Hear more from Mo and the Heatcheck team on the Sky Sports YouTube channel every Tuesday, and Sky Sports live coverage of the NBA continues on Thursday morning when the league-leading Utah Jazz host the defending champions LA Lakers
Wednesday 24 February 2021 16:33, UK
As the snow melts and days get longer, the end of lockdown appears to be in sight, and the NBA season continues to speed by: it’s almost time for the All-Star break.
Before we get to discussing the All-Star teams and dunk contests, it's time for another weekly round-up of the winners and losers of the past week around the NBA.
After being picked #1 in the 2020 NBA Draft, Anthony Edwards made more headlines for his off-court statements than his play on it.
While he did become one of my favourite players after bringing Popeyes chicken with him to a post-game press conference - his fellow draftees LaMelo Ball, Tyrese Haliburton and James Wiseman captured the attention of the fans and media leading to a few people questioning the decision to pick Ant-Man ahead of them.
Edwards may be the lone bright-spark for a Minnesota Timberwolves team that has continued to struggle. They fired their head coach on Sunday night as they sit firmly at the bottom of the Western Conference with a 7-25 record, but their rookie has shown flashes of huge potential over the past week.
He put up 18 points and seven rebounds in the win against the Toronto Raptors before following it up with a 28-point performance against the reigning champions which showed just how fearless the 19-year-old is, as he pulled up and cashed in a triple over King James himself.
For most, scoring over an all-time great such as LeBron James would be a personal highlight, however that did not even come close to being the highlight of the week for Edwards.
There are some plays that you watch unfold that you know will instantly go down in the history books. LeBron's chasedown block on Igoudala, Ray Allen's clutch three from the corner in the Finals against the Spurs, Damian Lillard's game-winner against OKC, the list goes on. These are all moments that will be replayed on NBA highlight reels for years to come, and it's rare that a rookie finds themselves making a play so iconic.
Rewind to a cold Sunday night in Minnesota. With 12 seconds remaining in the quarter, Edwards catches the ball on the wing. The defender attempts to intercept the pass but fails and is thrown off balance as Edwards drives along the baseline with his left hand. The help defender Yuta Wantanabe comes across to protect the rim but Edwards decides to take flight and put him on a poster that will circulate NBA Twitter for years to come.
An absolutely devastating slam which resulted in the rookie looking up at the jumbotron trying to watch the replay as he walked to the free-throw line with a smile across his face. Words can't do it justice, just watch the dunk below, then watch it again. Welcome to the big leagues young fella!
This season began with supreme optimism for the Portland Trail Blazers. CJ McCollum started off by putting up the best numbers of his career, Jusuf Nurkic was ready to go after missing the majority of last season with injury, and Robert Covington was acquired to provide much-needed defence.
Fast forward to right now: McCollum has suffered a small hairline fracture in his left foot and a mid-foot sprain, Nurkic fractured his right wrist, and the defence that RoCo was supposed to bolster is amongst the worst in the league.
The Rip City franchise are supposed to be down and out, but there is one man who refuses to allow that to happen.
Logo Lillard.
He may be regarded as the best rapper in the NBA, but it's his play on the court that's been making all the noise. The week started with 34 points and 11 assists in a win against Dallas, was followed by 31 points and 10 assists against the Thunder, which is an impressive stat-line. It gets more impressive when you factor in that Portland were down with just five minutes remaining, before going on an 18-2 run, powered by four three-pointers from Dame, with two crucial assists to go with them.
The next night, he dropped 43 points and a career-high 16 assists in a close win over the Pelicans. He's notorious for his long-range shots in the dying embers of the game, but Dame showed his versatility, driving to the hoop for an and-one opportunity with just 16.5 seconds remaining.
If that wasn't enough, he had 35 points and 12 assists in a battle with the hot-streaking Washington Wizards, before being named as the Western Conference Player of the Week.
The 30-year-old point guard has been carrying an injury-hampered squad on his back, and is thriving under the pressure. It's time we put some respect on this man's name and talk about him in the MVP conversation along with Embiid, LeBron, Jokic and others.
We talked earlier about the number one pick from the 2020 Draft having an impressive week, but the No 1 pick from the 2019 draft has also been putting on a show lately!
