encouraging word, had such a message for Goudelock and Morris, who’d be wise to listen to the limping two-time MVP as they approach the toughest spot of their young careers.

“I don’t think those guys should approach it as a tough spot,” Nash said. “I think they should approach it like they’ve got nothing to lose and they should go out there and let it rip. If they have a tough night, what would you expect in their first NBA start out of nowhere? So they should play free and loose and use their youth and energy and the skills that they possess to go out and have fun with it and take a free cut.”

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Howard Feels The Red Mamba Tweaks

April 25, 2013  ·  2:23AM


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SAN ANTONIO — The Black Mamba didn’t tweet. Something about not wanting to be a distraction.

So Kobe Bryant sat at home again on the sofa in Orange County, this time resting his surgically repaired Achilles’ tendon and both his thumbs.

The Red Mamba did tweak. And jostle. And shove. And pull. And prod. It was all about being as bothersome as a mosquito at a nudist colony.

Matt Bonner never rested for even a single one of the 29 minutes that he had to contest, confront and confound Dwight Howard.

The Lakers All-Star center scored 16 points, pulled down nine rebounds and blocked four shots, but also picked up five fouls and a technical in another one of those nights when he did so much head-shaking that you wondered if it might fall right off his broad and muscular shoulders.

This is life without Kobe for the Lakers, nobody to bail them out at the end of difficult possessions or do some of the improbable things that might make the Spurs defense loosen up and have to guard the perimeter.

There were times in the first half of Game 2 when Howard was a monster at both ends of the floor, muscling inside for rugged buckets and trying to swat down any shot that the Spurs tried. He snarled after rejecting a Tim Duncan shot and he roared after making back-to-back rejections on Tony Parker.

But Howard also went up for an offensive rebound and swung a hard right elbow that caught Bonner square on his face and sent him to the floor like a bag of rocks.

The red-haired Bonner wore a sheepish smile and a red welt as he stood in front of his locker.

“You knock me down, I’ll keep getting up,” said Bonner.

Call it the Chumbawamba defense. Maybe that’s why none other than Kobe himself bestowed the nickname Red Mamba.

Or maybe it was the 10 points on 4-for-5 shooting — including another running one-hander — dubbed the “Shyhook” by the wags of the Internet.

“Matty’s a tough-minded individual,” said Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. “He’s a heck of a competitor and a great team guy. He’ll do whatever we ask him to do. I think his family worries about him and the things we ask him to do out there.” (more…)

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Can Dwight Make Lakers House A Home?

April 24, 2013  ·  9:58AM

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SAN ANTONIO — Long before they ever squared off down in the paint, exchanged pushes and shoves, elbows and hips and knees in the frenzy of a playoff game, Dwight Howard knew all about the Spurs’ No. 21.

“I literally grew up watching Tim Duncan,” said the Lakers center as he unlaced his sneakers following practice.

Howard was only 11 when Duncan was drafted No. 1 overall by San Antonio in 1997 and Duncan had already won two NBA titles by the time Howard entered the league as the No. 1 pick in 2004.

“He’s a big guy who handled the ball, shot the ball well, had a lot of moves on the block and made it tough for guys to guard.  I loved watching that.”

But Howard never tried to imitate that. The truth is, his angular body and his offensive moves that are less-than fluid did always resemble those of another famous Spur, David Robinson. Those two have become friends, occasionally chatting by phone.

Yet when it came time for hero worship, Howard cast his gaze in the direction of, perhaps, the most famous big man of all time.

“My childhood idol was Wilt Chamberlain,” Howard said.

But it wasn’t grainy old videotapes that piqued his interest. The 1980′s-era Alphie the Robot, a one-foot tall toy that asked questions and dispensed bits of trivia to young minds, first told Howard about Chamberlain.

“He used to say: ‘Wilt Chamberlain scored a hundred points,’ ” Howard recalled.  “I was intrigued by Wilt Chamberlain from that moment on.  I wanted to meet him, but he died before I got a chance to get to the NBA.  He was my childhood idol.”

A six-year-old quickly began to research and learn about Chamberlain.

“He liked to have fun,” Howard said.

