BEWARE OF THE “DURANTULA”

Don’t look now but a new scoring force has emerged in the NBA this season. Third year pro Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City Thunder is currently running a very close second to LeBron James (29.8 ppg) in the league’s scoring race with a 29.7 ppg average (tied up with Carmelo Anthony of the Denver Nuggets).

This is the closest scoring race since 1978 when San Antonio Spurs legend George “Iceman” Gervin and Denver Nuggets great David “Skywalker” Thompson engaged in a memorable neck-and-neck duel until the final day of the regular season.

Durant, who played his first NBA season in Seattle during the Emerald City’s final NBA season before relocating to Oklahoma City, had been selected to his first All-Star game this coming weekend in Dallas, Texas. The 21-year-old former Texas Longhorn is also submitting norms of 7.3 rpg and 3.0 apg in 50 impressive games so far for the Thunder this season.

If the Thunder continues its current surprising run and lands in the post-season play, then maybe, just maybe, Durant will have a shot at the league’s MVP crown.

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In a bid to arrest their on-and-off form, the Boston Celtics are trying something new.

With the team’s upcoming West Coast trip and through the help of Dr. Charles A. Czeisler, chief of the Division of Sleep Medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, the Celtics have altered their training schedule to allow players at least eight hours of sleep nightly.

For Celtic guard Ray Allen, this thing will definitely have a positive effect on the team’s over-all performance: “He’ll show you exactly what it does to your body, if you don’t have eight hours of sleep, from the fatigue to not having your balance, all these different things. Since I’ve been in the league, certain games, you don’t know why you just lost games - I think, sometimes, lack of sleep. I’ve always thought we sleep too much as athletes, but it’s more like we need it, and that’s part of the job.

“It’s been helping me, personally, as far as how I feel going into practice and into games. That’s another 10- to 15-year study if you want to study how it affects us. If we can be healthier, over the course of the season, it will be beneficial to us.’’

So the initial result of how it benefited the team will be known right after the said road trip.