The New York teams are starting to crawl their way back to respectability, the Celtics and Lakers are playing each other without any national coverage and we can officially ignore Cleveland for the time being. That means, it's time to talk about the good teams in the league, which by this point in the regular season means most of the Western Conference, the Indiana Pacers and the Miami Heat. (Sorry Bucks fans.)  No we're not going to argue about this, Indiana Pacers guard Paul George had the Dunk of the Year. This is sewn up. (There is also a really cool illustrated .gif version created by Patrick Truby.)  Until this moment, all the Indiana Pacers have been missing was a signature moment. After all, their plan to sew up home field advantage over the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference is bearing fruit as the Heat deal with an injured Dwyane Wade and grumblings about a "flip the switch" approach to the regular season. Paul George has emerged as a legitimate superstar, even garnering some not-completely-insane MVP talk and the Pacers have built up a strong enough postseason track record that they can skip the "contenders or pretenders" talk that, say, the Portland Trail Blazers have had to deal with.  Their Big Moment may have come in Sunday's 106-92 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers, where George unleashed a 360 windmill dunk that some have described as the best in-game dunk in years. One of the best things about basketball is that on rare occasions, you get to see amazingly skilled athletes do things that we've been taught that the human body simply cannot do. George's dunk doesn't just seem to defy gravity but human bio-mechanics.  Not to channel Jonathan Franzen or anything, but in the era of DVRs and video-on-demand, sporting events have become among the last of things that most people prefer to experience live, and it's for moments like these. There's no CGI involved, there's no script, no choreography. Once in a while the impossible just happens to happen, something nobody watching could have predicted mere seconds before. There are no spoilers in basketball, Paul George proved that Sunday night.  It's probably for the best that the Seattle Seahawks are headed to the Super Bowl. Without Russell Wilson and company's remarkable NFL season, Seattle sports fans might not have been able to avoid seeing Kevin Durant put up monster numbers with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Playing without point guard Russell Westbrook, Durant has single-handedly kept the former Seattle SuperSonics in the mix for the best record in the Western Conference.  The only surprising thing about Kevin Durant scoring a career high 54 points against the Golden State Warriors on Friday was that he hadn't had a 54 point or higher game yet. Not that we expected him to match Wilt's 100, or Kobe's 81, at this point in his still young career, but it feels like this should have been a milestone he surpassed a while back. Those are the sacrifices a player must make when he has to to share the ball with a player as productive as Russell Westbrook.  A few days later Durant put up 45 against the Portland Trail Blazers in a 105-97 win against the Western Conference's biggest surprise team. The win gave the Thunder a 32-10 record, putting them just a halfgame behind the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference standings. In his team's last eight games, Durant has scored at least 30 points every night. More importantly to Thunder fans, OKC has won five of its last six games with Durant no longer sharing scoring duties with his injured point guard.  Someone who is definitely watching? That would be two-time league MVP LeBron James, admitting to ESPN that he's jealous:  I get jealous sometimes when I look over at KD and he's like 16-for-32 (from the field) and then 14-for-34. ... Man.  That sounds like a quote from someone who knows he has some real competition this year.  You're never going to believe this, but it's mid-winter and the San Antonio Spurs have the best record in the Western Conference. Some things we can still rely on it seems. Taking advantage of injuries to Thunder's Russell Westbrook, the Los Angeles Clippers' Chris Paul, as well as the tiniest bit of regression from the overachieving (but still very, very good) Portland Trail Blazers, the 32-9 Spurs are currently hold a slim half-game lead in the crowded West.  As usual for San Antonio, any player on the roster can contribute at any time. During Sunday's 110-82 win over the Milwaukee Bucks, it was Australian benchwarmer Patty Mills's night leading all Spurs scorers with 20 points, which highlighted several things:  1. The Milwaukee Bucks are really bad this season. (We already kinda knew that.)  2. Obviously the Spurs got ahead really quickly if Patty Mills got enough playing time to score 20 points.  3. Would anyone be shocked at the success of any Gregg Popovich-picked player at any point? It's almost surprising that Tracy McGrady didn't go off for a double-double for the Spurs in last year's playoffs. Maybe Mills can make up for the loss of Danny Green? He did have some success with the three-pointer on Sunday, after all.  4. If things like this keep happening, it's going to be hard to blame Popovich if he keeps deciding to bench his starters during the regular season.  Not that the Spurs aren't getting criticism from surprising sources. Last week veteran guard Manu Ginobili noticed a rather disturbing trend, calling out his team by pointing out they had gone 1-8 against the Western Conference's best. It's a little thing, especially since the Spurs have only lost two games so far in 2014, a January 2nd loss to the New York Knicks and Friday's 109-100 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers, but a trend worth noticing. Ideally they would prefer to have more of a half-game cushion in the lead over the Thunder before Westbrook returns. There's a lot of season left to play, but if there's any team that knows this, it's San Antonio.  This week's major NBA injury news (rolls 20-sided dice) affected Danilo Gallinari of the Denver Nuggets. Gallinari, who hasn't played in a game all season after injuring his ACL last April, will not return to the court following a second surgery on his knee. Gallinari will miss the entire 2013-14 Nuggets season, unlike most Nuggets fans who, at its end, probably won't miss it all.  Unless there's a dramatic turnaround, this Nuggets season already looks close to lost. Despite having a strong showing last season, the Nuggets let Coach of the Year George Karl go after another one-and-done postseason run and then watched big-time trade acquisition Andre Iguodala sign with the rival Golden State Warriors after a one-year rental. As of right now, Denver has a 20-20 record, putting them just outside the playoff mix alongside the Memphis Grizzlies and Minnesota Timberwolves.  Not to downplay the Denver Nuggets' loss, or prematurely give their season an "All Quiet On The Western Conference"-eque darkly ironic ending, but technically the NBA didn't lose a major star player to injury this week, since Gallinari never really returned in the first place. And hey, Rajon Rondo and Greg Oden actually even played a little bit this week, that may mean that it was a net positive for the NBA. (Warning: This optimistic outlook ensures that like half of the Timberwolves starters will be scratched for the remainder of the season an hour after this gets posted.)  • Greg Oden is back in the NBA which is a heartwarming story unless you're Andrew Bynum. Last Wednesday Oden played his first regular season game since 2009, even getting in a dunk during the Miami Heat's victory over the Washington Wizards. On Tuesday night's win over the Boston Celtics, the Heat center denied Jeff Green's dunk attempt. Note: This feel good story ends if he helps the Heat destroy the Portland Trail Blazers in the NBA Finals, then it's just going to look incredibly unfair.  • Ricky Rubio is for the children.  • Nate Robinson should play for every NBA team. Seriously.  • Despite the return of Rajon Rondo, the Boston Celtics have won exactly one game in 2014. Meanwhile in his offices, Danny Ainge is watching NCAA games and cackling madly as his plan comes together.  • Matt Bonner: Better Andy Kaufman impersonator than Jim Carrey.  • Nice try First Lady, but we've reviewed the tape and we're still going with Paul George for Dunk of the Year:
Hunter Felt: Paul George helps Indiana keep pace; Kevin Durant has LeBron James jealous; Death, Taxes and the San Antonio Spurs