NBA: HEAT, THUNDER, PACERS. . . NUGGETS

sports-notebook.blogspot.com . . . FOR MORE ANALYSIS, GO TO "MILE HIGH SPORTS RADIO," AM1510 or FM93.7, and to Denver’s best sports blogging team---milehighsports.com. SPORTS NOTEBOOK posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week. Ed., Publ., Marvin Leibstone; Copy & Mng. Ed., Gail Kleiner. . . // . . . NBA: HEAT, THUNDER, PACERS. . . NUGGETS . . . // . . NBA: FOUR of the six division leading franchises of the NBA have accrued 40 and more wins per of 82 games that each of the league’s 30 teams will have played when the 2013/14 regular season closes come April and playoffs kick in. Leading them are the Western Conference-Northwest Division’s 43-14 Oklahoma City Thunder, followed by the Eastern Conference-Central Division’s 42-13 Indiana Pacers, next the East’s Southwest 40-14 Miami Heat and the West’s Southwest 40-16 San Antonio Spurs. The West’s Pacific Division L.A. Clippers and the East’s Atlantic Toronto Raptors have 38 and 31 wins respectively. We wouldn’t be from Fantasy-land saying that the season is only half over and so each of these teams could experience setbacks and lose their current ranking. Nor would we be straying far from reality by commenting it’s likely that these franchises will finish the season just where they are now, top of the heap. In fact, during most NBA seasons many teams that are ahead of others just after the All Star break stay that way, though it could be more difficult for some to do so. Right now, the Heat and the Pacers have the more comfortable positions, each 13 games ahead of respective second place teams, the Washington Wizards and the Chicago Bulls, while the Thunder has a five game lead above the Portland Trail Blazers, the Spurs have but a two game edge over the Houston Rockets, the Clippers four above the Golden State Warriors, the Raptors five atop the Brooklyn Nets. But if the win-loss ratio of each of the six division leading teams stays roughly the same, it will be the Thunder, Pacers and the Heat receiving chances for best shot at preferred post-season seeding. Of interest is that the three teams reflect three different approaches to construction of an NBA franchise, the Thunder a kind of hybrid in that it can play as a team of equals and exploit widely-shared passing, assists, shooting and rebounding and yet convert quickly to reliance on superstar Kevin Durant and a preferred wing man for game control. The Pacers are more of a teamwork team, and the Heat will rely more on which of three top stars will drive the quality and quantity of developed plays and shots, usually LeBron James in command. Not that either strategy is without flaws. Sunday last,the Clippers defeated the Thunder, 125-117, in spite of Durant scoring more than 40 points; and, the West’s Pacific 19-37 L.A. Lakers, a team constructed for reliance on star power in ways similar to the Heat’s process, is last within its division and fourth worst in the NBA, just nine wins ahead of bottom of the pile Milwaukee Bucks, 10-45. . . // DENVER NUGGETS---HERE is a team without a superstar, possibly the franchise most determined to win via the key elements of teamwork, now holding a 2013/14 record that is incredibly Ferris-wheel, high up suddenly from a seven game winning streak, sooner than later of eight straight losses, most notably 14 losses since January 1. Now at 25-30, and in fourth place and 17 games behind Western Conference-Northwest Division first place team, the Thunder, surely another playoff berth is off the horizon for the Nuggets. It can still rise above .500, however, and finish the current season with respect, even retake third place by winning around 15 games by April, and if third place Minnesota Timberwolves slide back considerably. But the Nuggets seem to have made losing a habit. Of the team’s 14 losses since January 1, around half have been by 10 or more points, five of those by 15 or more, one by 39, another by 27, and only one of the losses could be called “close,” a three point loss to the Charlotte Bobcats. And, four of the last seven Nuggets losses were one after the other and higher in number of points behind within all of the Nuggets losses since January 1 (17, 17, 39, 27). Worst of the 14 losses was dealt by the Pacers, Nuggets 39 down at endgame. Yet January saw the Nuggets achieve five straight wins, one of them against top team, the Thunder, 101-88. Several days later, the Nuggets defeated a second place team, the West’s Pacific Division Golden State Warriors, 125-116, and on January 25 the Nuggets beat the Pacers, 109-96. February has been the cruel month, and looking for the one factor behind teammates doing the wrong thing at the wrong court location and at the wrong time, such makes little sense, for in almost all cases, and no matter the sport or other endeavor, losing usually has numerous causes---injuries to players; coach/player differences; stubbornness against changes in tactics; dropbacks in skills and in percentage of shots that become points; ineffective rostering; team failure to improvise effectively when opportunities for scoring become obvious; opposing team scouts and coaches figuring out a team’s vulnerabilities from film and learning how to exploit that; poor distribution of minutes allocated to relievers; excessive reliance on one or two players; patches of hard scheduling; loss of steam and motivation as a season progresses. The best of the best NBA teams lose multiple games during a regular season---losing now and then is inevitable, but losing very frequently doesn’t have to happen. Figuring out how to eliminate that which causes a team to lose frequently isn’t a task that can be completed overnight. . . "Past, Present, Future.” Twelve of the Nuggets remaining 27 games will be against first and second place franchises, and so the Nuggets have to be focused in the present. Yet returning to .500 won’t be easy without clarity regarding mistakes that have been behind the frequency of loss across January and February, and then without clarity of purpose for winning tomorrow’s game. Having to be in the three dimensions of time "almost always" makes winning a lot harder to achieve, it’s the predicament that any team would wish to avoid as a season nears completion, it’s probably the rookie coach’s worst nightmare. END/ml