Monday Insider

[Weez]

Can Jimmy Jackson make the difference?

By Chad Ford

ESPN Insider

The Good, the Bad, the Upside

Insider's Chad Ford rounds up the state of the NBA every Monday, looking at The Good and The Bad and offering a little dose of optimism in The Upside.

The Bad

Waiving the white flag in Utah?

Why would anyone want Lenny's old job?

The Upside

Joltin' Joe makes another smooth move.

Pacers revving up for the stretch.

This week marks the midway point in the NBA season. It's tough to remember a time when we've seen more parity throughout the league.

To date, only three teams, the Spurs, Suns and the Heat, have been dominant enough to merit serious Finals discussion. After that, there's a giant scrum of contenders with lots of upside, but nothing concrete to hang your hat on.

Steve Nash, LeBron James, Shaquille O'Neal, Tim Duncan and Amare Stoudemire have all done enough to merit the MVP buzz.

D'Antoni is a coach of the year contender.

Emeka Okafor is running away with the Rookie of the Year award (though Dwight Howard and Ben Gordon are gaining ground).

Stoudemire, Larry Hughes, and Bobby Simmons are in the running for the Most Improved player award.

Vladimir Radmanovic, Jerry Stackhouse and Earl Boykins are garnering the most Sixth Man buzz.

Mike D'Antoni and Nate McMillan are the front-runners for Coach of the Year honors.

Here's Insider's take on the Good, the Bad and the Upside through the first half of the season.

The Good

Spurs: What's not to like about the Spurs? They are the best team in the league defensively, yet they are still finding a way to score 97 points per game. The have a legit MVP candidate in Duncan; Tony Parker continues to grow into an All-Star point guard; Manu Ginobili is lightning in a bottle (did you catch his 48-point performance against the Suns this weekend?); and they have the most underrated bench in the league.

Popovich

Their coach, Gregg Popovich, is as steady as they come and has loosened the reins a little on his team offensively, which explains in part why Parker and Ginobili are having such great years. They have the experience it takes to go all the way. You'll be hard-pressed to find an executive in the league that doesn't have this team penciled in to go all the way.

"We used to be like a swamp that (bred) mosquitoes," said former Spurs star and current television analyst Sean Elliott. "Our offense was totally stagnant. We would dump the ball into the low post, and everybody would stand around and watch Tim (Duncan) and Dave (Robinson). Now we have people who cut, move, pass. We can score with anybody in the league, and defensively, we're better than everybody."

What can they do to seal the deal? Their frontcourt is a little soft, especially at center. Rasho Nesterovic is having an off year and hit the injured list this weekend with a sprained ankle. The team is still holding out hope that Karl Malone will join the team. If Malone is fully healthy, the Spurs can move Duncan to center, Malone to the four and bring Nesterovic off the bench. Malone has been coy about his intentions so far, but league sources claim that if he does decide to play this year, the Spurs are the heavy favorites to get his services.

If Malone doesn't come back, expect the Spurs to remain active on the trade front. They recently tried to pry away Tyson Chandler from the Bulls and continue to look for a long, athletic big man who can block shots and rebound. They're offering Nesterovic as trade bait but would be willing to give up anyone not named Duncan, Parker or Ginobili if they could find the right guy.

Suns: After a red-hot start, the Suns have lost six of their last seven, prompting the team to take some pretty strong medicine on Friday when they traded Casey Jacobsen, Maciej Lampe and Jackson Vroman to the Hornets for veteran Jim Jackson. While everyone knows that the loss of Steve Nash led to the Suns' six-game skid, the trouble Phoenix experienced without him in the lineup underscored a general feeling upstairs: The team desperately needed more help off the bench, and management seriously believes it can win it all this year.

By pulling the trigger on this trade, the Suns believe that they've significantly narrowed a pretty wide chasm between their fifth man and their sixth man. Jackson is a significant improvement over Jacobsen and should fit well into the Suns' style of play. Now, if a Suns starter gets injured, the team shouldn't suffer quite as much drop off.

Jackson (center) strengthens the Suns' bench.

Despite rumors to the contrary, the trade wasn't made in preparation for a bigger trade involving Joe Johnson, sources told Insider this weekend. Talk of a swap with the Clippers for Chris Wilcox or with the Sixers for Samuel Dalembert is bogus. We've been writing in this space for more than a month that the Suns have interest in Dalembert, and they still do. But they've been given zero indications that the Sixers would be willing to swap him for Johnson and/or the pick they own from the Bulls.

Will the addition of Jackson be enough to justify trading away big for small and young for old? Obviously the answer is yes if the Suns win the title. If they don't? The team gave up two young centers that they were high on because they weren't ready to contribute this season. If Jim Jackson, who turned 34 in October, fails to provide the expected kick, the trade could hurt them down the road. I understand why they did it, but if Lampe or Jacobsen kick-start their careers elsewhere, the team could be kicking itself down the line.

Heat: For anyone still questioning the Shaquille O'Neal-for-Lamar Odom, Caron Butler and Brian Grant swap, take a look at what the Heat are doing both on the court and at the box office.

Shaq's presence is felt everywhere. He remains the most dominant big man in the league and can carry the entire team on his back when he needs to. He also remains humble enough to let his teammates do the heavy lifting when they get it going. The fact that Dwyane Wade, not Shaq, leads the team in scoring – and Shaq is cool with it – says a lot about the difference between this team and last year's Lakers.

Just having Shaq on the court makes things easier for the Heat. It should come as no surprise that the team leads the league in shooting. The team hits 48.4 percent of their shots, an impressive 1.2 percent better than their next closest competitor, the Suns.

At this point last season, the Heat were 18-26 through 44 games. This year the team leads the East with a 30-12 record. The Lakers, meanwhile, are 22-16 after going 25-13 a year ago.

