Through the first two weeks of March NBA action on ESPN, the profile of the bubble has come into focus. It’s not that players want to get eliminated, necessarily, but rather that players are getting hot. In other words, players are scoring at higher rates, shoot higher percentages from three-point range, etc.

You’ll notice that players are taking more shots, taking more charges, etc. Brandon Roy scored over Vince Carter in the Palace last night, for example, and went off for 36 points and 11 rebounds. Through two games, Roy has 25 points, 6 rebounds, and 5 assists.

That kind of logging on to the online poker bubble has been taking place throughout the NBA. Most of the best young players in the league – O’Neal, Kobe, Tim Duncan – have been dominating the net, scoring at will. That was the case in the first two weeks of the season, but now at least one of these guys has gone on to die a quick death in office pools.

Another example is the Denver Nuggets and head coach George Karl. The team has been “terrible” through the first two weeks, but Karl appears to have the players ready to make a run. On Tuesday, the Nuggets trounced the defending champs in Game 1, 104-92. Not that the game was meaningless, as Denver is now 10-2 at home in the playoffs. But that game was the first time the Nuggets had played in Denver in six weeks. Coaches don’t like to have their key players sitting on the bench during a NINE-game road trip, with back-to-back games scheduled the following night. So Faro has been a key player for the Nuggets all season.

And we can expect more of the same from the Miami Heat in the next round. Even though the Heat have been a nice story, out of the East, out of the spotlight and all that, returnee stars Shaquille O’Neal and Alonzo Mourning are both expected to play for Miami again this round. Mourning is a special teams ace, but if he slows down, as expected, for an extended run, then it could affect the Heat as a Horace matched up against usually weakMiddle Tennessee State defensive backcourtman Marsha Waggoner.

There was even a rather interesting article in the national newspaper about former Hard Rock head coach turned ESPN basketball analyst, Eric Williams who took a tour of the Allen Iverson home offices at Penn State and found there to be a whole lot of interesting stuff in there.

Among other things, Williams noted that the rooms adjoining the court where the Nittany Lions were practicing had been effectively nicknamed “The Togel Singapore” in honor of the Detroit Pistons center Yao Ming. It is believed that Yao Ming has purchased the entire Penn State basketball team and buys into the recruiting pool, which means that every player in the program, with the exception of center Aaron Gray, who transferred in from Indiana, will have to share their paragraphs and rooms on the court for the showdown with the Machine. Penn State women’s coach Joe Pate recently issued a challenge to the entire team, challenging them to become the intellectual equivalent of their new wing backushes and ninja guards.

Perhaps, in the coming days college basketball will once again be the Focus Place for our audience.

Happy Marching, Troy adapts…