"They are in their peak in the flow."

-Legendary Hubie Brown on the Warriors, in a recent Spurs-Warriors broadcast

Early in Gothic Ginobili's run, Aaron and I had grand plans for a week of Tennis-related posts -- a Gothic Ginobili Tennis Week. It never materialized. Part of it was my sprawling impossible-to-edit 4000-word rants about Federer vs. Nadal that used sprawling 2000-word segues about the rivalry between Tim Duncan and Steve Nash. [Ed. Note: That was most of it, yes.] But part of Tennis Week's demise was attributed simply to the fact that the connection runs too deeply, is too multifaceted, and it led us to make over-eager connections between every aspect of tennis and every aspect of basketball. It kind of fell flat.

Every direction we tried to take a piece about tennis led to yet another direction about basketball, and vice versa, until the only way to get a proper reckoning for what we were writing is basically to write a book about tennis and another about basketball, and then to be reincarnated in 1989 (when I was born) or 1997 (when Aaron was probably born, because he is a freakishly young person, although he owns a house. He is 12. He is BJ Lawson.)  So... we had some issues with the audience we wanted to reach, put it that way. Fun stuff, but hard to really get a hold of the whole picture and distill it down into something. But obviously there is tennis and there is basketball, and we enjoy both, and given that we are relentlessly, neurotically teasing out reasons for things, we found a lot of overlapping reasons for liking each sport. And so, every once in awhile, I'll get a hold of a connection between the sports that is accessible, simple, well-reasoned, and easy to tell someone over a glass of beers, or a bowl of milkshake. [Ed. Note: Did Alex Dewey just revolutionize milkshake science?]

And I do, and I write a blog about it. So here it is.

 • • •

Ed. Note: The following section was written prior to game six.

As the Spurs and Warriors dually enter a closeout and an elimination game tonight, it wouldn't make me smart to note that Stephen Curry probably has to step up at this point, or that otherwise another Warriors player(s) have to disguise themselves as Stephen Curry. Right now the teams are pretty evenly matched, but the Spurs have a clear advantage - they're a deeper team and have more of a vocabulary with which to gameplan, and after one round of articulate gameplanning by Pop, the tide has turned towards the Spurs.  This isn't to say Pop's outcoaching Mark Jackson. But with his resources, Pop has been able to construct a killer gameplan.

In its simplest form, that gameplan is thus: Make Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson run for their Earthly lives on both ends whenever they're on the court. Yes, yes, they're the Spurs, so they're doing it with "the system": loop plays to free up Tony Parker's jumper, Danny Green flaring out to the wing with elaborate, effective screeners to help him out, kick outs & backdoor cuts. Chip Engellend getting them to hit those wing and corner 3s, Tim Duncan working in the offseason to sprint with Danny Green in triple-digit weather (truth), Pop bein' a good dude and coach overall. Manu and Tony and Boris Diaw finding him consistently. Every writerly cliche about the Spurs except "boring". Yes, yes, it's all true.

But they're making him run. And it's working. The Spurs have done more or less what is at all possible for a team to do defensively against Curry (at least in games 3-5 [Ed. Note: And Game 6 too.]) while still respecting most of their other options. Steph Curry has a bum ankle and the Spurs want to run him out of the gym. Klay Thompson, too, to a lesser extent: The gameplan of forcing Curry into constant motion also works to keep Klay moving, and while he's quite a smart, decent defender for his age, he's not laterally quick enough to be the guy you want slowing down Tony or Kawhi Leonard in the open court. And Klay and Curry have both had periodic foul troubles in their careers, and the Warriors can't afford to work around that impediment.

Pop's found a solid game-plan, and it works for two reasons: a) Damned if they do, and b) damned if they don't. [Ed. Note: Yes indeed, that does encapsulate all present options. Good work Dewey.] If the Warriors decide to completely buy out of this strategy, switch on screens to save energy... the Spurs will exploit them with the matchups (just as effectively as Harrison Barnes has exploited Tony Parker in the strategy of playing Green and Leonard on Curry). If the Warriors simply don't run as fast to conserve energy? Well, that's all the Spurs need to get a completely dominant run in, even if the Warriors are hitting good shots. What's more, the Warriors may conserve energy by not running as hard, but the Spurs really work on offense, and the Spurs conserve energy themselves through the Warriors' decision to conserve. And... if the Warriors do decide to have Stephen Curry chase Tony Parker or Danny Green through every screen? He just gets tuckered out, poor guy. His ankle, already a problem, returns in force, a terror for Warriors fans to behold on every possession. Heck, I just like the game of basketball. Heck: I'm rooting for the other team, and I still worry  about the ankle going out because he steps on Danny Green's foot after the whistle or something.

But, through all my terror about Curry's ankle, through all the paranoia and outbursts of fandom (did you know that seven times out of ten we listen to our music at night guys [Ed. Note: STOP. CEASE. DESIST.]), through all the admiration at Pop's gameplan and at Curry's shooting and at Duncan and Bogut's defense, and Kawhi and Duncan's two-man game... through it all, I still end up coming back to tennis.

 • • •

This is because tennis is one of the most strangely unnatural sports for a human being to play, at least in terms of the motion required. Hands up if you cringed at the weird, long-striding motions of Rose and Westbrook off the dribble even before they got injured. Tennis is like that first-step-then-finish sequence repeated hundreds of times per match (potentially upwards of a thousand, depending on the match-up) and dozens of times per game. And here's the thing: Everyone in tennis understands all of this. Everyone in tennis understands that sometimes your ankle swells up or your toe looks like it's dead tissue or you get a pimple right on the center of your back that never stops itching. Okay, scratch that last one. Anyway, everyone in tennis understands what a grind it is. You'll get concussions in football, you'll get tendinitis in basketball. And you'll get giant-ankle syndrome in tennis. It's not "if", it's "when". And also it's "disgusting".

In this series, going into Game 4, Steph Curry had run about 9.74 miles. It's not at all implausible to suggest he's picked up that rate in the ensuing two games. Call it 18 miles (after Game 5) that the Spurs have forced him to run thus far. You see comparable stats with tennis (which, like basketball, is also played on a ridiculous, grind-it-out schedule that can see a player play two key, high-career-leverage-point matches in about 40 hours, each match lasting about 4-5 hours apiece). Players running several miles per game, and in a period of hours. Players running not in the sense of "Gee, thank you for running that fun little 5k for our charity on soft quarter-mile tracks" types of runs but "every step is the apocalypse and I'm lucky if I get to run back on defense and get five seconds to stop and think". Michael Chang in the 1989 French Open famously shot a bunch of moonshot lobs to give himself rest while he was playing, because he was cramping up. Tennis doesn't stop for you, put it that way. And neither does basketball. Especially if the other team knows you need to rest.

