By JAMES BUCKLIN

Welcome
everyone to another edition of Bucklinks: Where you can take a trip
through all of the headlines and every other dark and sometimes
hilarious corner of the NBA.

Taking a look at the standings
you will see that the Thunder are still making the rest of the league
look silly, while the Heat, Sixers and Bulls continue to battle for East
supremacy. The Celtics won four straight as Paul Pierce turned back the
clocks over the past few, but dropped a tough one to the “not as bad as
I thought they’d be” Cleveland Cavaliers. The Magic, Spurs and Lakers
are also hovering around the “.500 because we’re old” mark as well while
the Bobcats have lost eight straight and are officially worse than the Wizards.

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On the topic of the Charlotte Bobcats and bad basketball take a look at this free throw “attempt”
by DeSagana Diop from the Cats / Wiz game. I have coached basketball on
the pee-wee level so I have seen this before, only from players about
three feet shorter than Mr. Diop. We have seen this kind of activity
in the past but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone come up quite that
short. Let that be an inspiration to everyone. You don’t have to be able
to reach the rim on an airball to make it to the NBA. You just need to
grow to be over 7-feet tall.

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In a clash of the Eastern Conference titans Sunday afternoon between Miami and Chicago the Heat came out with the big win at home 97-93.
That win wasn’t quite enough for Bron, Wade and the gang to leap over
Chicago in the standings to capture the coveted 1-seed, but LeBron James
was able to leap over one of the Bulls players in the process. Check
out this alley-oop play and prepare for your jaw to drop.

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People used to get on LeBron’s case for using an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality when he took his talents to South Beach,
but I think it may be time to start transferring that heat over to
Dwight Howard. After another disappointing Orlando loss the other night
he said he would love to join the Bulls if he got the opportunity. He
also did this after The Celtics took two against his Magic saying he would be honored to play in Boston. The Basketball Jones does a nice job here of laying this whole thing out.

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Notable Injuries of the week: Andrea Bargnani, Andrew Bogut, Dirk Nowitski still getting back into shape.