No Westbrook, no matter
After the Rockets collapsed (at home) I thought I’d look back and presently. In this game the home team managed to score 19 points in the second half of their game against the Thunder. How can an NBA only score 19 points in two quarters of basketball? This is the team that was to compete for the Western Conference Championship, can I say maybe next season? Looking back and today, in 41 games the Rockets are 26-15. Last year the Rockets with no Howard in the lineup were 21-20. Rockets fans possibly believed the acquisition of Dwight Howard would lead them to a championship. Charles Barkley addressed the issue in his post-game comments; “Dwight Howard is a very, very good player, he’s not a great player. He’s made little progress in his game since 2009 (NBA Championship series).”

Magic Johnson
If you’ve read Words any length of time you are aware of this ahead of time. I loved Magic Johnson the player; Magic Johnson the analyst concerned me. It seemed at times he aimed more critical remarks at the Lakers than any other NBA team. I’ve come full circle now; Magic blasted Laker co-owner Jim Buss in the newspaper. Another case I don’t intend to repeat what he said, let’s just say it needed to be stated. I’m sure as I’m typing this Buss will not react to Magic’s comment.

Same old story
I was fooled again this time by Big XII teams, early on it appeared a tight race. Once again Kansas has moved to the top of the heap. Baylor, Oklahoma State, Kansas State and Iowa State all were contenders who have become pretenders. Before the season concludes Kansas may lose one or two games but I doubt if any of the pretenders will supplant them as conference champions.

Don’t get me wrong
Road mileage can vary based on the highway utilized; it’s a little more than 200 road miles between Wichita and Kansas City Missouri. Road mileage between Kansas City and Lawrence is about 50 miles; I hope you see where I’m headed. Local media doesn’t ignore Wichita basketball however they don’t pay a great deal of attention considering the team is one of the best in the nation. The same situation exists for Mizzou sports; Columbia is 150 miles from Kansas City. Oh, I forgot there is another advantage. It seems a large number of journalism students from Kansas locate here and appear to represent the majority of print and electronic media here. Of course during football season little coverage other than the score is mentioned regarding Kansas football.

Do you allow people to do their job?
This is a piggy-back to a Dan Patrick discussion. Patrick was discussing “Black Monday” where five NFL coaches were fired. His view, “ownership is often the problem these guys make a billion dollars in the private sector. They believe they are the smartest guys in the room.” The NBA has been just as unstable in the coaching ranks at the completion of last season, a record number of coaches where relieved of their jobs. Even more interesting George Karl and Lionel Hollins had both led their teams into the playoffs although both their teams failed to advance.

If we look closely at list of successful NBA teams most have owners who allow the pros to run their team. The Spurs have been the model of consistency on and off the court, owners remain in the background. One upon a time I could include the Lakers in the same conversation however lately it’s quite difficult. We are unsure what Jim Buss is attempting to accomplish these days. We could include the Cavs Dan Gilbert as one of those hands-on owners. Although he appears to remain in the background James Dolan might be a contributing factor to the problems of the Knicks. Dolan and others fail to “let the people (you’ve hired) do their job.”