It’s funny how things turn out. Now Howard wears the Lakers jersey that Chamberlain once wore, lives just up the street from Wilt’s former Bel-Air palace in the Santa Monica Mountains.

“If you came out the back of his house and looked up to the right, my house is right there,” Howard said. “Mariah Carey lives right by me. You can see the ocean from my rooftop, downtown and the Staples Center from the back.

“And I’ve got a telescope just like Wilt had. The roof of his bedroom used to open and he’d look at the sky. Now I’m looking up at all the same stars.”

Along with a slice of the sky, it seems they also share struggles at the free throw line and a few personality traits, including a persecution complex. (more…)

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Hobbling Nash Won’t Give Up The Fight

April 22, 2013  ·  8:30PM

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SAN ANTONIO — Steve Nash says he expects to feel and play as good as ever next season.

It’s this season that matters, as long as it lasts, and there are probably newly-hatched fruit flies with greater life expectancies than the Lakers. Of course, that was true from the moment that Kobe Bryant tore his Achilles tendon and went from unstoppable offensive force on the court to unfiltered tweeter from the sofa.

But it is especially true if Nash can’t be Nash.

In the series opener on Sunday afternoon, Nash couldn’t find his top gear and make those shifty drives to the basket. He couldn’t get into the paint and create as unpredictably and imaginatively as a basketball Jackson Pollock. He missed open jump shots and finished 6-for-15 with just three assists and two rebounds.

He tried to zig and couldn’t zag. Nash labored and struggled and fought and battled, but for most of the game appeared to be a guy who was 39 going on 69.

“But we need him out there,” said Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni.

The Lakers season couldn’t have been more painful from start to finish if they’d shot themselves with a nail gun and the first hole came when Nash went down in the second game of the season with a broken leg. He didn’t play again until three days before Christmas, didn’t start to develop a real rhythm until around the All-Star break and then went back to the sidelines with a hamstring injury on March 30.

“Yeah, it’s been tough, health-wise,” Nash said. “I’ve never missed this much time by a longshot. Any time you change environments — and we had a lot of guys change environments — it takes time to come together. And with all the injury problems at that same time, we’ve had fought and fought and fought and not got a lot of joy out of the season. That’s why I’m still thrilled to get a chance to play in the series, still fight with my teammates and try to make something good out of all this.” (more…)

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Big Brother Kobe Has Eye On Lakers

April 21, 2013  ·  9:20PM

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SAN ANTONIO – It’s a brave new world, where all of us are connected.

Well, almost all of us.

There were those nine troglodytes in Lakers uniforms who ran cluelessly up and down the court at the AT&T Center as if they didn’t know fire had been discovered or the wheel invented.

While the rest of the planet was entertained, motivated and fully informed by Kobe Bryant at the center of the Twitterverse on how to slow down and shut off the Spurs, his teammates were like those old Japanese soldiers who finally wandered out of the mountains not realizing that World War II had ended.

Poor Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, Steve Nash and Metta World Peace.

– “What I would say if I was there right now? Pau get (your) ass on the block and don’t move (until you) get it,” Bryant tweeted.

– “Post. Post. Post.”

– “Gotta milk Pau in the post right now and D12. Will get good looks from it.”

– “Gotta get to the block. See (what) Spurs (are) gonna do with Pau and D12.”

Poor Mike D’Antoni. Perhaps by Wednesday, he can modernize to use carrier pigeons instead of cave paintings during timeouts to get his messages across. Maybe the Lakers’ equipment manager can find a way to duct tape an iPhone somewhere onto the body of each member of the team, so they can get constant updates and suggestions from “Coach Vino,” which is what Bryant called himself on Friday. After all, this is the 21st century .Why should the minor detail of torn Achilles tendon stop Bryant from finding a way to get into the series?

One can picture the restless Black Mamba squirming all over the sofa in his Orange County mansion, with his bad leg propped up on a pillow and his thumbs flying across the keyboard.

– “Matador defense on Parker.”

– “This game has a ‘steal one’ written all over it for us.”

Of course, it would have helped if the Lakers had been able to connect on more than 3-for-15 behind the 3-point line or knock down any of the other many open shots at the basket they had. And it might have been a “stealable” game if the Lakers hadn’t turned the ball over 18 times.