He's already played more games (29) this season than he did during his entire rookie campaign (24).
Over the four games he played last week, he averaged an impressive 29.5 points. He came up clutch in the overtime win against the Boston Celtics early on Sunday evening, sparking a comeback from a 24-point deficit with an and-one put-back to open the fourth quarter.
I won't tell you too much about that game because you need to be tuning-in to #NBASundays live on Sky Sports for the full analysis, but he did break the hearts of Boston Celtics fans across the world (and yes that includes me!).
For a team led by the reigning MVP and DPOY, this has been a week to forget for the Milwaukee Bucks. They began with a loss to the tanking Oklahoma City Thunder, before losing two games to their Eastern Conference rivals the Toronto Raptors.
The did pick up a win over the Thunder on Friday night, but needing to beat a team that have only won 12 games all season to end a five-game losing streak is not exactly encouraging if you're trying to compete in an Eastern Conference which is more talented than ever.
The Bucks success is evidently dependent on the health of Jrue Holiday. The Bucks big off-season acquisition has been inactive since February 8 and Milwaukee's defence is missing him dearly. Without Holiday they've been lacking size in the back-court, and opponents have been scoring in the paint almost at will.
They also seem to struggle when they're not dominating their Central Division rivals (only one of whom is actually a competitive side)
On the offensive side, Giannis' lack of shooting ability continues to hamper them as Khris Middleton is relied upon to create offence in crucial stages of games.
The Bucks are now 2-8 when games are within five points in the last five minutes. After a disastrous off-season in which they fumbled what would have been a great acquisition in sharp-shooting Bogdan Bogdanovic, the front office scrambled to make-do with other pieces, and right now if I was Giannis Antetokounmpo: I would be considering whether or not I made the right decision to sign a five-year contract to stay in the place that they call "Cream City".
Spoiler - With this final section I don't want to come across like a grumpy old man yelling at a cloud, because I do truly love watching the best players in the league going up against each other, but just hear me out with this one.
Thursday night's match-up between the new-look Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Lakers reportedly pulled in more viewers than any game this season so far, and rightly so.
Even with Anthony Davis and Kevin Durant out, fans still tuned in to watch LeBron James facing his former teammate Kyrie Irving alongside former MVP James Harden.
It was an exciting game, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but how did we get to this point? It's time we spare a thought for small market teams in the NBA, and appreciate just how tough it is for them to compete at the highest level.
In the NBA there are three ways to acquire players to build a team: draft, trade, or sign free agents.
None of the superstars on the Lakers or Nets were drafted there. LeBron James and Kyrie Irving were both drafted in Cleveland, Kevin Durant and James Harden both in Oklahoma, and Anthony Davis in New Orleans. All of these small-markets had their franchise players leave through free agency or trade, because they wanted to be in the bright lights and team up with other superstars in big cities.
LeBron left Cleveland (for the second time) as a free agent, and convinced AD to force the Pelicans to trade him to the Lakers. He did this by pretty much saying that if he was traded anywhere other than LA, he would simply leave when he reached free agency, thereby ending any leverage that New Orleans may have had in trade talks with other sides.
Irving demanded a trade out of Cleveland to a select list of teams, and when he found himself being out-shone by Boston's young stars, he left as a free agent to join the Nets along with his superstar buddy Kevin Durant, a man notorious for his Free Agency decisions (we all remember Summer 2016).
James Harden has never played the free agency card, as he was traded from Oklahoma to Houston, but when he lost patience in H-Town he also forced his way out by demanding to be traded to a particular list of contending teams.
I'm not saying I necessarily have a problem with players determining where they play basketball, but what I am saying is that maybe we should hold certain NBA championships in higher regard, when teams have been put together through shrewd work by General Managers.
Masai Ujiri's trades for Kawhi Leonard and Marc Gasol, Danny Ainge's trades for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, and even the astute drafting by the Golden State Warriors to select Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green before the rest of the world knew they would become stars.
If all it now takes to acquire the best players in the league is to simply be located on the West Coast, or the Big Apple, then the next small-market team to win an NBA Championship has my utmost respect.
