NBA Weekly Awards: Week 17
Team On the Fall
Before beating Boston on Sunday, the Portland Trailblazers had lost 6 on the trot. With every passing week, the play-offs look ever more distant for the Blazers, who slipped out of the play-off spots in January, went below .500 at the beginning of February and with the end of another unfruitful week, the Blazers stand at 26-30 with their post season hopes becoming ever-diminished.
Team On the Up
The Indiana Pacers are probably on of the most under the radar team in the NBA. That, of course, will change when the playoffs begin and everyone begin admiring the squad assembled by Larry Bird and co. The Pacers put together a four game winning streak last week. The fact that made it even more impressive was the average victory margin. They have made their intentions in recent games quite clear from the get go, leading their opponent by an average of 17 points at the end of the first quarter.
Worst Team of the Week
A 5 game losing skid, coupled with how the franchise parted with Thomas Robinson, their first round pick in the daft last summer, just sums up the circus that is the Sacramento Kings right now. With new ownership to take over in the new season, the Kings must be concerned with shedding guaranteed salary but sending first round picks for what can only be said as uninspiring returns is a strict ‘no no’.
Best Team of the Week
The Miami Heat are building up steam as they head into the post season. The Heat went on an 11 game winning streak last week which had begun pre All-Star weekend. To get a sense of how much the Heat has caught fire, we can look at the Eastern Conference standing. At the beginning of the year, the Heat were tied with the Knicks at the top of the Eastern Conference and now they sit comfortably 6.5 games ahead of New York.
Best performance of the week
James Harden just reminded the Thunder what they were missing, as he dropped 46 on the Thunder to lead the Rockets to a memorable victory. “The bearded one” went 14-17 in the game including 7-of-8 from long range as he single-handedly demolished the reigning Western Conference champions. He has truly transformed himself into the franchise player that everyone thought he had the potential of becoming.
Best Player of the Week
The Lakers are slowly becoming watchable again and heading them towards some sort of semi-blance is yet again their superstar, Kobe Bryant. Bryant continues to play the facilitator role, averaging 6 assists a game while also getting 31.3 points despite shooting a really horrifically low percentage from beyond the arc. The most important thing might be that the Lakers are finally winning again and now are ninth and just 2.5 games behind Houston for the last play-off spot.