“I was happy with the looks we got,” D’Antoni said. “I wasn’t happy with the turnovers we had.”

For all the postgame talk in the Spurs’ locker room of finding their missing defensive intensity and execution, the outcome was as much about all of the things the Lakers simply could not get done. Nash was the one who received a pregame epidural to treat the pain from his lingering hip injury, but Gasol was too often the one that struggled as if trying to give birth to any kind of offensive rhythm.

This was a game that the Spurs won handily despite no one among Tim Duncan (6-for-15), Tony Parker (8-for-21) and Manu Ginobili (6-for-13) being able to make half their shots. Even when the crowd tried to summon up a “Beat L.A.!” chant in the third quarter, it was listless. Without Kobe, playing the Lakers is like a trip to Oz without running into the Wicked Witch of the West.

The truth is the Lakers were in arm’s length to grab the kind of early win that can turn a series on its head until Ginobili went up like a bottle-rocket to close out the third quarter. With his newest teammate Tracy McGrady watching in street clothes from the bench, Ginobili did a “mini-TMac,” zipping in eight points in 85 seconds.

“I knew it was my time, usually,” said Ginobili, who had missed nine of the last 10 regular season games with a strained right hamstring.

The second of Ginobili’s treys was a walk-up heat check with 2.4 seconds left that probably had coach Gregg Popovich close to swallowing his tongue.

“If I would have missed it, probably he would have said something,” Ginobili shrugged.

If Manu had been a Laker and missed it, there’s no telling what kind of fireballing, nasty tweet Kobe might have sent his way.

When D’Antoni was asked later if he approved of Bryant’s running commentary and criticism, he smiled and rolled his eyes.

“It’s great to have that commentary,” D’Antoni said. “He’s a fan. He’s a fan right now.”

Just a fan the way King Kong was just a monkey.

Bryant replied almost immediately.

– “A fan?? lol.”

– “Nervous response. I’m sure he didn’t meant it that way. No big deal.”

The Lakers did pound the ball into the post throughout the day. They did use their size to body up and turn it into the kind of brute strength, ugly affair that is their path to an upset in the series. After looking uncomfortable early, Howard did get 20 points and 15 rebounds.

“We can’t get discouraged because we lost the first game,” Howard.

Dwight had better wait until hears from his BFF on Twitter.

Kobe still has thumbs that work.

– “On to game 2. I will be watching from the crib again in a Pau jersey and Laker face paint ha!” (Joking) aside, we will be fine on (Wednesday).”

But eventually, even the Mambatweeter thought better of his input.

– “I see my tweeting during the game is being talked about as much as the game itself. Not my intention , just bored as I guess.” #notagain

It’s a brave new world, where the Lakers who actually played found out you’re not paranoid if Big Brother really is looking over your shoulder.

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Give L.A. Its Due Starting With Dwight

April 18, 2013  ·  1:08PM

HANG TIME SOUTHWEST – Let the singing of the praises begin. The Los Angeles Lakers are in the playoffs and in this strange season, that’s no small feat.

May it start with Dwight Howard. He was demanded to be dominant without Kobe Bryant by analysts such as Magic Johnson and more, and for those two must-have games he delivered: 42 points, 35 rebounds and seven blocks while playing 82 of 96 minutes.

“Everybody counted us out, but one thing that I told the guys tonight was that we’ve been through so much as a team this year, from the injuries to the rumors and everything that has happened,” Howard said after the Lakers rallied to defeat Houston 99-95 in overtime and pass the Rockets for the seventh seed. “It could have made us separate from each other, but we stayed strong, stayed together and we won for each other tonight. So we’re happy that we’re in the playoffs, but we’re not done yet.”

Next up for a golf clap is coach Mike D’Antoni. He’s absorbed tidal waves of criticism since taking over — including from right here — as the fans’ distant second choice to jilted Phil Jackson. Sure, Kobe’s season-ending Achilles injury might have finally forced D’Antoni to bend and feed his two bigs, Dwight and Pau Gasol, as so many have screamed for months, but he did.