Given that everyone knows about the foundational question of needing rest (and everyone knows that everyone knows that, etc.), energy forms a crucial part of strategy -- both in basketball and in tennis. In tennis you run players ragged in almost the same way the Spurs are running the Warriors' guards. The Warriors "are in their peak in the flow" as Hubie put it (God, what a sentence, right?) and sometimes I think that's because the other team isn't forcing Curry into a nightmare situation of having to run four awkward, bumpy, knee-knocked miles just to keep his team in the game. Defense is easier when you're jogging back in a straight line, and offense is easier (and for Curry, more efficient) when you don't have to run off a defender to get an open look. Rafa Nadal, Andy Murray, and Novak Djokovic are three of the world's top four players, and each of them, for all their grace and proprioception? They are not in their peak in the flow. They are more like the Spurs or Grizzlies: Yes, they make wonderful returns, but their essence is to make reasonably brilliant plays and to wear the other player out with matchless energy. They send their player left and right and left and right, a bit faster now, come on now, like a gym class from hell. [Ed. Note: It's part of why my ill-fated love for John Isner is doomed from the start -- the man is simply never going to be able to grind it out against those elite players enough times in a single season to win a slam. Still love you, John Isner.]

Roger Federer is the only glaring exception, because he doesn't strictly have the grindhouse in his wheelhouse. He doesn't grind out 5-hour victories against the other three; he's too old for that. No; he conserves his energy with his literally-the-greatest-of-all-time vision and athletic grace, and when he picks his spots, he runs like a deer and takes what he needs. And as his energy wanes, Federer will probably be able to carry it out still longer. But if his opponents can force him to run, he's vulnerable. He still routinely utterly dominates sets against the best in the world, and even pulled out an unthinkable 4-set domination against Andy Murray. But if you're one of the other top players and you test his energy enough, and he's had to play two five-setters in 48 hours, he'll even start to make mistakes. Well, okay, it will still be the second-best tennis ever played, but still, it's a huge and glaring dropoff. There's just about nothing stranger than Fed making an unforced error that isn't a next-level athletic vision unfulfilled or a set he's resting on; no, an unforced error that's just a sheer, dumb mistake that any of us could have made. And suddenly Nadal or Murray or Djokovic looks like the smart one, because now he's right at Federer's level skill-wise - or even above Federer - and Roger's foe also has all the energy on his side. Even Federer plays with energy, in the sense that if he can get his opponent running without doing much running himself, that's a good sign that he's winning. And some of the most shocking plays are when a player like Andy Murray (noted for his conditioning and endurance) takes the bait, goes left and right for two straight minutes on a volley while his opponent just stands there... and then he wins the rally, and his opponent looks almost more exhausted, realizing that he's going to have to run all day just to have a hope of penetrating that first line.

I can't bring this to a literary close. All I can say is that's what it evokes in me when I see what the Spurs are doing to Stephen Curry, trying to frustrate him and run him out of the gym. And as Game 6 (and the possibility of elimination) approaches, this young, next-level athlete has more than a little bit of a spark in him, a coach that recognizes and cultivates him, and a team around him that can support this... And if he ever wants to take the bait, run out of the gym, and still succeed, well, that's somewhere that next-level athletes can get to, and as far as next-level athletes go, it's hard to bet against Stephen Curry. It might not happen this year, though.

 • • •

Yeah, the Warriors lost, but in this series and the previous one they've established themselves in the "if healthy, then contenders" tail of the NBA. And Steph Curry has established himself as a Nash-like player with his both his shooting and his passing. Aaron and I were talking about it, and you know, Steph and Klay's limiting factor right now as players is their mediocre rates of conversion at the rim. If they can do that; that is to say, if they can learn to score and draw a bit more contact in the lane with their existing skillsets? They will be excellent and the Warriors' team will follow. Harrison Barnes, gruesome fall aside, has looked great in this series. Ezeli's a nice piece. The health issues of Bogut and Lee should make for an interesting story to watch for. Overall, with such a brilliant coaching job by Mark Jackson (some quibbles aside), it has to be disappointing for such a talented, coherent team to go down like this. But it's worth noting that a few factors went the Spurs way in the way of injury and foul trouble that allowed the Spurs to make these gameplans work. The Warriors can't be disheartened by such an impressive season, and as time goes on they will only inch closer to their terrifying primes. It's never happy to lose a series, but the Warriors have done well for themselves and hopefully gained the respect of a large contingent of fans over the course of their special season. They'll be back.

Remember how we had that one series, a long time ago, where we'd entreat our writers to scribe short vignettes on the previous night's games? We've consistently discovered there's no way for us to do that every night, but with the capsules done and Aaron back in the saddle as a more active managing editor, we're hoping that we can bring the feature back as a weekly Wednesday post. Sometimes Friday, like today. As always, the vignettes may not always be tactful, tacit, or terse -- they'll always be under a thousand words, though, and generally attempt to work through a question, an observation, or a feeling. Today's short piece is as follows.

• CHI at MIA: The Indefatiga-Bulls Flame Out (by Aaron McGuire)

Read on after the jump.

• • •

CHI/MIA: The Indefatiga-Bulls Flame Out
Aaron McGuire

With Chicago's unfortunate five-game ouster yesterday evening, three things were made absolute fact.

• Derrick Rose will officially not be returning this season.
• The Bulls -- despite winning the first game of the series -- were outscored by 66 points over their 5 game loss.
• This terrible, god-awful season for Chicago has drawn to a close. The Bulls get a summer to recover.

The first point isn't really that important, even if we've been inundated with coverage to assert that it is. Derrick Rose is taking a little bit longer to come back than the world could've hoped, but it's hard to put together a strong argument that Rose should cow to his fans and media when it comes to his ACL recovery. Oh, sure, I've heard the spiel -- he's been "cleared to play" for months, it's all in his head, he owes it to his team, et cetera. Tom Ziller covered the "cleared to play" angle pretty well already, but I'll relay the cliffs notes -- Chicago's medical staff has a disturbing history of allowing players to see the court with grievous injuries they should've already caught. Rose's personal doctors may be saying something different, and there's scant reason to assume Rose is acting in bad faith here.

It may very well "all be in his head", but you can't just huff and puff and declare that a person should think the way you do. You can't just yell at Rose and have him suddenly stop having the hang-up in his head that's keeping him off the floor. He has to work through the blocks in his own head and find a way to get around it himself. And as for owing it to his team? Rose's contract is in large part insured -- the Bulls had to pay Rose less than $10 million due to the number of games he missed, and the insurance payout may have been the infusion that allowed Reinsdorf to pay the luxury tax. Rose practices with the team, and his teammates all seem to support him. I'm not sure what -- exactly -- he owes the team if he's not quite healthy and he needs a bit more time to get there. Perhaps I'm wrong, and I simply haven't heard the right arguments for why Rose's absence is a big deal. But when you peel back the overzealous reporting and overexposure, I feel that the Rose saga is a journalist-invented mountain designed of a tiny molehill.

