Not to put too fine a point on it, but, uh ...

	Philly's Allen Iverson is a great player, but he can't beat L.A. alone.

The Eastern Conference blows.

I'm wondering, in all seriousness, who could possibly represent this conference in the Finals in June and not get swept. Lakers, Blazers, Spurs, doesn't matter.

The Sixers are assuredly the best of the conference, but against the West, they've gotten their doors blown off by San Antonio and Los Angeles.

The Heat is treading water, and Miami has such trouble scoring it was actually excited about Cedric Ceballos coming to town. The Heat had been hoping that Don MacLean would provide some offense off the bench, but MacLean was suspended by the league for five games last week for violating the league's steroid policy. (Which prompted Charles Barkley, on TNT last week, to scream "Don MacLean? Don MacLean? I played with Don MacLean in Houston. I've seen Don MacLean naked in the locker room! No way he does steroids!")

The Knicks are their lovable fussin' and feudin' selves, with Jeff Van Gundy having to play Latrell Sprewell at point guard, which neither the coach nor the player wants to do. Van Gundy hates the term "Big Backcourt" (what would you like us to call it, Jeff?) and says his team isn't very tough. Glen Rice is complaining about getting more shots, to which Van Gundy told local reporters, "they (the players) don't have to coach. I'll coach." Which is about what Paul Westphal said to Gary Payton before getting fired last week.

Toronto seems okay. Though Charles Oakley is apparently fighting everyone in the league.

The Magic, everyone's pick to go far in the playoffs, were 5-9 at the start of the week.

The Bucks, everyone else's pick to go far in the playoffs, are so bad that George Karl called his team "disgraceful" after losing to the Hawks. No one is even pretending to play defense. Karl is having his fill of both Glenn Robinson and Ray Allen, who was supposed to have taken his game to Olympic levels after starring in Australia. It's to the point now where Mark Pope has been starting for them. On purpose.

Byron Scott, the Nets' first-year coach, has spent the past two months bad-mouthing the team's No. 1 overall pick, Kenyon Martin. Even when Martin won Rookie of the Month honors -- a safe, unthreatening award to be sure -- Scott said it just proved what a lousy rookie class was in the NBA. Ohhkayy.

	Croshere

	Sprewell

	Allen

The Pacers, who were the East's representative in the Finals last June, are slipping and sliding around .500. Austin Croshere struggled mightily at small forward, and since Jalen Rose has returned from his broken wrist, he's struggling mightily at power forward, too. "I don't think we're going through anything that anybody else ain't going through," first-year coach Isiah Thomas says.

Charlotte seems okay.

Cleveland got off to a quick 9-4 start, and I was dumb enough to go there to do a piece on how good the Cavs were. That night, they scored four points in the second quarter against the Celtics and got smoked on their home floor. And it happened again three nights later to the Sixers. (As for the Celtics, well, we went over that ground last week.)

"We know we're not a contender," says Cleveland's honest GM, Jim Paxson. "We know that ... this is a process that we have to build, and we need to get better in certain areas and hopefully we can take a nice step this year and show improvement as the season goes along -- hopefully be good enough to challenge for the playoffs come April, and if we do that, I think that'd be a very successful year for us."

Who's the worst team in the conference? Hard to say. The Hawks certainly looked like the dregs, but they then throttled Washington at home by 30 or so last week. So you'd think the Wizards take the cake, but they beat the Bulls in Chicago. If you combine all three rosters and just took the best four players from each, that team would still not make the playoffs.

Okay, it would in the East.

Nate's way, or get out
Nate McMillan is already laying down the law in Seattle. Practice is mandatory for everyone now, and that includes Gary Payton, who was given plays off during workouts under the Paul Westphal regime. Everyone stands up during timeouts. No more Nike warmups on the road. And no more carping to the officials.

"That is one thing that I will change with our team," McMillan said. "I think in the past few years, I think we've been known as whiners -- or I think we have been -- to the officials ... if you're going to talk to them, we will speak in a respectful way to them. And I know that's hard with GP, and several others. But we're working on it. I think you have to be that way. These guys are humans, and they have feelings. And if you disrespect people, I don't care, really, how professional you are, one time it's going to go against you, and they're going to stick it to you. And that one time could cost you a game, or a title."

	Baker

	Payton

You can make this about inmates running the asylum if you want. But no one says that the Heat players are running Riles. No one says Shaq and Kobe are running Phil. Despite all their struggles with one another, no one says Iverson is running Larry Brown. The bottom line is that Westphal wasn't getting Payton to play. He wasn't getting Vin Baker to play. And his job was to get them to play.

	ALDRIDGE'S RANKINGS
	THE TOP 10 1. L.A. Lakers 2. San Antonio 3. Sacramento 4. Philadelphia 5. Utah 6. Portland 7. Phoenix 8. Dallas 9. Charlotte 10. Toronto THE BOTTOM FIVE 25. Golden State 26. L.A. Clippers 27. Washington 28. Chicago 29. Atlanta

"Gary is a competitor," McMillan said. "He just hates to lose. And recently, I thought this year, I saw him not enjoying what he was doing. And I told his mother -- I saw his mother when we were in Sacramento -- I told her and his brother, 'talk to him. He needs you. I'm there for him, but he's not enjoying what he's doing.' And his brother made the comment that he kind of felt that ... he hasn't seen Gary this way since the time they were talking about trading him for (Derek) Harper. That was a tough time for him." GP insists he could have played for Westphal, and was playing for Westphal. So what about happened in Dallas? A "misunderstanding," Payton says, pointing to the ultimate lifting of his suspension by Westphal -- which, of course, was what doomed Westphal with the other players.

"Every coach is going to get the same out Gary," Gary says. "I'm not gonna be like 'okay, I don't like this man, I'm gonna give him 30 percent,' and 'I like him, so I'm gonna give him 100 percent.' That's not Gary. I'm not gonna say that. Every coach that I played for is gonna get 100 percent out of Gary Payton. I got pride in myself."

McMillan says he wants Payton at his trash-talking best. He wants Vin Baker coming off the bench, because Baker and Patrick Ewing were terrible together defensively. "We had two guys behind the ball on every break," McMillan says. But he's sold it to Baker this way: you still get your 37 minutes a night, and you're on the floor at the ends of games.

"He's three years removed from the game," Baker says -- and let's be frank, he'd say that about anybody who isn't Westphal. "He relates to players, still, from a players' standpoint. He still gets out and runs with us. He laughs with us in practice, understands where we're coming from as a player, (if) we're frustrated, why we're frustrated. And he'll get in our face at the same time and tell us he doesn't want to hear it."

Here's what I like about McMillan. It's the same thing I liked about McMillan as a player. No sugar coating, no bull. "I don't believe in BSing the game," McMillan says. And in the next breath, he talks about how he's realizing how lonely being a head coach will be. "You can't really even talk to the assistant coaches, can't talk to the players," he said. "And you're in this suite. So I'm finding I bring my computer with me to my room a lot to play computer games."

I think Paul Westphal is a good man. I think he will coach again. But I think Nate McMillan is going to be one hell of a pro coach.

	Gatling

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