But as the Rockets' reversal of fortune proves, things can change quickly in the N.B.A.
Her good fortune proves nice people can finish first!' Maria Shriver emails me.
Adding in all that information doesn't increase Mr. Smith's anonymity; Jeff Jonas has made a small fortune proving that semantic reconciliation dramatically collapses uncertainty.
Neither recalls whether any of the fortunes proved to be particularly apt.
However, if these forecasts of regional differences in economic fortunes prove accurate (and they are hardly outlandish), the coming year could be rougher still, because manufacturing areas tend to be Labour strongholds.
Two years later the Christmas premiere of Smiles Of A Summer Night - a stylish comedy of manners - changed Bergman's fortunes, proving an enormous critical and financial success and giving him the artistic freedom he needed.
In a thought-provoking, sharply written, four-part novelistic chronicle of Chinese-American life, The Fortunes proves uneven at times but the powerful prose and themes shine through. .
But in a ceremony that showed the HPFA spreading its awards love around, "Grand Budapest" -- a stylish, quirky fable about a concierge of a European hotel (Ralph Fiennes) who becomes embroiled in a feud over a widow's fortune -- proved an underdog winner.
Revived last year by a Malaysian consortium led by Tony Fernandes, a Malaysian entrepreneur who owns AirAsia, and with the blessing of the son of the owner of the original Team Lotus and the support of the Malaysian-owned Lotus Cars, the team's off-track fortunes quickly proved to be even more challenging than racing in its first year.
A 1923 headline in The Philadelphia Inquirer, appearing as Barnes prepared to open the building that would house his collection, typified the view of many: "How a Pennsylvania millionaire is spending a fortune to prove the Futurists and Cubists not insane and teach us to admire their strange work as he does".
That good fortune would prove not to last.