What is more interesting -- at least to me -- is the second point. There was a lot of talk after Game 5 about how the Bulls made Chicago proud over the five game series and put up a strong challenge to the Miami Heat. Despite twisting and turning, I have trouble seeing it that way. The inclination to give the Bulls a wealth of credit for their performance this series is rooted in how the Bulls lost -- if there was any way for Chicago to maximize their best efforts and minimize their stinkers, this would be the way to do it. They opened the series with a shocking upset, something that set the basketball world abuzz and made for a week's worth of "Can They Beat The Heat" coverage. They closed the series with a gutty comeback and a brilliant defensive performance, at least for two and a half quarters -- the Bulls outscored Miami 73-45 from 5:24 left in the 1st to 1:05 left in the 3rd. They started strong and they closed strong, which is exactly what you'd want to do if you wanted to rewrite the book on how a series went. Because people forget about the middle. And in this case?

The middle was horrifying.

Really. The Bulls outscored Miami by 4 points over the first and fifth games combined -- Miami outscored the Bulls by 70 points over games 2 through 4. That's an average of 23 points per game. In game 2, Chicago was obliterated by 37 points. At one point, the Bulls gave Miami a 62-20 run. It was gruesome. Worst playoff loss in franchise history by a country mile -- their previous worst was 26 points, in 2007. Then, in Game 3, the Heat played completely terribly for an entire game and the Bulls simply found themselves completely unable to capitalize, losing the game by 10 against a seriously pathetic Miami performance that might not have beaten the Milwaukee Bucks. Then there was game 4, a pitiful performance that ended up being by far the worst offensive performance by a Chicago Bulls team in the NBA playoffs, losing by 23 points in a game where the were outshot from the floor 49% to 25%. The final margin could've been far worse, too, if the Bulls hadn't made a living at the line and forced a score of Miami turnovers.

Which leaves me with my take -- the Bulls started strong and closed strong, but the only way one could really assert that the Bulls had a "good" series against Miami is if they quite literally ignored the middle three games. As injured and snakebit as this Bulls team was, one can't quite ignore how embarrassingly lopsided the middle-matter of the series was, especially game 3. Even against the defending champs. Boozer and Noah dominated and Chicago's defense kept Miami in check for most of the night, with Miami's offense sputtering and their defense barely functioning. It didn't matter, though -- the Bulls lost by ten! Chicago's performances in game one and game five should give their fans hope. But the way the Bulls folded during those three games -- in a series they once led, and a series they had stolen home court advantage in -- was more than a bit depressing, and perhaps a tad embarrassing. It wasn't embarrassing for no reason, of course. The team was spent and ravaged by injuries, with naught but a skeleton crew on deck with their season on the brink. But it was a brutal series and it was a depressing series to watch. And bookending their horrible middle with two strong efforts doesn't erase the fact that the middle happened.

The Bulls are going home. The long national nightmare is over for our worldly Bulls fans, and their players are going to get a chance to recover. The 2013 Bulls had a lot of intriguing highs -- winning a game 7 in Brooklyn, snagging the five seed despite their myriad injuries, staying in the top-6 defenses despite their injuries, winning game 1 in Miami, and validating Thibodeau's system. But don't let the highs erase the lows. This team was incomplete, and they need to change some things going forward. For all of Thibodeau's strategic brilliance, Thibodeau needs to augment his system creativity with rotation creativity to keep his players healthy. The Bulls front office needs to find ways to beef up the team's depth. Derrick Rose needs to get his body in shape and eradicate his mental blocks. And the fans need a bit of time off from the constant drumbeat of injuries and insubstantial information.

Goodbye, Chicago. Here's hoping for a better 2014.

Heart breaker, heart breaker
You stole the love right out of my heart
Heart breaker, heart breaker
I wanna tear your world apart

-- The Rolling Stones, Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)

The NBA playoffs can be a harsh mistress -- you get a lot of intense games, but you also get a lot of heartbreakers. You know the type. Those deflating games where a team is, retrospectively, on the absolute verge of victory. A high-leverage game that could've gone either way. The winning team gets to experience the rushing elation of a minor theft -- the losing team takes a bitter pill. This year's playoffs have an air of inevitability around them, and that's cast a minor pall on the proceedings. And that's a bit of a shame, because we're having a remarkably close and snippy season. Heartbreaking loss after heartbreaking loss -- gutty win after gutty win. All over the place! Gut punches abound.

All that said, there's a tendency for analysts and bloggers to take on vacuous airs when the subject of a heartbreaker loss comes to play. "This team has no chance of winning the series," they say -- "how could they, after a gut punch like that?" Smart analysts galore cast aspersions to the mental toughness of the team and conflate heightened probabilities with statistical certainty. So, on the inadvertent request of Dr. Jeremy Abramson, I decided to take a bit of time to clear a few things up. For today's playoff question, I'm examining a subject near and dear to the hearts of NBA fans everywhere -- how does a heartbreaker loss affect a series, really?

• • •

DEFINING A HEARTBREAKER, and THE THREE BIG QUESTIONS

This was a bit tough, but I think I finally came to a reasonable conclusion. For my definition of a heartbreaker loss, I'm going with a road game lost by 1-2 points in regulation or any game lost in overtime. The logic here is simple. If the game was lost by 1-2 points in regulation, one single shot -- a three pointer -- could've won them the game. A single additional shot. They were on the road, which means they were a single shot from silencing a hostile crowd. If the game went into overtime, the same is true -- one more shot, one more free throw, one more anything and the game was theirs.

The logic behind excluding three point contests is simple. In a three point game, the best you could reasonably do with a single shot is force overtime. And if you played regulation evenly, overtime is more than likely going to be a 50-50 coin flip either way -- hard to really call that a heartbreaker so much as a bad break. So there you have it. It's a 1-2 point margin or an overtime game. For my data, I used information from Basketball Reference (where else?) and compiled a score of information by hand for all heartbreaker losses from 1993 to 2013. It was something of a massive slog, but I'll share my final dataset with anyone who asks -- let me know if you'd like to look at it.

Now that we've defined our "heartbreaker" losses, let's examine some big-picture questions.

• HOW COMMON ARE THEY?
  

Not as common as you might think, actually. They've been exceedingly prevalent over the past two years, but that's something of a statistical outlier -- this is the first two year period with more than 20 playoff heartbreakers in the last 20 years. Here's a graph to illustrate the point.

