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The 2008-09 NBA season started a bit earlier than normal. A handful of teams, then, have reached the 27-game pole quicker than usual.
You know what that means.
With one-third of the 82-game schedule essentially gone, it's time for ESPN.com's annual First Trimester Report, where we take stock of the league's seven major award categories:
East MVP of the First Trimester
LeBron James (Cleveland)
He's playing the one-on-one defense we've always wanted him to play and mixing in some minutes at power forward these days.
He's finally making free throws, as an 80-percenter, at a rate that a player of his stature should.
He's also more of a leader than he's ever been, on a team that hadn't lost a single home game entering the weekend, captaining what appears to be the only threat (besides injuries in Boston) to the Celtics winning the East.
So ...
Impressive as Dwyane Wade has been in his renaissance, improving on what he did in Beijing to fully reclaim his 2006 NBA Finals form, LeBron has to rank as the best singular force in the East right now. The whole league, probably.
I suppose you could say it helps his cause that you can't single out a Celtic here to make it a more crowded race, but let's face it. The Cavs are on a tidy 64-18 pace of their own and winning by a nightly margin of 13-plus points. LeBron is looking more and more like le roi that all the commercials have been telling us.
West MVP of the First Trimester
Chauncey Billups (Denver)
It's a much tougher call over here.
How much tougher?
You can make the case -- and we're about to -- that neither Kobe Bryant nor Chris Paul has been the best player in the conference through the first third of season. You likewise struggle to even make room in the discussion for the fast-charging Brandon Roy, even at a time of year when we're not so strict about our usual edict -- which Wade recently backed up -- that MVPs only come from elite teams.
This choice at this stage comes down to Billups versus Tim Duncan for me. Kobe's fast-starting Lakers were the early story in the West, but the recent developments in Denver and San Antonio have been major, making this decision maybe our hardest on the board.
A summer of boxing training and throwing tractor tires had Duncan sufficiently lean, spry and juiced to carry the Spurs by himself for much of November while Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker nursed ankle injuries. TD merely hoisted the Spurs out a 2-5 start and prevented the rest of the West's contenders from gaining some real distance when they had the chance.
Yet I've surprised myself here by spurning the Spur and choosing Billups, who really didn't leave me much of an alternative. The Nuggets were 1-3 before Billups played a game for them, widely expected to slide out of playoff contention and unloved by their own fans after being shredded all summer for handing Marcus Camby to the Clippers in a straight salary dump.
Now?
Without the benefit of gaudy numbers, Billups has triumphantly returned to his hometown to be the leader/organizer/stabilizer that Carmelo Anthony and all the other Nuggets needed, coach George Karl included. No one in the West -- not even Duncan and not even Paul, whose statistical prowess is fantasy stuff indeed -- has had Chauncey's impact so far.
Coach of the First Trimester
Doc Rivers (Boston)
Not sure who even wants to be in the Coach of the Year race (or even the Coach of the First Trimester race) when three of the last COYs -- Mike D'Antoni in Phoenix, Avery Johnson in Dallas and Sam Mitchell in Toronto -- no longer work in the cities where they won the award.
As always, though, there are numerous worthy candidates.
Mike Brown hasn't received enough credit for the long-awaited offensive improvements we've seen in Cleveland. Orlando's Stan Van Gundy never gets sufficient spotlight for the influence he has on Dwight Howard and a thin team that does nothing but win road games. San Antonio's Gregg Popovich and Utah's Jerry Sloan have kept their teams winning through significant injury obstacles ... and Atlanta's long-suffering Mike Woodson has helped the Hawks' maintain last spring's playoff momentum -- when few pundits thought he could -- despite losing Josh Smith for 12 games.
Phil Jackson's juggling of a deep bench, Miami rookie Erik Spoelstra's better-than-.500 start with the Heat, even Mike D'Antoni making the Knicks respectable (and watchable) so soon in spite of the Stephon Marbury circus ... all of them merit a mention. Especially D'Antoni for proving that his system can function even without Steve Nash at the controls.
However ...
