Are the Lakers ready to turn the team over to Dwight Howard?
\nIs Kobe Bryant, who succeeded in banishing Shaquille O\u2019Neal from Los Angeles because Shaq was claiming too much of the spotlight, willing to play understudy to Howard when Bryant returns from his Achilles injury?
\nLots of palace intrigue will take place at Staples Center shortly after the Lakers are tossed to the curb by either the Thunder of Spurs in Round 1 on the playoffs. Howard will probably take a tour around the NBA and get wined and dined as a free agent. Ultimately he will come to his senses and take the bigger deal that the Lakers will offer him.
\nThen what? There won\u2019t be a lot of money to spend \u2013 especially if Bryant comes back, as everyone figures he will. Will it finally be time for Superman to mature and be The Man, and will Bryant even countenance that?
\nTo the end of the year rankings:
\n1. HEAT (64-16) \u2013 Really, the only concern here is that Dwyane Wade gets his rhythm and groove back by the time the Heat run into any opponent of consequence next month.
\n2. THUNDER (59-21) \u2013 Anyone else notice that the Thunder have won their last five road games by double digits?
\n3. SPURS (58-22) \u2013 Red flags everywhere as the Spurs\u2019 vets gird for another playoff run. Ginobili has now missed 48 regular season games over the past two seasons.
\n4. NUGGETS (55-25) \u2013 George Karl coach of the year. You got anyone better?
\n5. GRIZZLIES (54-26) \u2013 OK, maybe Lionel Hollins. Management was right that the train would not leave the tracks after dumping leading scorer Rudy Gay in mid-season.
\n6. KNICKS (53-27) \u2013 Pretty simple, really. In theory, anyway. Double-team Anthony every time he puts it on the floor, and wait for him to get cold from outside. He may stay hot, in which case you\u2019re screwed. But that\u2019s your best chance.
\n7. CLIPPERS (54-26) \u2013 If the Clippers don\u2019t make it to the Western finals they\u2019ll take some heat for not pushing harder to nail down the Kevin Garnett deal.
\n8. NETS (47-33) \u2013 It ain\u2019t Chamberlain, West and Goodrich, but the Nets\u2019 own troika of Williams, Johnson and Lopez had their best combined game (81 points) in a win over Indiana that clinched the No. 4 playoff seed in the East.
\n9. WARRIORS (45-35) \u2013 Injuries are starting to pile up for Andrew Bogut, who has played only 45 regular-season games over the past two seasons. They need him if they plan to go more than one round in the playoffs.
\n10. PACERS (49-31) \u2013 Something\u2019s missing here. The Pacers haven\u2019t covered the number since April 1 and have lost four of their last five.
\n11. ROCKETS (45-35) \u2013 Caution, caution, caution: Houston will be the only team in the West to start the playoffs without a winning record against conference opponents.
\n12. HAWKS (44-36) \u2013 Reports out of Atlanta indicate that the Hawks offered Josh Smith $45 million over 3 years. Who\u2019s crazier? The front office for putting it on the table or Smith for turning it down? [ad-6571516]
\n13. BULLS (43-37) \u2013 A. Derrick Rose was cleared to scrimmage on Feb. 18. B. He hasn\u2019t played yet. C. He won\u2019t be back this year. Forget the knight on the white horse, Bulls fans. Ain\u2019t happening.
\n14. LAKERS (44-37) \u2013 OK, the Spurs weren\u2019t exactly going belly button to the wall. But that victory over San Antonio sans Bryant was like a drink of cool water.
\n15. JAZZ (42-38) \u2013 Looks like the Jazz are going to miss the playoffs, and they\u2019ll have a long time to look back at that 3-12 February\/March stretch that basically tore the liver out of this team.
\n16. CELTICS (41-39) \u2013 So one of the reasons the Celtics let Ray Allen go is that they thought he couldn\u2019t stay healthy. Now Allen is healthy and the rest of the Celtics are banged up. C\u2019est la vie.
\n17. MAVERICKS (40-40)
\n18. RAPTORS (32-48)
\n19. BUCKS (37-43)
\n20. 76ERS (33-47)
\n21. TRAIL BLAZERS (33-47)
\n22. WIZARDS (29-51)
\n23. TIMBERWOLVES (30-50)
\n24. PISTONS (28-52)
\n25. KINGS\/SONICS (28-52)
\n26. HORNETS\/PELICANS (27-54)
\n27. CAVALIERS (24-56)
\n28. SUNS (24-56)
\n29. MAGIC (20-60)
\n30. BOBCATS (19-61)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Larry’s NBA Power Ratings Are the Lakers ready to turn the team over to Dwight Howard? Is Kobe Bryant, who succeeded in banishing Shaquille O\u2019Neal from Los Angeles because Shaq was claiming too much of the spotlight, willing to play understudy to Howard when Bryant returns from his Achilles injury?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":24926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[260,4977,22803,11586,22804,22805,57179,3126],"class_list":["post-61645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","tag-cappers-picks","tag-nba-power-ratings","tag-nba-power-ratings-online","tag-nba-rankings","tag-nba-ratings","tag-nba-team-power-rankings","tag-nba-weekly-power-rankings","tag-team-rankings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61679,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61645\/revisions\/61679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}