THIS WEEK IN THE NBA
The San Antonio Spurs' annual rodeo trip - eight games over 20 days this season - takes them to Boston today, New Jersey on Tuesday and Toronto on Wednesday. "We try to use the rodeo trip as a silver lining," said coach Gregg Popovich. "To try to come together and realize it's tougher on the road. You get a little bit of a bunker mentality, a little edge. It's a good test and a good measure of where we are and what has to be done by the time the playoffs come." The Lakers will play their first home game since Jan. 27 on Tuesday against Oklahoma City but then are right back on the road Wednesday in Utah. After the all-star break, the Lakers will play 17 of their final 30 games on the road. The Suns have a three-game trip leading into the break, as they travel to Detroit, Philadelphia and Cleveland. The Piston and Hawks, two teams battling for the fourth playoff spot in the East, play Wednesday in Detroit. In the final game before the break, Portland plays at Golden State late Thursday night. GAME OF THE WEEK
The top two MVP candidates square off today when Kobe Bryant and the Lakers visit Cleveland to take on LeBron James and the Cavaliers.
Bucks WEEK
It'll be a Carl Landry homecoming when the Houston Rockets make their only regular-season visit to the Bradley Center on Monday. A payback victory Wednesday over Indiana would allow the injury-ravaged Bucks to go into the all-star break on a bit of a high note.
QUOTABLE
"People talk about how physical our team is. We play in a tuxedo (compared to the old guys)." - Utah coach Jerry Sloan, comparing the toughness of his current team to that of the Karl Malone-John Stockton teams.
PLAYER OF THE WEEK
What do you do for an encore if you set a Madison Square Garden record by pouring in 61 points in a victory over the Knicks? If you're the Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant, you score 36 points in a victory at Toronto and then make the league take notice again by leading the Lakers into Boston and claiming an overtime victory over the defending champion. "We came into this building and got beat pretty bad," Bryant said, referring to last season's NBA Finals. "I think we kind of took the challenge upon ourselves coming in here and seeing how much we've grown since then." Bryant finished with 26 points, 10 rebounds and five assists as the Lakers snapped Boston's 12-game winning streak. On Christmas at the Staples Center, the Lakers broke a 19-game Celtics winning streak. Last week's victory gave the Lakers the playoff tiebreaker over Boston and a 5-0 record on their six-game trip. Bryant figured the Lakers would be ready for the game after noticing how quiet his teammates were on the plane ride from Toronto and on the bus ride to the game in Boston. "We're not a quiet team," he said.
NUMBERS GAME
* Eighteen of the league's top 19 players in three-point percentage, at the time of selection, were not invited to compete in the all-star, three-point contest.
* Charlotte's Boris Diaw committed eight turnovers against Utah with four coming on offensive fouls.
* In January, LeBron James averaged 27.5 points, 9.6 rebounds and 8.2 assists, the first player to post those kinds of numbers for a month since Larry Bird in March 1987.
* The 20 free throws that Oklahoma City guard Russell Westbrook made against the Kings were the most against Sacramento in its 25-year history in California.
* The league's top two scorers in January were the Heat's Dwayne Wade (28.1) and the Thunder's Kevin Durant (27.8).
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