Making A Break For It And Week 8 Of The NBA Power Rankings

Spring is not my favorite season for the most part, but there is at least 1 good thing about it: it makes it easier to sneak out of work early. If you don’t care what your supervisors and fellow employees think about you, you can just roll out whenever in broad daylight (like a boss, I add parenthetically). For those of us who are equipped with some good ol’ fashioned guilt and fear, we have to learn to use some smoke and mirrors though. There are 2 general principles for good work sneaking-outage. 1st, location is key. Good luck trying to sneak out early if a thousand offices and eyes are between your cubicle and the exit door. Also, the more concealed workspace you have, the better. My old office building at APG was a dump, but I loved my cube (my last 1 at least). That cubicle type was basically walled-off on 3 sides, and out of dumb luck the 4th side was an actual wall. Mostly everyone else’s cube was similar, so if I timed my break just right I could reach the door without anyone seeing…better yet, my desk was not in a well-traveled area of the building, so the likelihood of anyone noticing my cubicle being empty was small. The off-post building I work in now is new and shiny, a big improvement over my old digs. The only bad thing is that the cubicle design is more open, and it’s easy to spot when someone walks away from their desk (or when it’s uninhabited all together). The 2nd principle of rolling out early is to travel light. This is where spring comes into play. Some people bring everything but their kitchen sink up to their desk: backpack/laptop case, lunchbox, gym bag, etc…not me. My lunch comes in a plastic bag, so other than a spoon nothing is coming back home with me, and I don’t work out in our office gym, so the gym bag is staying in the car. The only thing left to worry about is a jacket, and if the weather is nice, there’s no chance I’m bringing 1 to work. I’m not saying I dip out of work early every day, but the number 1 giveaway of an early office escapee is a jacket. It’s basically the equivalent of when a bank robber gets sprayed in the face with that blue stuff. You get up from the desk with your jacket on, you’ve been marked. In the spring it’s, “No jacket, no problem.” I could be going anywhere: the bathroom, outside for a private phone call or a quick smoke, who knows? (I don’t smoke, but I could.) Just leave your computer on, don’t make a scene, and no one’s the wiser…actually, they all probably know anyway. Actually, they probably know, and don’t care. People generally care much less about what you’re doing than you think…anyway 4 words (well, 3 words and an acronym): weekly NBA power rankings.

Hey, buddy...where are you off to?

1. Chicago Bulls (PR=1, 39-10)…The Bulls keep the top spot for the 3rd straight week. Tough to argue with going 3-1 this week all with D-Rose on the bench dressed in his Sunday best, but Rose’s lingering injuries are starting to worry me (especially given the fact that Chicago so heavily relies on his offense come playoff time).

2. Miami Heat (PR=3, 34-11)…Miami moves back up a spot this week, but they have an interesting 3 game road trip this week: at Detroit and at Indy with their 1st meeting of the year with the Thunder in Oklahoma City sandwiched in between.

3. Oklahoma City Thunder (PR=2, 35-12)…OKC very quietly built up the best record in the league earlier in the year, and they have just as quietly played unevenly over the past few weeks. They actually have alternated wins and losses in their last 8 games. However, as much as I like to hate on Derek Fisher, he does finally add some stability to their backup point guard troubles with Eric Maynor out.

4. San Antonio Spurs (PR=4, 30-14)…Even with some movement every once in a while in the top 3, this makes the 7th straight week the Spurs come in at number 4 in the rankings. You can seemingly mark San Antonio down for a 2-1 record very week. How they finish the year will depend on the extent of Tony Parker’s hammy injury though, as he has far and away been their best all around player this season.

5. Los Angeles Lakers (PR=5, 29-18)…The Lakers were tied with the Magic with the 5th spot last week, and both went 2-2 this week. I will give LA the edge because Ramon Sessions seems to be a huge upgrade at the point for them. Whether or not Kobe actually allows Sessions to touch the ball when they’re both in the game is another question entirely.

How much longer can John Lucas III and company keep this up?

26. Toronto Raptors (PR=26, 15-32)…I have liked Jerryd Bayless since he was at Arizona, and I’m glad he’s actually getting some decent run in the pros finally. There, I said something nice about the Raptors. Moving on…

27. New Jersey Nets (PR=Not Ranked, 15-33)…So much for my “onward and upward” theory with the Nets. 4 L’s in a row and 6 of the last 7 (including home losses to New Orleans, Cleveland, and Washington) is not so good.

28. Washington Wizards (PR=28, 11-34)…No movement for DC this week, but the moves they made (trading Nick Young and Javale McGee, telling Andray Blatche and Rashard Lewis to go home, and picking up Nene) have them looking up in my opinion.

29. New Orleans Hornets (PR=29, 11-35)…Eric Gordon is expected to return to practice sometime next week according to his Yahoo fantasy basketball profile (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/players/4469/news;_ylt=ArxaqooQg3GDwkk8vWMSFvPSPaB4). So, that’s something.

30. Charlotte Bobcats (PR=30, 7-37)…Have actually won 2 of their last 5, which is almost 25% better than the pace they’ve been winning at for the whole season.

Nene looks pretty good in red, white, and blue to me at least.

Rising: Milwaukee still (6 W’s in a row now), Utah (only a half game out of the 8-seed in the West), and Sacramento (won 3 in a row to get out of the bottom 5)

Falling: LA Clippers still (help!)