The red bar indicates this year, when we (clearly) have a strong chance at accruing a few more of these types of games before the playoffs conclude. In general, heartbreakers are relatively rare events. They don't happen particularly often, and when they do happen, they tend to have a few games clumped together into a relatively small group of hard-fought series -- for instance, this year's 10 heartbreakers are clumped into seven of the series we've played out so far. In 2006, five of the 14 heartbreakers were concentrated in two of that year's most contested series -- DAL/MIA and DAL/SAS. Et cetera, et cetera.

• DOES THE HEARTBROKEN TEAM ALWAYS LOSE?

No! Not at all, actually. There's a relatively persistent trope that's been running around for a while that a team can't possibly come back from a road heartbreaker. Especially if they're the road team in the series -- if they lack home court advantage, they couldn't possibly win a series where they let a game get away on the road, right? Sort of, but not quite. Here are the raw series win/loss numbers when a team suffers a playoff heartbreaker.

TEAMS THAT HAVE HOME COURT ADVANTAGE: If the team with home court advantage suffers a road heartbreaker, it's hardly much of an ill omen for their chances at all. In the 20 year period surveyed, homecourt teams that suffered road heartbreakers went 37-22 in the series they suffered the heartbreaker in. That's a reasonably good winning percentage (63%), but it's not 100% robust -- for instance, in five cases, the heartbreaker actually ended up being the deciding lever in a series where the homecourt-blessed team outscored the visitors handily over every other game of the series.

TEAMS THAT DON'T HAVE HOME COURT ADVANTAGE: If the team without home court advantage suffers a road heartbreaker, their chances are certainly slimmer... but they definitely aren't extinguished. It's not a death knell, even if things look rough. Teams that start the series on the road are 18-53 in series where they suffer a road heartbreaker, a 25% winning percentage. There's certainly some truth to the idea that a HCA-lacking team that loses a road heartbreaker has missed their best chance at winning the series. But there's also truth to the idea that the road heartbreaker tells more about how evenly matched the series is than it does about the team's chances to win the series. In four of those series losses, the heartbroken team actually managed to outscore the homecourt team over the other non-heartbreak games of the series.

Overall, teams that suffer heartbreakers are 55-75 in their heartbreaker series over the 20 year span examined.

• HOW OFTEN ARE HEARTBREAKERS THE DECIDING GAME?

This was an interesting sub-question I had when I finally got my data together. Out of all these series, how often did the heartbreak loss represent the deciding game of the series? That is to say -- how often would a flip in the heartbreaker have flipped the results of the series? The number was a bit surprising, at least to me. In 24 out of the 130 cases in this dataset, the heartbreaker game represented a game that could've flipped the series. That is to say that the entire series could've been flipped with just a single additional shot or -- in many cases -- a single free throw. Of course, once you looked at the point differential, one starts to wonder why the number wasn't higher. Even though teams that suffer heartbreaker losses were 55-75 in the heartbreaker series, they posted a positive point differential (0.35 PPG) among their series when taken as a whole. That's extremely, extremely close. Closer than I'd expect, especially looking at the numbers regarding road team series losses and the scant number of teams who lost the series but won the point differential outside of that game. To summarize the contents of the last few paragraphs, a short table:

Series Win and Series Loss are pretty self-explanatory. "Flip" implies that the series would've flipped if they'd won their heartbreaker. DIFF/GM gives the point differential for the team, and CHAMP indicates whether the team with the heartbreaker loss won that year's championship. That's right -- 10 of the games in this dataset involved teams that would-be champions losing a road heartbreaker during their run. That's eight of the last twenty champions, listed below:

• 2012: MIA @ BOS, G4 -- Miami loses 93-91 -- in OT -- to give Boston a 2-2 series tie.

• 2011: DAL @ POR, G4 -- Dallas loses 84-82 to give Portland a 2-2 series tie. (The "Brandon Roy" game.)

• 2009: LAL @ UTA, G3 -- Los Angeles loses 88-86. They ended up winning the series 4-1.

• 2005: SAS @ SEA, G3 -- San Antonio loses 92-91, missing one free throw in the final minute that could've tied it and shanking four separate shots -- many wide open. They'd close the series in 6.

• 2003: SAS @ NJN, G4 -- San Antonio loses 77-76, in the finals. The Spurs dominated the Nets for most of the series, but they gave Game 4 away -- they went cold for 2:37 to end the game, scoring nothing from Manu Ginobili's two free throws to Duncan's flush with 6 to play. In the meanwhile, the Spurs missed a bunch of wide-open shots and nearly won the game anyway. They'd win the series in 6 for their second championship.

• 2003: SAS @ PHO, G4 -- San Antonio loses 86-84 to tie the series at two apiece. The Suns actually upset the Spurs in Game one, but the Spurs nearly won the next four games to take the series. Instead, it took six games, with a successful razor-thin road win in game 6 to close it out.

• 2002: LAL @ SAC, G5 -- Los Angeles loses 92-91. It would be their last loss of the season. Welp.

• 1998: CHI @ IND, G4 -- Chicago lost 96-94 to the Reggie Pacers. This series was kind of funny -- Indiana won their three games by a combined total of 7 points, while the Bulls won their four by a total of 36. And, obviously, they won the title.

• 1998: CHI @ IND, G3 -- Chicago lost 107-105. Same series as above.

• 1995: HOU @ UTA, G1 -- Houston lost 100-102, in the opening game of their postseason. They'd win 3 of their next 4 against Utah (including a 140-126 annihilation in game 2) to take the series, and would eventually sweep the finals.

• • •

Overall, the presiding narrative -- the idea that a road heartbreaker is an omen of utter doom -- isn't exactly right. Close, but not quite there. Road teams posting a 25% winning percentage in the aftermath of a road heartbreaker is hardly as bad as it looks on its face, given that you're talking about lesser teams who are essentially giving their opponents a one game handicap. The fact that it's that high is more a testament to what the heartbreaker means to the road-starting team on a macro level -- it means that the gap between the two is hardly insurmountable, and whether the series is long or not, they have a chance to push them. As you can see with this year's mercurial Warriors squad.

And the heartbreaker isn't just suffered by the downtrodden -- eight of the last twenty champions suffered one such heartbreaker loss on their march to the title. Will that continue this year? Certainly possible -- five of the remaining eight playoff teams (Golden State, San Antonio, Memphis, Oklahoma City, and New York) have already suffered heartbreakers, and there are still ample games remaining for the final three holdouts (Miami, Chicago, and Indiana) to join the party. We'll see. If you have any questions regarding this analysis, feel free to comment on this post -- I'll be responding to comments for most of the day.

Stay frosty, folks.

The Spurs are in trouble.