The Celts are in the midst of a start for the ages, after we were told all summer that they wouldn't have the hunger to be anywhere near the team you see now. So we can't mention them enough in a column like this.
Which is why Rivers has to be the selection here. Everyone knows that a good chunk of the Celtics' peerless intensity comes from Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, but don't downplay Doc's role in it. He's using his bench better, getting more and more out of his youngsters and has a relationship with his stars that probably only Popovich can top.
Rookie of the First Trimester
O.J. Mayo (Memphis)
Point guard has always been my favorite position. Derrick Rose is obviously more of a point guard than O.J. Mayo.
Still ...
I find myself drawn more to Mayo's start. And, no, this has nothing to do with Rose cutting himself on the apple knife.
Maybe it's because I expected Rose to be in this ballpark. I saw Mayo's first NBA exhibition game in person and did not see much evidence of a kid who, at 21, didn't even need 20 games to prove he's a top-shelf NBA scorer.
It's early. I suspect Chicago's flirtation with a playoff spot will ultimately help Rose win the ROY trophy. Yet to this point, Mayo has the slightest of edges with me, with an opening trimester in the pros sufficiently special to help Grizz coach Marc Iavaroni keep his job ... and scorch another hole in Kevin McHale's draft resume in Minneapolis.
Sixth Man of the First Trimester
Jason Terry (Dallas)
One of the easiest calls of them all.
That's true even with Ginobili back to work, Nate Robinson and J.R. Smith heating up and Andrei Kirilenko looking more comfortable coming off the bench for Jerry Sloan than he has in years.
Reason being: Terry's has been a sizzling scorer for weeks. He's clicking next to Dirk Nowitzki better than he has since Dallas' ill-fated run to the 2006 NBA Finals. Nowitzki would be the first to say that the Mavs would not be 9-4 this season when Josh Howard doesn't play without Terry.
Defensive Player of the First Trimester
Kevin Garnett, Boston
This one?
Turns out this one was the hardest call of them all.
Dwight Howard is threatening to become the first player to swat four shots per game since Dikembe Mutombo did it for Denver in 1995-96.
He's also averaging better than 14 boards per game and could well join Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1975-76), Bill Walton (1976-77), Hakeem Olajuwon (1989-90) and Ben Wallace (2001-02) in the exclusive club of players to lead the league in blocks and rebounds in the same season.
It's likewise increasingly evident that Howard's positioning and activity defensively have improved to the point that he's affecting lots of shots, too, helping the Magic -- even though they play at a fairly fast pace -- move all the way into the league's top three in team defensive efficiency.
The problem?
Boston's start has been so historic -- and its defense remains so ferocious -- that I can't just make this about numbers. Sorry, Orlando. I simply can't turn in an entire trimester report with only one Celtic winner. KG's effectiveness and reach as a defensive anchor and chief of the intensity police, in conjunction with Rivers and Pierce, to keep these Celts so hungry has him just above Howard for now.
Most Improved Player of the First Trimester
Devin Harris (New Jersey)
You know what?
Even as Harris and Vince Carter take all the shots in Jersey and even if Lawrence Frank did rewrite his entire playbook for Harris' benefit coming into this season as noted in Box 6 -- a masterstroke that really requires us to add L-Frank to the Coach of the First Trimester conversation above -- those moves alone weren't going to turn Harris into the league's No. 6 scorer at 23.8 points per game.
Give the Mavericks' castoff copious amounts of credit for improving his outside shooting tremendously, repeatedly forcing his way to the free-throw line and generally capitalizing on the total freedom Frank gives him. Harris had many supporters in the Dallas public who lobbied against the trade from the start, but even his most ardent backers never imagined a breakout like this, especially after Harris' numbers over the final 25 games with the Nets last season weren't drastically different than his Mavs numbers.
This season? He's done so well so fast that the Mavs -- still smarting from Nash's free-agent departure in the summer of 2004 and the two MVP trophies he went on to win in Phoenix -- have to be wondering if they can ever dare to let another lead guard go.
This much we know for sure: Paul Millsap has been amazing as Carlos Boozer's injury stand-in with the Jazz ... and he didn't have a shot at this trimester trophy.