Dwight’s 30 shot attempts over the last two games are his highest two-game total since March 6-8. At the other end, he reminded us why he was the three-time Defensive Player of the Year in Orlando before the back injury last season derailed a shot at four in a row. His two defensive gems against a driving James Harden late in the game were marvelous.

Gasol, dogged by injuries and an intellectual basketball divide with D’Antoni, came through in the last two games with 24 points, 36 rebounds and 13 assists, with a number of nifty passes going to Dwight.

The bottom line is the Lakers were written off and easily ridiculed. On Jan. 2 they were 15-16 and in 11th place. On Jan. 24 the Lakers hit rock-bottom, in 12th place at 17-25. Since then, through the death of beloved owner Jerry Buss and injuries to Gasol and Nash and Metta World Peace and now Kobe, they finished 28-12.

With the season on the line every single day in April, the Lakers won eight of nine.

“Obviously I’m really proud the way for just a month they had to just play in elimination-like games every night, and I think Steve Nash said it best, or Dwight, I forget which one said it, but after they [Houston's Chandler Parsons] threw in the 3 to tie the game and it went into overtime, he said, ‘It’s been hard all year, this stuff’s happened all year, so why was this any different, and it’s not going to be easy and let’s go out and win it,’ and they did.

“The great thing about it was everybody contributed, somebody did something that we got the win, because you can’t shoot 36 percent and make it easy, it’s going to be tough. So we didn’t shoot the ball well, but other than that I thought we had good shots and I thought the guys obviously played hard and we played well defensively again.”

It has been a team thing. Steve Blake has been off the charts with back-to-back 20-plus-point games. Antawn Jamison had 31 points and 10 rebounds, and shot 5-for-10 from beyond the arc.

While Utah’s loss at Memphis just before the Lakers tipped off against the Rockets got them in the playoffs, the gutsy win made sure they’d snag the unforeseen seventh seed and avoid Kevin Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round.

“I don’t even know what to say,” Blake said. “I’m just proud to be a Laker.”

Now these Lakers will take their cuts, with the pressure eased and nothing to lose with Kobe on crutches, against a disciplined and proficient San Antonio Spurs team. However, it is a Spurs team that limps into the postseason and isn’t immune to an early postseason upset.

In this strange season, anything, it seems, is possible.

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D’Antoni Must Step Into The Void … Now!

April 14, 2013  ·  9:58AM





HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – As much as the rest of this season for the Los Angeles Lakers is about Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol, Steve Nash and Metta World Peace, the responsibility for how the Lakers finish sits squarely on the shoulders of one Mike D’Antoni.

The Lakers’ coach lost the cloak of Kobe Bryant, who is recovering from Saturday surgery to repair his torn Achilles and will be out for at least the next six months. D’Antoni no longer has the option of allowing Bryant to answer for the Lakers basketball sins this season. He can’t ease into the background as Bryant explains away one of the great botched chemistry experiments in pro sports history.

All of that internal security from doubters, both near and far, evaporated with just over three minutes to play Friday night at Staples Center, when Bryant’s season came to an abrupt end.

This season’s defining moment will come without Bryant in uniform, it could come as early as tonight’s showdown with the San Antonio Spurs (9:30 p.m. ET, NBA TV), with D’Antoni clearly at the controls of a team he had no says so in building after taking over for Mike Brown in November.

The style disconnect that has existed all season can no longer be used as an excuse, not with both Howard and Gasol playing their old selves in recent weeks. Nash is a non-factor and has been for much of the season, due to injuries, and World Peace is going to bring the same frenetic energy he always does, regardless of who is and is not in uniform.

D’Atnoni is now the wild card. Can he cajole this team into the playoffs, making good on Bryant’s guarantee, and ensure that they make the noise Bryant swore they would once they got in? D’Antoni’s future with the Lakers depends on it. D’Antoni has a chance to reintroduce himself to this team in ways that he simply could not when Bryant was at the center of all things.

Unlike some, I don’t blame D’Antoni for pushing Bryant too hard, playing him a merciless amount of minutes as the Lakers clawed their way back into playoff contention after the All-Star break. There’s enough of Southland bashing of D’Antoni, Lakers’ owner Jim Buss and general manager Mitch Kupchak to fill every minutes of every day until Bryant returns, and you know he’s coming back from this.

