NBA: East vs. West; Nuggets, Bulls // NFL Violence; Issues & Answers
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. . . SPORTS NOTEBOOK posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week. Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone; Copy & Mng. Ed., Gail Kleiner.
NBA --- IT could be the East dominating the West during the current NBA All Star game, February 17, but there will be another story even if the East keeps the West under 100 points and strolls away with 10 or more points ahead. That story is this: the West is a far better aggregate of NFL franchises, the better conference within the world’s best basketball league.
Anyway, that’s the case as of yesterday’s rankings, and as demonstrated by other recently tallied numbers.
For example, this NBA season’s top three teams within the league are the West’s Southwest Division’s San Antonio Spurs (39 wins, 11 losses), next the Northwest Division’s Oklahoma City Thunder, 37-12, followed by the Pacific Division’s Los Angeles Clippers, 35-16.
The East’s leading team, its Southeast Division’s Miami Heat (32-14), they are holding at fourth place within the NBA, and the East’s Atlantic Division’s New York Knicks (31-16), they are sixth, behind fifth place team within the NBA, the West’s Northwest Division’s Denver Nuggets (32-18).
Too, the East includes seven teams of more losses than wins, that is, seven teams below .500, while the West has but four below .500. And, as the East has only four teams above .600, the West can boast of six above .600, and the West is the only conference with a team high above .700 (the Spurs, .780).
Also, the West includes the two franchises with the most games won “at home,” being the Spurs, with 22 home wins as of February 7, and the Nuggets, 22, the latter having beaten the East’s Central Division’s Chicago Bulls last night, 128-96 (ugh!).
Add that the West has the top three teams with the most games won “on the road”---the Spurs, with 17, the Thunder and the Clippers, tied at 15. The East’s Bulls show up as the league’s third place road victory club, with 14 wins. Ironically, the East’s Central Division’s leading team, the Indiana Pacers (31 wins), they have the second-most road losses league-wide, 16, behind the East’s Southeast Division’s Orlando Magic’s 18 road losses.
If there’s a category within which the East has been leaping ahead, it’s that of having this year’s “three worst teams,” the Southeast Division’s Charlotte Bobcats, 11-37/.229, the same division’s Washington Wizards, 13-35/.271, and the Central Division’s Cleveland Cavaliers, 15-34/.306.
An overarching top NBA performance tally remains the total number of games won by the three division leading teams belonging to each conference. As of February 7, the West’s three leading franchises were leaving the East’s top three behind, 111 total Western Conference wins over the East’s 94.
The All Star Game, well, it’s about “Stars,” it won’t be changing the win/loss records reflecting how a different galaxy will soon form, “the NBA post-season, the ultimate East/West sky-regalia of the best of the best teams competing, the battles that always dwarf that which came before."
Nuggets, Bulls --- Solo athletes, e.g., tennis players, long distance runners, skiers, they can address being “in the Zone” more often than any team can, since the experience happens a lot less for the latter, all of a team’s players being so on the same page minute-after-minute that recognition by each fuels the dynamic, keeps it going. Some have called this process, “fusion,” others have said of it, “it’s every player being in harmony with every other player,” and so on. These definitions, that “being in the zone,” it seemed captured and held by the currently 32-18 Denver Nuggets last night as they clobbered the now 29-20 Chicago Bulls, also a division second place team, final: 128-96. This was Denver’s eighth straight win, its best winning streak of the year, topping a six game W streak and two four-game W’s.
The vs. Bulls win was also the Nuggets highest numerical finish of the year, besting the team’s 126-114 December win against the L.A. Lakers. Since January 1, the Nuggets have lost only three of 18 games played.
And, during four of the eight games won in a row by the Nuggets, opponents were held under 100 points.
Also, each of five of the Nuggets eight straight wins finished with the team accruing more than 110 points.
Noteworthy is that the Nuggets beat the NBA’s top two teams during the current season (Spurs, the Thunder).
Also noteworthy was the quality of last night’s win, in that the Nuggets were all over the map of game-winning categories, including lay-ups, field goals from in the paint, three-pointers, free throws, steals (12), rebounds, blocks and assists, with speed and hustle from tip-off until endgame. Moreover, the third Q’s Nuggets performance was phenomenal, more than 35 points scored, though 16 were given away, suggesting that the much-improved Denver defense may have given up more if the Bulls high scorer/guard Derrick Rose were afieled (out from injury). As for style, there were Nuggets “dunks galore,” especially from starter/forward, Kenneth Faried, and hot off the grill, Wilson Chandler---24 points within less than 20 minutes on the floor.
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NFL --- Major League Baseball is still in the throes of a PED storm, and it’s likely that the winds implying change within the NFL this year will be from the league’s violence = lifetime injury problem. Though baseball’s PED matter has never been of proportions infecting every signed ballplayer, it has spread in ways impacting nearly every MLB franchise negatively, corrupting not only estimates of player performance but all aspects of a team’s fairness-in-competition. Nor has the NFL’s violence = injury conundrum been felt within more than 1.5, maybe two percent, of the existing NFL player population, although over the span of total player-lifetimes from within that percentage, it becomes a large number, thus hundreds of former players unable to maintain healthy lives.
So, the NFL is faced with two questions, (1) How to compensate players already afflicted from concussions and from other injuries, and (2) How to reduce significantly, if unable to completely eliminate, all threats to a football player? The first will surely be about money and its distribution, about how willing team owners will be when it comes to “shelling out,” and the second will require joint-venturing involving not only players, coaches, general managers and owners creating new rules, but also technologists from within and outside the game, who can design better protective equipment.
Of course, the degree of success obtained by the NFL for player compensation re. injury-impacts and for development of better protective equipment, such will be determined by team-owner decisions about whether to take the moral high ground, or whether to climb up only half way, or whitewash the issue, so that maintained will be the violence that many owners believe is what makes the NFL popular and that keeps fans filling stadiums.
What is clear is “the inescapability.” Caring more for players, and making football safer, are matters that the NFL knows it cannot run from. And, the decision to go full out in favor of players and safety could well have to do with just how determined the players themselves are about changes being made for betterment of their health, their post-career well-being and their longevity (the players union can be a formidable negotiating body, proven during the NFL's 2010/11 lockout).
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