It's self-evident at this point, but it must be said regardless. The San Antonio Spurs went 35-6 at home in the regular season this year. They nevertheless lost game two of their best-of-seven series against the Golden State Warriors. What's worse is that the Spurs lost the game in embarrassing, befuddling fashion. They missed open shots. They couldn't stop Klay Thompson. Their decision-making down the stretch was a bit confusing, and they stopped playing their brand of basketball despite experiencing naught more than a modicum of defensive resistance to it. They lost faith in their own system and started isolating in an attempt to win the game. That's not how San Antonio plays basketball. Not when they win, anyway.

Worse yet, that was at home -- we haven't even seen what the Oracle is going to look like for Golden State's home games. Which, after last night, are all they need to win if they want to win this series. If the Warriors hold serve at home, the Spurs are done. Which is a rather terrifying thought for any self-respecting Spurs fan, given the furor of their bay area crowd and the tendency for San Antonio's role players to fade a bit in road game situations. Regardless. After two games, we don't really have the slightest clue what's going on in this series. But I'm going to try as hard as I can to explain it anyway.

• • •

FIRST: WHO ARE THESE TEAMS, ON A FLIGHTY METAPHORICAL LEVEL?

The Warriors are easy to place, at least for me. They're the gambler's wayward son.

Look at it this way. There's this town bum -- he's a poor drunkard, long ago wealthy but on something akin to a 17-year cold streak. His once-considerable fortune has been squandered and he lives on the streets, cobbling together pennies to gamble at a local casino every week or so. Loses it all, of course -- that's just his way. He represents the prior-to-2013 Warriors -- the post-TMC crew that's been so unlucky and unfortunate as to boggle the mind and distress the soul. He has a child, a son barely born at the time of his tremendous fortune. As his luck dwindled, his wife left him. Took the kid, too.

Enter 2013 -- the son returns. He lets his father sleep in the hotel, and upon his father's prodding, he decides to enter the casino. Thing is? He's never played a lick of cards before. The kid is a golden boy, a bright kid who nevertheless had never gambled before in his life. He only has a vague recollection of what each poker hand means, and he hasn't yet figured out that a flush is better than a straight, and he's still confused that he lost that hand where he had a two-pair and his friend had 3-of-a-kind. Nevertheless, the kid is crushing it. He's winning hands he shouldn't have played and showing absolutely no fear at the table. Which makes sense, because he isn't sure what he has to fear. Or what anything means at all. The chips keep piling up for him, and the house wonders if he's cheating. But the kid isn't. He's just on all the rolls his father always dreamed of, and given that it's his first time gambling, he has no reason to be tight or concerned -- he doesn't have any human conception of "normal." He's just playing a game he scarcely understands, and playing it incomprehensibly well.

As for the Spurs? They're the sly accountant -- an experienced poker hand who's nevertheless underwater at the table and completely at a loss. The accountant considers himself a good judge of talent, of tells, of hand-quality -- all that said, he has no idea how to handicap this new kid. He's as confident with a junk hand as he is with a good one. He's destroying his betters on hands the betters have never lost with -- Christ, did that kid REALLY just play a 4-of-a-kind to beat my ace-10 full house? Did that seriously just happen? Hell -- the kid had just bust out an old Denver businessman. The businessman had been having the night of his life in the casinos, he was up some ungodly sum before he chose to sit down at the kid's table. The accountant had played with the businessman earlier that night -- he was good. Very good. And when the kid bust the businessman out, the accountant found himself a bit happy -- he knew he'd be at that table later, and the businessman was on such a roll that it was hard to imagine he'd be an easy out.

But he never quite saw that kid coming. Apparently, nobody did.

• • •

SECOND: WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE FAVORITES?

The time for illustrative metaphors is over -- the time for a frank examination of what the Spurs are doing wrong and the Warriors are doing right is now. And to these eyes, the problem is pretty simple. The Warriors are making bad shots and the Spurs are missing good shots. I don't mean that to be a backhanded compliment or an insult, either -- the Warriors are such a terrifying team to face for that exact reason. The Spurs defense is built around the concept of making the opposing team's shots as difficult as possible. Try to goad the opposing team into taking the worst shots on the table, then simply hope they miss them. The Warriors are funny, in that they actually can make those shots.

Now, of course, that poses the question -- SHOULD they be taking those shots? No. Obviously not. They try to take easier shots, they screen off Curry and Thompson and they run decent plays to open up their guys. But if faced with a situation where they're being goaded into taking a lot of bad shots, they're not going to simply fall apart like a wobbly Jenga board, like the Lakers or the Nets or the Clippers. They're going to make more of them than the opposing team expects. The key to defending Golden State -- at least when they're as hot as they've been this postseason -- doesn't really exist. As long as they're in even a semblance of rhythm, the shot is at least remotely malleable to their will. You simply need to hope that Curry and Thompson stop making terrible shots, like pull-up threes over a stout defender or off-balance one-legged three pointers with a hand in their face. And they might, sure. But they aren't incapable of making those shots like a Steve Blake or a Gerald Wallace. In fact, nobody on the Warriors is strictly incapable of making shots -- there's nobody to funnel the ball to, no offensive sieve to try and redirect their action to. You just need to make their shots more difficult and hope they stop making them. Against the Nuggets, they didn't. Against the Spurs, with the shots even harder than they were in the Denver series, they still aren't.

As for the Spurs offense, this is an important point -- the Spurs are missing a lot of wide-open shots. I counted eight wide-open threes that the Spurs completely clanked last night, including five totally open corner threes from Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green. Both of them usually make that shot. Missing that many wide open threes is absurd, and a relatively unexpected wrinkle going into this series. Additionally, the Spurs were missing a lot of open at-rim layups -- Duncan missed a particularly glaring one where he sealed off Bogut and had several seconds of prep time early in the game. Parker missed a point blank nearly-uncontested layup in the last two minutes. So did Danny Green. Andrew Bogut is a wonderful defensive presence and he affected many shots. But the Spurs weren't even making the shots they created when they ran their offense, which may partly explain why most of the Spurs started going away from their offense and isolating. Especially Manu and Gary Neal, who both played like putzes for most of last night's contest. Just befuddling. If the Spurs continue to miss that many open shots over the remainder of the series, they'll lose handily.

• • •

THIRD: HOW DO YOU ADJUST?

There are two adjustments I think each team needs to make if they intend to win this series.

If you're San Antonio, you need to...

