Five to Watch: Week 5

After missing last week, where nothing really happened...



erm, my bad.

Anyway, what's going down this week?

1. Spurs at Hornets, Sunday: Under the radar, Los Spurs are 11-1 without really getting a whole lot (by his standards) from Tim Duncan and vaunted addition Tiago Splitter still working his way into the rotation. The Hornets have made a little more noise while also jumping out to an 11-1 start, and we're about a week away from a raft of "Chris Paul is Back!" stories focusing on how he never really wanted to leave and so on. Predictable media narrative is predicable. In any event, this is a huge matchup between the teams vying for the position as "most likely sacrificial lamb for the Western Conference Finals."

2. This week in As The Heat Turn, Udonis Haslem is on the shelf for a bit with a very painful sounding injury (dislocated big toe? yech). Depending on Wade's health, the Heat are down to between 2 and 3.5 guys who qualify under my extremely unscientific and arbitrary "Actual NBA Player" rubric - I give Methuselah Ilgauskas between 1/2 and one on that scale. Time for Lebron James to go into his "get on, folks" routine, but also a big opportunity for the much maligned Bosh to get some of the critics off his back.

3. Relatedly, the travel across Florida for a rematch with Orlando. We all know what happened earlier in the season when Miami completely wood-shedded the seconf half. If they can repeat that feat with their current roster, in Orlando, this would be a huge huge statement win for Miami and probably a pretty crushing loss for Orlando. This would be a nice time for Dwight Howard to go nutty.

4. Thursday night on TNT, I probably won't be watching, nor will anyone else, but the over/under and Charles uttering a variation of "these are two turrible games" over the course of the night has to be around 13.5. I'm sure Sacto/LAC seemed like a good idea at the time to the NBA schedule makers.

5. Finally, the Lake Show in Utah on Friday. I'm basically looking for any sign of a challenge to the Laker's dominance this year. With all due respect to Chris Paul, Pau Gasol is the 1/8th Season MVP in my book. Shannon Brown is either still playing out of his mind or has just gotten lots lots better. Blake and Barnes combine with Shamwow to give them an extremely effective bench, and both Ebanks and Caracter have shown signs of being promising prospects. In short, I hate them. I really hope that the one time BTTITW can do what needs doing here.

What's everyone else looking for?