Bryant was in the midst of a seven-game stretch where he was averaging 46 physically taxing minutes a night trying to rescue a team that plenty of us feel has been mismanaged since Bernie Bickerstaff‘s brief tenure at the helm, he bridged the gap between Brown and D’Antoni. Even a freak injury like the one Bryant suffered looks a bit curious to those of us who don’t buy into the conspiracy theories.

I blame D’Antoni for dropping the ball and not being able to reign in Bryant’s wicked competitive streak at a time when it was clear the seemingly ageless wonder was laboring. I blame him for being too stubborn to adjust his own philosophy to fit the talent on the roster he inherited. Game after game Bryant was forced to carry the Lakers in ways that were really unnecessary, given the fact that remain the only team in the league with two elite 7-footers at their disposal.

Lucky for D’Antoni, he has a chance to make it all right. If can guide the Lakers past the Spurs tonight, he could set up a weekend date with Gregg Popovich, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and the Spurs. Or maybe it’s Scott Brooks, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

There is room for redemption if D’Antoni can claw his way out of this weekend’s and this season’s mess. But it has to include the Lakers finishing this playoff fight with the Utah Jazz right and following it with a playoff run as spirited as anything Bryant did during his one-man rescue of the Lakers before Friday night.

We can all agree that D’Antoni is an offensive genius and visionary in a league filled with followers. But if he can’t engineer the Lakers’ rise from this latest fall, if he can’t go back to the drawing board and pull out the motivational tactics to inspire this team, then he might very well be devoured by the Lakers’ season on the brink.

But if he wants out of Phil Jackson‘s shadow and wants to write his own chapter in Lakers’ lore, he has to step into the void now and run with it for as long as humanly possible.

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For Better or Worse, The Lakers’ Stage Now Belongs To Dwight

April 13, 2013  ·  1:58PM

 

Yo Dwight, you got now.

It’s a case of can’t live with him, but can he live without him? For Los Angeles Lakers big man Dwight Howard, who has often felt like Kobe Bryant’s picked-on little brother in his first season in Lakerland, this baffling year now falls in the palms of his massive hands after Bryant’s devastating Achilles injury Friday night.

Make no mistake as the Lakers quickly move on with no other choice to Sunday’s critical game against the San Antonio Spurs. This is not suddenly the overly cerebral and emotional Pau Gasol’s team nor is it the injured Steve Nash’s job to keep Lakers’ chins ups. The bionic Metta World Peace? Hardly.

We’re about to find out just how much the 27-year-old Howard, L.A.’s hopeful future rock of the franchise, has grown up in the past year, through the scars and lessons of an implausibly wild ride: His never-ending debacle in Orlando, the trade, the back surgery, the firing of Mike Brown, the head-bumping with Mike D’Antoni, the shoulder injury, the death of Jerry Buss, Bryant’s relentless, often backhanded, tutelage, and, of course, all the losing by a team already declared one of the biggest busts in NBA history.

Just two games stand between the Lakers making the playoffs after an arduous climb or descending into a long, uncertain offseason. Immediately the cycle will begin of will-he-stay or will-he-go questions that will hound Howard and the Lakers all the way to the July 1 start of free agency when Howard can hand-pick a team with enough cap space to sign him.

All indications have suggested that Howard seems headed for a long-term stay in L.A., tabbed as the successor to Kobe’s throne once he calls it a career, perhaps as early as after next season as Bryant himself has suggested now on multiple occasions.

How Bryant’s Achilles injury, which could keep him out as little as six months or as long as 12, will affect the Lakers’ immediate playoff hopes will be known in a matter of days. Less certain is Bryant’s availability for next season and ultimately his longevity now 17 years in, and especially how it might alter Howard’s feelings about re-signing under such circumstance.

The latter is impossible to even speculate. Nothing with Howard has ever been what it seems.

And now Bryant’s absence thrusts Howard into the spotlight like never before, even as he smiled through all those years leading that rag-tag bunch as a sole superstar stuck in Orlando. For the remainder of this season, however long it lasts, and, without a doubt, for at least the start of next season if he chooses to stay in Lakers purple and gold, all eyes will be trained on the 6-foot-11, 265-pound man-child.