• STOP PLAYING GARY NEAL. This isn't meant to be impugning Gary's spirit. And he's provided a decent shot or two over the course of the series. But my GOD, man -- this is not the series for Gary. When he's on the court facing off against Klay Thompson or Stephen Curry, he's giving them open looks. The Warriors aren't always capitalizing, but that's really not something the Spurs can bet on going forward. If the Warriors stop making impossibly well-contested shots, they'll probably try taking a few slightly more open ones. Combine that with the fact that Neal is bogging down San Antonio's offense (I counted two separate fourth quarter  possessions in Game #2 where Neal dribbled, isolated, and refused to pass the ball out to Parker, Duncan, or any other player on the Spurs despite having a game within 8 points and a chance to make some ground. He doesn't run the offense. He needs to get off the floor.)

• MODIFIED SMALLBALL -- CALL IT... QUICKBALL? This may seem to run counter to adjustment #1, since Pop tends to put Gary out in those sort of 3-guard lineups with Manu and Tony. But I think Nando De Colo or Tracy McGrady are both going to be superior to Gary defensively given their size and their improved passing abilities, and that's worth something. The Spurs have come back in both games when they've played small and started loosening up. By trying out more Kawhi-at-the-four lineups with Duncan at center and three guards darting from lane to lane, the Spurs can speed up their offense and leave the Warriors fewer opportunities to switch the Spurs into a bad assignment where a plodding big man can't get back to the three point line. The quicker the lineup, the better this works. With their general shot release as quick as it is, the Spurs need to play lineups that can recover fast enough. So far, smallball works best for this. Call it quickball.

If you're Golden State, you need to...

• RUN YOUR OFFENSE THE ENTIRE GAME. At the moment, the most disturbing thing for the Spurs has to be that the Warriors have essentially seen fit to let the Spurs back into both the games we've played so far in the series. If the Warriors simply ran their fast paced, fluid offense over the full 48 minutes, the Spurs probably lose both these games by double digits. At home. To a six-seed. Welp. When up by a large lead, the Warriors have an odd tendency to start running the clock with about 12 minutes left in the game. That's now how they play, and it leads to a god-awful out-of-rhythm shot just about every time. If they actually ran their offense in the fourth quarter, they put both of these games away far earlier.

• CONTEST SAN ANTONIO'S OPEN SHOTS. You know how I mentioned that the Spurs missed a ton of open shots? Well, the fact that they got those shots is something of a problem -- the Spurs are a top-10 offense that's punched below its weight this season, with the present ceiling of "best in the league" as they demonstrated last season. If that offense comes to play when the series moves to Oakland, every open shot they give up is going to hurt. A lot. Jackson and the Warriors need to look at the tape and figure out how exactly their defense keeps breaking down and cut that out. They've gotten lucky with the Spurs missing so many shots. It may happen again that the Spurs simply miss open shots, but it's much more likely that the Warriors make their adjustments and eliminate the open shots in the first place.

And if you're a fan of either team? Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

(If your power doesn't go out.)

Hey, folks. Aaron McGuire here. Are you having a good morning? If you're a fan of the San Antonio Spurs, you might be. Of course, there are several serious analytic reasons for last night's game to worry Spurs fans. The Warriors brazenly outplayed the Spurs over the first 44 minutes of the game, and it took a sudden miracle confluence of San Antonio's elite defense of this season, elite offense of last season, and some completely incredible Warriors follies to lose the game. This isn't going to be a series the Warriors are simply content with lying down and losing. The Spurs are going to have to wrest every win out of Golden State's cold, dead hands to get to the conference finals. Because a team this good and a team this hot simply isn't going to bow out quietly.

All that said, I find myself uniquely unqualified to write about this game. Why? Because my power went out with 1:18 remaining in regulation. What's more, IT DIDN'T COME BACK UNTIL HALF AN HOUR AFTER THE GAME HAD FINISHED. For a Spurs devotee watching his first Spurs game in HD (...no, I had never seen a Spurs game in HD before tonight), that was a unique experience. It was a unique experience that will merit several furious calls to my power company and the possible purchase of a backup generator. But that's besides the point. Given that my phone had only 2% battery life at the time my power went out (and boy, did I time that BEAUTIFULLY!), I had to do some crazy stuff to finish watching the game. I felt this made a reasonably compelling post. Here's what happened.

• • •

As Carl Landry entered the game for Richard Jefferson out of a time-out, I was writing a tweet.

spurs are still down 3 to a team starring curry with duncan in the locker room. so, uh, they lose. but this gutty fourth is solid, and HEY WHERE DID MY POWER GO

Due to the fact that my power being cut also managed to cut my internet, the tweet never actually got sent. But that was about how sudden it was. I was sitting at the edge of my couch with bated breath, tik-typing tweets into my work laptop with some work in a side tab. Seconds later, the lights all flickered and my TV made its "turning off" noise. I could hear my HVAC power down. I stared blankly into the darkness.

"... what."

So, fun fact. I moved into this new place about a week ago. I've had some nasty combination of strep throat and a crummy flu over the past week, so virtually nothing is unpacked. That includes the veritable menagerie of flashlights my father has passed down to me over the years. Seriously. Every possible moment my father could've given me a flashlight in the past 5 years, he's delivered. The only care package I ever received in college was a box with two flashlights and some gum in it. I have gotten flashlights for my birthday, for Hannukah, for Christmas, for "visiting", and for good measure. My father's love for giving me flashlights has never made any sense to me, but suddenly, it made my father seem like a literal genius.

Except for the fact that, again, I had unpacked none of them. Theoretically, I own enough flashlights that every single room of my new place can have a flashlight or two in easily-accessible locations. Unfortunately, every single flashlight -- EVERY SINGLE ONE -- was packed in a box. And my keys (which, hilariously, have two flashlights on them) were upstairs somewhere. I end up wandering around and tripping over two boxes. The first one was entirely filled with clothes, but the second one had exactly what I was looking for -- an enormous maglite that could kill a man without regret. Flashlight in hand, I headed for the circuit breaker.

0:59 REMAINING IN REGULATION: Boris Diaw makes 2/2 FTs. 104-103, GSW.

No problems there. But that did clear up a few things. Everything that was on -- my FIOS backup power and (weirdly enough) my irrigation controls -- were running on backup battery power. Nothing else had power. Entire place was out. I sat on my couch to look at my phone, realizing -- again -- that my phone only had 2% battery life. If this game went to overtime, I was screwed. I headed outside, flashlight in hand and my phone's AOL Instant Messenger client keyed to channel Dewey.

0:20 REMAINING IN REGULATION: Danny Green makes 25-foot 3-point field goal. 106-106.

Walking around my block, I found out three pretty hilarious things.

1. The power was out for everyone on my side of the block.
2. The power was NOT out for ANYONE on the other side of the block.
3. Thunderstorm conditions were nigh, which probably merited more clothing than pajama pants and a t-shirt.

