With hot teams, Davis, Lillard hot names in MVP discussion

WITH the Houston Rockets on top of the NBA and James Harden on top of the scoring race, he may be running away with the MVP vote.

Anthony Davis and Damian Lillard might have something to say about that.

With stellar play steering their sizzling teams, they have at least entered their names in the conversation with a little more than a month left in the regular season.

Harden has been runner-up to Stephen Curry and Russell Westbrook in recent years, but it's looked like his time this season. With more than 31 points and nearly nine assists per game — third in the league in that category — for a team with the league's best record, it's hard to imagine needing to look elsewhere.

"What Harden and Houston is doing right now, he's the MVP of the league right now," Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas said on NBA TV.

Davis and Lillard could deserve some thought.

Davis has carried New Orleans with dominant basketball since DeMarcus Cousins was lost for the season last month. The Western Conference player of the month for February opened March by winning player of the week, largely on the strength of a 53-point, 18-rebound, fiveblock effort that rallied the Pelicans from a 17-point deficit to a victory over Phoenix on Feb. 26.

Then he went for 41 points and 13 rebounds Tuesday in his first game this week, hitting the tiebreaking shot as the Pelicans beat the Clippers in Los Angeles.

He's second in the league in scoring and blocks, and eighth in rebounds.

Lillard is building a good resume for this week's honor. He's scored 39 and 37 in two games thus far, with 19 in the fourth quarter Monday to rally Portland past the Lakers, and eight 3pointers Tuesday in a rout of the Knicks. That gave the league leader in second-half scoring 35 or more in seven of the last 10 games.

Most importantly — for their teams and their candidacies — their clubs are rolling. New Orleans has won nine straight and Portland has won eight in a row.

The top four teams in the Western Conference have combined for 39 straight victories.

And if a couple of them have even a minor slump, they might fall right out of the playoff picture.

That's how tight things are in the West headed down the stretch. Golden State is 6-0 since the All-Star break and can't gain on Houston, which has won 16 in a row to remain a half-game ahead.

Third-place Portland has won eight consecutive games and is a game up on OMAHA, Neb. — In a single-file line, the allages group of 40 shuffled gingerly onto the ice. Some wore jeans, some wore sweatpants and one was in gym shorts. A few looked athletic; others not so much. There was a sense of nervous excitement.

All had pulled rubber “grippers” over the soles of their shoes to reduce slippage, and now it was time to learn how to curl.

Every four years, coinciding with the Winter Olympics, curiosity in the ancient Scottish sport is piqued. But this year, clubs across the nation are reporting unprecedented interest, particularly after the U.S. men won the country’s first curling gold medal.

Here at the Aksarben Curling Club (that’s “Nebraska” spelled backward), about 1,000 aspiring curlers will be introduced to the sport this winter and spring — more than twice as many as in a normal year, director of marketing Sean Morrison said.

“Typically we’ll see a bit of falloff as the Olympics wrap up and New Orleans, winner of nine in a row. Yet the Pelicans are just three games ahead of ninth place, and there the season ends and the weather warms,” Morrison said. “As it turns out, the U.S. men won the gold this year, and that only heightened the interest. We’re continuing to see a lot of interest where traditionally it would have waned by now.”

Fifty-somethings Brenda Graumann, Mimi Quinn and Robin Quinn signed up for the Aksarben event Sunday because they were looking for something new to try. They got their first look at the sport when they attended the U.S. Olympic trials in Omaha in November, and they watched the competition in South Korea on television.

“They make it look so easy,” Graumann said.

It’s not, Graumann and the rest would soon discover.

With the newbies sitting in rink-side bleachers while volunteers prepared the ice, Aksarben club president Steve Taylor went over that afternoon’s lesson, explained terminology and talked about safety. Everyone signs a release of liability upon walking through the door, Taylor said in an interview. remains just a 4 ½game difference between No. 3 and No. 10.

"There's just not a whole lot of separation," He noted there have been two concussions and one separated shoulder sustained from falls this winter.

Taylor issued a series of warnings. The brooms are for sweeping and aren’t spears or golf clubs to be waved around. “I don’t want to see anyone get cracked upside the face,” he said.

He admonished them to not play catch with the stones — yes, a couple guys one time thought it would be fun to toss the 40-pound stones back and forth to each other. Taylor cautioned that runaway stones “trucking down the ice” and sliding beyond the boundaries should be stopped with a broom, not a foot.

With that, the newcomers split into their four-person teams, one each on either end of the five curling sheets spread across the hockey rink.

There are about 20,000 curlers in 40 states registered with USA Curling , with nearly 4,000 in Wisconsin and 3,500 in Minnesota. Numbers outside the sport’s traditional footprint are sure to grow judging Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry said, "so I think that's what you're going to see for the rest of the year." AP by the popularity of initiation events.

“In addition to the strong response to local open houses and learnto-curl classes, we have had individuals reach out to the national organization from around the country about starting curling clubs,” USA Curling director of growth and development Kim Nawyn said. “We are particularly excited to see interest in states such as Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama, where there are no current clubs.”

The Denver Curling Club held six open houses over 10 days, and more than 1,000 people ages 6 to 80 came out to try the sport for 30 or 60 minutes. The Lone Star Curling Club in Austin, Texas, has sold out 500 spots spread over 10 learnto-curls, with two sessions selling out in 29 hours.

Gause said he didn’t know if he would want to commit to signing up for a league. He did say, however, he would like to try curling again.

“It’s a lot harder than I thought it was going to be,” he said. AP