D’Antoni, whose offense has failed to integrate Gasol and Howard on the low block, will have no choice now but to slow the game up and put the team’s fate in Howard‘s ability to go to work down low.

With Bryant out, Howard is the Lakers’ best player on the floor. If L.A. is going to take the final steps and achieve the satisfaction of having at least scrapped into the playoffs, they’ll need Howard to lift his team and produce like he is indeed the best player on the floor.

The stage is truly his.

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KD On Scoring Title: Melo Can Have It

April 4, 2013  ·  3:12PM

 

OKLAHOMA CITY – With 90 points in his last two games, Carmelo Anthony is a making a hard charge at Kevin Durant, who can become the first player to win four consecutive scoring titles since Michael Jordan won seven in a row 20 years ago.

Entering tonight’s Oklahoma City Thunder game against the San Antonio Spurs (10:30 p.m. ET, TNT), Durant leads the league at 28.3 ppg. The sizzling Anthony has climbed to 28.1.

How does Durant feel about this little development?

“He can have it,” Durant said flatly after OKC’s Thursday morning shootaround.

In the nine games that Anthony has played since missing three in a row and six of eight with a bothersome right knee, he’s been lethal, averaging 31.4 ppg and shooting 48.1 percent overall and 40 percent from 3-point range. To no coincidence, the Knicks are riding a 10-game winning streak.

“I mean the stuff he’s doing right now, every time he touches the ball it looks like it’s going to go in,” Durant said. “He’s having a nice run right now and his confidence is high. I’m sure he’s going to take over. If it happens, cool.”

Anthony’s scoring blitz is even more spectacular over the last five games: 33.6 ppg, 52.5 percent from the floor and 52.4 percent from beyond the arc. He poured in 50 Tuesday against the Heat without LeBron James (fourth in scoring at 26.9 ppg) and Dwyane Wade, and followed up with 40 Wednesday night against Atlanta.

OKC and New York both have eight games left. Thunder coach Scott Brooks has already said he has no plans to rest his starters down the stretch as they battle San Antonio for the West’s No. 1 seed. The Knicks are locked in a struggle for the East’s No. 2 seed with the Indiana Pacers.

“I coached Carmelo for three years (as an assistant coach at Denver), that’s probably not something that he wants,” Brooks said of the scoring title, which would be the first of Anthony’s 10-year career. “He wants the championship just as much as KD does. But it is exciting. It’s always exciting when you get down to the last week of the season — who gets the scoring title, who gets the rebounding title? Those are minor things. Kevin’s worried about the big picture.

“But, it would be cool; definitely would be a great opportunity to be his age and have it four straight years.”

It would be historic.

Durant can win four scoring titles in his first six seasons and before he turns 25 (which he will in September). He’s already the first to capture three consecutive scoring titles since Jordan did it in his return from baseball from 1995-98. Only Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain can claim scoring titles in more than three consecutive seasons. Chamberlain also won it seven times from 1959-66.

“Don’t get me wrong, I never want to take stuff like that for granted, but if it happens, it happens,” Durant said. “I’m just going to play my game. I’m not going to force it too much and think about it too much and try to get it. But if it’s meant to be then it will happen.”

Durant is also shooting for a most enviable double-double of sorts as the first player ever to win the scoring title and join the exclusive 50-40-90 club — 50 percent shooting from the field, 40 percent from 3-point range and 90 percent from the arc (Larry Bird, Mark Price, Reggie Miller, Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki are the others and Bird and Nash are the only ones to do it multiple times).

A down tick in Durant’s scoring and shooting since the All-Star break — 26.1 ppg, 47 percent overall and 35.1 percent on 3s — recently put him in jeopardy of dipping below the first two thresholds. But he’s gained a bit of wiggle room over the last six games while averaging 27.8 ppg on 51.4 percent shooting and 52.9 percent from beyond the arc. Entering tonight’s game, Durant’s percentages line up like this: 50.5, 41 and 90.8.

The long and lanky Durant is the far more efficient scorer compared to Anthony. Durant has played in 13 more games, yet has taken eight fewer total shots than Anthony (1,322 to 1,330) — about four fewer attempts per game — and has made 78 more (668 to 590).