Alright. Last one wasn't that hilarious. Still. I didn't know anyone on the block, and just about every house looked like their residents had gone to sleep. It WAS after midnight, after all. My phone was down to 1% power before I remembered the retrospectively obvious fact that I had a charger in my car. I knew what to do. I got in the car, plugged in my phone, and considered my options. I could either call the power company for what would inevitably be a fruitless call, or I could search for the game on the radio and follow along on twitter. My friend Mike texted me several possible radio stations -- none had the game, although I found a really intense mariachi station that I put on in lieu of game audio. I was down to the final option.

That's right, everyone: it was time for an Alex Dewey play by play.

• • •

[12:29] Aaron McGuire: dewey my power is still out i need a play by play

[12:29] Aaron McGuire: dewey please

[12:30] Alex Dewey: r u ready

[12:30] Aaron McGuire: yes

[12:30] Alex Dewey: heeere we go

[12:30] Alex Dewey: once upon a time not long ago

[12:31] Alex Dewey: when people wore adidas and lived life slow

[12:31] Aaron McGuire: dewey i will murder

[12:31] Alex Dewey: lol ok just a sec

[12:31] Alex Dewey: manu got called trying to strip bogut

[12:31] Alex Dewey: spurs get the board down three this is OT we run this

[12:31] Alex Dewey: manu runs the break slows it down throws around to green to manu to tony to manu to manu to manu

[12:32] Aaron McGuire: dewey are you stuck

[12:32] Alex Dewey: drobbin it droppin it the ball so hot it's in the corner BORIS THREEAW BORIS THREEAW

[12:32] Aaron McGuire: DESSERT FOR DINNER

[12:32] Alex Dewey: tie game 2:21 to go oh lord jack at the top dribble drobble dribble dropple

[12:32] Alex Dewey: TURNOVER TURNOVER THE BALL IS AN APPLE TURNOVER

[12:32] Alex Dewey: SPURS GO IN TRANSITION LENSES

[12:32] Alex Dewey: TWO POINT LEAD SPURS LEAD SPURS LEAD

[12:32] Aaron McGuire: I AM BECOME STEPH, DESTROYER OF WORLDS

[12:32] Alex Dewey: funny you should say that because steph just missed a shot spurs get the board

[12:32] Aaron McGuire: DESTROYER... OF RIMS?

[12:32] Alex Dewey: only if they spinnin ok so tony goes of a boris screen then k misses a 22 footer oh geez

[12:32] Alex Dewey: NVM MANU BOARDS MANU BOA--manu makes a bad pass ok then steph makes a layup oh god

[12:32] Aaron McGuire: o no tie game

[12:32] Alex Dewey: kawhi form the post he is the entire post

[12:32] Alex Dewey: spurs up two

[12:33] Alex Dewey: how am i typing this quickly

[12:33] Aaron McGuire: because i am telepathically lending you my 110 wpm typing ability please give it back later

[12:33] Alex Dewey: i refuse this is cool no wonder you were a transcriptionist

[12:34] Aaron McGuire: this game is insane

[12:34] Alex Dewey: hot damn warriors this is a crazy game. rj's finest moment. r j u bly?

[12:34] Aaron McGuire: it's the rjubilee for sure

[12:35] Alex Dewey: anyway it's tied with 20 seconds left, spurs running some vanilla stuff, warriors take foul to give w/ 6 secs left

[12:35] Alex Dewey: manu misses a three it's 2OT here in the ATT center

[12:35] Aaron McGuire: christ no not another OT of this i need my power back

[12:35] Alex Dewey: and by ATT center i mean alex-teaches-typing center by which i mean this chat window

[12:36] Aaron McGuire: nice

At this point, the mariachi music -- which I inexplicably never turned off -- gets especially intense for some reason.

[12:40] Aaron McGuire: ok desperately need an update what's going down son

[12:41] Alex Dewey: SEVEN TIMES OUT OF TEN WE LISTEN TO OUR MUSIC AT NIGHT

[12:41] Alex Dewey: THE WORD MARAUD MEANS TO LOOT

[12:41] Alex Dewey: WE MARAUD... FOR EARS.

[12:42] Aaron McGuire: alex what in the everloving christ does that mean

[12:46] Alex Dewey: SEVEN TIMES OUT OF TEN WE LISTEN TO OUR MUSIC AT NIGHT

[12:46] Aaron McGuire: alex these lyrics are the worst play by play in recorded human history

[12:46] Alex Dewey: THUS SPAWNING THE TITLE OF THIS PROGRAM

[12:46] Alex Dewey: THE WORD MARAUD MEANS TO LOOT

[12:46] Alex Dewey: IN SUCH A CASE THAT WE MARAUD FOR EARS THAT IS THIS CASE WE LOOT

[12:46] Aaron McGuire: alex you are killing me

[12:46] Alex Dewey: game is still tied after 1:16 of 2OT lol

[12:47] Alex Dewey: tony with a vicious spin move cuts the lead to one

[12:47] Aaron McGuire: wait did the warriors take a lead what

[12:47] Alex Dewey: shush chile

[12:47] Aaron McGuire: i am not chile

[12:47] Alex Dewey: you are now

[12:47] Alex Dewey: anyway 3:11 curry on top dogg is 2 assists and 2 boards short of a tripdub

[12:47] Alex Dewey: haha a dub w/ a tripdub that's classic

[12:47] Alex Dewey: anyway curry makes the scoop across court to the corner from opp wing

[12:48] Alex Dewey: everybody loves draymond takes it right and gets two FTs. cans both.

[12:48] Alex Dewey: dubs by 3, parker hits a j like he's a rasta or somethin

[12:48] Alex Dewey: so dubs by 1 bc the j was a two point j not a 3 point j if you are counting

[12:49] Aaron McGuire: i hope the scorekeeper is

[12:49] Alex Dewey: rj is so close and yet so far, but he may be coming into the game, or perhaps he is not

[12:49] Aaron McGuire: you are in love with rj and it is terrifying

[12:49] Alex Dewey: whet not your soul

[12:49] Aaron McGuire: same

[12:49] Alex Dewey: anyway DIAW JUMPER SPURS LEAD

[12:49] Aaron McGuire: SAME

[12:49] Alex Dewey: GREEN POKES AWAY A TURNOVER PARKER HITS FROM MIDPOST OH GOD

[12:50] Aaron McGuire: YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[12:50] Alex Dewey: curry takes it to the rim danny green blocks the HELL out of it

[12:51] Aaron McGuire: dangreen my brothers

[12:52] Alex Dewey: jack makes one, misses another -- spurs up two, kawhi screen, pass to kawhi, reverse to green

[12:52] Alex Dewey: AND DANNY GREEN CANS A TRIPLE SPURS BY FIVE

[12:53] Aaron McGuire: DANGREEN MY BROTHERS

[12:53] Alex Dewey: a minute left in the game, spurs by five, curry drives and misses but boris fouls him

[12:53] Aaron McGuire: automatic two pts

[12:54] Alex Dewey: you're correct he made both, parker to manu, top of the k--what?!??