Despite the gaudy record, team president Pat Riley knows the Heat are still a piece or two away from a title.

Riley is looking for more depth and a consistent third scorer on the offensive end. They've been trying to move Eddie Jones most of the year for a combo of Jalen Rose and Donyell Marshall. They've been in the Malone sweepstakes and even flirted with bringing Qyntel Woods. They also made a play for Carlos Arroyo, before he was shipped to Detroit, after the shaky play of Damon Jones the past few weeks.

Mavericks: Dallas is a point guard away from being in position to win an NBA title this year. I'll give Mavs fans a second to savor the irony.

Mark Cuban has to be kicking himself as he watches Nash put up MVP numbers in Phoenix. Put all the actuarial tables aside for a minute: There was something that Nash brought to the table that formulas don't take into account. Cuban blew it, and he knows it.

While Cuban spent most of the summer obsessing over the team's lack of a big man, teams like the Suns were fine-tuning a style of play (one employed less radically by Don Nelson over the years) that maximized Nash's ability and let the Suns take advantage of the growing weakness of the Western Conference's front lines.

Cuban spent nearly the same amount of money on Dampier that he refused to pay Nash. Dampier is just one year younger and has so far been a major disappointment for the Mavs, averaging 8.7 ppg and 7.4 rpg.

The silver lining is that the Mavs are winning despite Cuban's bumbling. Dirk Nowitzki is having a career year (and, in a bit of revisionist history, the Mavs are claiming that he's playing at this level because he no longer has Nash to lean on. … yeah, right). Reserve Jerry Stackhouse is a strong contender for the Sixth Man honor. Second-year forward Josh Howard has been great, and Terry, Nash's replacement, has been on a tear in January, averaging 16.6 ppg and 6.1 apg while shooting more than 60 percent from the field and the three-point line.

Despite Terry's recent production, the Mavs are still looking to upgrade the point guard position. The Mavs believe Terry is better as a sixth man, a Nick Van Exel-esque scorer. Rookie Devin Harris will be the eventual heir to the position, but he isn't ready yet. While Cuban claims he no longer has interest in Jason Kidd, that isn't entirely true, according to sources close to Kidd. Other point guards on the block that the Mavs might consider include Gary Payton and Andre Miller.

Cavaliers: If somehow the Suns fade and Nash doesn't take home the MVP award, is there really a better candidate than LeBron James? I know that the conventional wisdom in the league is that he's too young and needs to earn his due. But that, to me, is what is so amazing about him.

James' numbers for the season are as good as anyone in the league. He's taken it up another notch over his last five games, averaging 27 ppg, 8.8 rpg, 8.4 apg and 3 spg with two triple-doubles in his last three games. Then you factor in that he's taken the cellar-dwelling Cavs from last place two seasons ago to second place in the East this season – without a lot of major additions (and one major subtraction in Carlos Boozer). You can make the argument that perhaps Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan are better players. But after that, it would be difficult to find a better player who helps his team more.

LeBron already has provided us with plenty of highlights, and he just turned 20.

GM Jim Paxson's challenge is to give James enough of a supporting cast to keep the Cavs a contender this season. His attempts to pawn off Dajuan Wagner and DeSagana Diop for a role player in the last year of his contract has fallen flat. At this point, the Cavs might start getting more serious in their pursuits. The team has flirted with the idea of moving center Zydrunas Ilgauskas. While Ilgauskas remains one of the most gifted offensive centers in the league, lately it has come at the expense of his defense, rebounding and shot blocking. With his impending free agency, the Cavs have a tough decision to make.

Ilgauskas turns 30 in June and his history of foot problems (though, in fairness, he hasn't missed a game in 2½ seasons) worries the Cavs. If he would agree to a reasonable extension, the feeling in Cleveland is to re-sign him. However, they won't go overboard. The Cavs need enough room under the cap next summer to offer a player like Michael Redd or Ray Allen a max contract. If Ilgauskas, in a trade, could bring them back a player like that before the trade deadline, the Cavs might be hard-pressed to turn it down.

The less drastic approach is to wait Ilgauskas out until the summer and add Sasha Pavlovic or Luke Jackson to the Wagner-Diop combo or to a package that includes Eric Snow. Had they done either, the team would have made a trade by now and improved their team for this season while adding flexibility to their cap next year. What are the Cavs waiting for? Paxson might have no choice to wait until new team owner Dan Gilbert officially takes over the Cavs. The board of governors is expected to approve the sale over the All-Star break, just a week before the trade deadline.

SuperSonics: Teams are beginning to figure out the Sonics, but they're probably too deep to suffer the type of second-half melt down that would push them out of the playoffs.

The team has three players coming off the bench – Radmanovic, Danny Fortson and Daniels – who would be starters on most teams in the league. Radmanovic and Daniels have been especially lethal, averaging a combined 34 ppg and 10.2 rpg and 7.4 apg off the bench in the last five.

Despite the great production from the bench, the team has lost three of their last five and appears to lack the grittiness it showed earlier in the season. Teams are coming right at the Sonics now, exploiting a defense that allows opponents to shoot 45.5 percent from the field. Of the teams that allow foes to shoot the same or better from the field, all but one, the Wizards, are headed for the lottery this season.

"We have lost a little bit of the scrappiness that we had, and we've got to get it back," McMillan said. "We've got to find a way to dig down deep and get that back because these teams are coming out and playing aggressive basketball."

As we reported last week, the Sonics are interested in making changes but are paralyzed to certain degree by a sense of insecurity heading into the offseason. Until the team figures out whether they are going to re-sign Allen, Radmanovic and Daniels in free agency, expect the hand wringing to continue.

Chad Ford covers the NBA for ESPN Insider.