Anthony’s 44.4 percent overall shooting this season is a notch below his career average (45.5 percent), but his 37.8 percent from 3-point range would tie for the second-highest mark of his career.

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Blogtable: Primed To Pull Playoff Upset?

April 3, 2013  ·  10:21AM

Each week, we’ll ask our stable of scribes to weigh in on the three most important NBA topics of the day — and then give you a chance to step on the scale, too, in the comments below.

Week 23: Taking Spurs or Thunder? | Pacers or Knicks No. 2 in East? | Team ready to pull a playoff upset?

Tell us which 6, 7 or 8 seed, as they stand now, is most primed for an upset. And why?

Steve Aschburner: Scanning all the likely lower-seeded teams, my conclusion is: In Thibs I trust. If the Chicago Bulls draw anyone but Miami or Indiana in the East, my hunch is they can advance even without Derrick Rose available. One of the Bulls’ biggest problems this season has been letdowns against dubious opponents. Another has been lapses in concentration due to schedule turnarounds. Neither of those will be present in the postseason. Assuming Chicago doesn’t suffer anything as traumatic as Rose’s injury last spring and Joakim Noah‘s subsequent ankle sprain that doomed it against Philadelphia, I think coach Tom Thibodeau‘s ability to lock in and game-plan defensively will thwart the higher-seeded Knicks, Nets or Hawks.

Fran Blinebury: I don’t know that any of them are actually “primed” for an upset. But if I had to pick one team — as the standings are today — I’d go with the Celtics, simply because you can’t count out the veteran know-how and determination of players such as Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. Of course, the same would apply to the Lakers if they squeeze past Utah for No. 8 in the West. A team with Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol and Steve Nash is not the kind of reward either the Spurs or Thunder would be happy to get for finishing first in the West.

Jeff Caplan: In the question about the Pacers and Knicks, I’ve already suggested that a 3-6 Knicks-Bulls matchup could provide an upset. In the West, how can anyone not think that the Rockets in a potential 2-7 matchup with San Antonio couldn’t make that very interesting? The Spurs might not have Manu Ginobili against the high-scoring Rockets and that’s a huge blow. Obviously the edge goes to the Spurs, but for potential upsets I like it. I don’t think the Rockets could take down the Thunder in another potential 2-7 series, but it sure would be a fascinating series with James Harden against his old mates. I also don’t think the Warriors, if they face Denver in a 3-6 matchup, have enough to get past the Nuggets, although the Ty Lawson injury factor is significant.

Scott Howard-Cooper: The Bulls. What a brutal draw for the supposed favorite in a 3-6 first-round series. The Bulls aren’t far from being a No. 3 themselves, and that defense, rebounding, toughness and coaching makes them a tough out. The Heat would definitely be favored against Chicago. Anyone else in the East and there are small margins.

John Schuhmann: Chicago. Of any potential 6/7/8 seed, the Bulls have the best defense and the best road record. They’ve proven to be resilient in the face of several key injuries and are also 5-1 against New York (3-0) and Brooklyn (2-1), having held those two potent offenses under a point per possession over the six games. The Celtics’ chances of pulling off an upset obviously depend on Kevin Garnett’s health and their ability to avoid the 8 seed. If they face the Knicks with KG ready to go, I think they have a decent shot to get to the next round. But in the West, I just don’t think any 6/7/8 seed is good enough defensively to pose much of a threat to San Antonio, Oklahoma City or Denver/Memphis.

Sekou Smith: If by “primed for an upset” you mean poised to ruin the postseason for a top seed, I’m going with Chicago in the East and Golden State in the West. The Bulls, as they showed in stopping the Miami Heat’s win streak at 27 games, can crank their game up to another level than what we’ve seen from them on a consistent basis during the regular season. Even without Derrick Rose they are a dangerous group in a playoff setting. The Warriors are the ideal playoff wild card with their streaky 3-point shooting abilities. That said, if the Los Angeles Lakers make the playoff field, they could turn the postseason upside down in a first round matchup against either the San Antonio Spurs or Oklahoma City Thunder. Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard are playing at a high level right now and if they get in, they’re going to be a major problem in the playoffs.

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