[12:54] Aaron McGuire: ???

[12:54] Alex Dewey: manu just shot a TERRIBLe three. the worst three. what was that.

[12:54] Aaron McGuire: for some reason capitalizing everything but the e in terrible makes the word a lot more impactful

[12:55] Alex Dewey: curry gets the floater, easy. spurs by 1. parker slows it down... misses the shot.

[12:55] Alex Dewey: warriors w/ the ball down 1, 9 secs to go

[12:55] Aaron McGuire: oh god that's enough time they have curry

[12:55] Alex Dewey: crap you're right bazemore gets a layup spurs let the dubs get out in transition

[12:55] Alex Dewey: warriors by 1, 4 secs left, spurs timeout...

[12:56] Aaron McGuire: at least the guys fought back. didn't let this be an embarrassing one.

[12:56] Alex Dewey: yeah

[12:56] Aaron McGuire: who's in for this last possession?

[12:57] Alex Dewey: kawhi has the inbounds, green/diaw/manu/parker are in the game

[12:57] Alex Dewey: warriors have jack, curry, bazemore, garnes

[12:57] Alex Dewey: additionally they have rj defending the inbounds

[12:57] Aaron McGuire: so you're saying there's still a chance

[12:58] Alex Dewey: lol

[12:58] Alex Dewey: warriors use their foul to give, spurs do another timeout

[12:58] Alex Dewey: setting up a play on the other side of the floor

[12:58] Alex Dewey: inbounds to manuuffjkklgweh

[12:58] Aaron McGuire: ???

[12:59] Alex Dewey: D BREADOWN 3MANU##333

[12:59] Aaron McGuire: WHAT?!?!?

[12:59] Alex Dewey: 3MANU

[12:59] Alex Dewey: 3

[12:59] Alex Dewey: MANU333

[12:59] Alex Dewey: MANU WING 3

[12:59] Alex Dewey: MANU OPEN THREE WING FROM WHENCE IT CAME

[12:59] Aaron McGuire: wgjaweglkjajfkjwfkljs;dguiwgwl;efdmlqw [Ed. Note: This was shockingly difficult to type on a phone.]

[12:59] Alex Dewey: SPURS BY 2 w/ 1.2 SECONDS LEFT IN THE GAME

[12:59] Alex Dewey: but

[12:59] Aaron McGuire: they have curry

[12:59] Alex Dewey: reminder the warriors have stephen curry

[12:59] Aaron McGuire: we are different flavors of the exact same person and it is terrifying dewey

[12:59] Alex Dewey: heh duncan in the game, jack to inbound

[1:00] Alex Dewey: SEVEN TIMES OUT OF TEN WE LISTEN TO OUR MUSIC AT NIGHT

[1:00] Alex Dewey: THE WORD MARAUD MEANS TO LOOT

[1:00] Alex Dewey: WE MARAUD... FOR EARS.

[1:01] Aaron McGuire: WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING THIS TO ME ALEX

[1:01] Alex Dewey: SEVEN TIMES OUT OF TEN WE LISTEN TO OUR MUSIC AT NIGHT

[1:02] Alex Dewey: anyway 1.2 seconds left

[1:02] Alex Dewey: RJ WILL INBOUND DUNCAN IS GUARDING HIM THIS IS THE GREATEST MOMENT OF THE PLAYOFFS

[1:02] Alex Dewey: JACK MISSED DEWEY DEFEATS RJ SPURS WIN

[1:03] Aaron McGuire: HOW DID THE SPURS WIN THAT

[1:03] Alex Dewey: well just re-read this play by play log it'll jog your memory probably

[1:03] Aaron McGuire: THIS IS MY ENTIRE MEMORY I HAVE NO POWER

[1:03] Alex Dewey: oh, i thought you were joking, is your power seriously out?

[1:03] Aaron McGuire: YES

[1:04] Alex Dewey: seven times out of ten you listen to my play-by-play at night

[1:04] Aaron McGuire: dewey i swear to god i will punch you

• • •

EPILOGUE: After getting out of my car, brushing my teeth in total darkness, wrapping myself in covers, and closing my eyes... the power came back on. I'm not kidding. Minutes after I closed my eyes.

Remember how we had that one series, a long time ago, where we'd entreat our writers to scribe short vignettes on the previous night's games? We've consistently discovered there's no way for us to do that every night, but with the capsules done and Aaron back in the saddle as a more active managing editor, we're hoping that we can bring the feature back as a weekly Wednesday post. Sometimes Friday, like today. As always, the vignettes may not always be tactful, tacit, or terse -- they'll always be under a thousand words, though, and generally attempt to work through a question, an observation, or a feeling. Today's short pieces are as follows.

• DEN/GSW: Should Karl Go? (by Aaron McGuire)
• OKC/HOU: The Thunder Will Beat The Rockets (by Alex Dewey)

Read on after the jump.

• • •

DEN/GSW: Should Karl Go?
Aaron McGuire

Most people slept on it a bit, but Scott Brooks had a really good playoff performance last year. In the first round, he arguably outcoached -- even relative to his team's hilarious talent advantage -- Rick Carlisle as his Thunder swept the Mavericks. He had a bit of a disappointing second round, with L.A. being essentially "in" 3 out of the 5 game of the series despite having a markedly inferior team due partly to Brooks' poor adjustments and generally odd strategies. But then... THEN, things got real. He proceeded to completely outcoach Gregg Popovich over the course of a six game series, making excellent adjustments and memorably forcing San Antonio to take a taste of its own medicine. Ball movement, ball pressure, expert closeouts, et cetera. He got his team to play an entirely different way in the Western Conference Finals. That's coaching, and he aced what essentially amounted to a four game PhD thesis to beat Gregg Popovich into the ground. He was riding a high of good-will heading into the finals, having put together his best string of coaching performances yet.

... only to fall flat on his face and completely irrevocably bungle a winnable finals series. He played Perkins too much. He played Fisher too much. He didn't put Westbrook or Durant in a position to succeed. His offense completely lacked the creativity displayed in the Western Conference Finals and his defense was easily schemed. To an equal and opposite extent to which the first few rounds gave his backers hope, the Finals gave his critics ammunition. "You need a better coach, Sam Presti. You need to stop relying on Scott Brooks to become something he isn't. You need a coach that puts his players in a position to succeed, not a coach that puts his players in a position to fail embarrassingly when the chips are down." Et cetera, et cetera. And the drumbeat of voices calling for a change in command grew ever-louder, and the cavalcade of mockery that fell when Presti resigned Brooks to a new three-year deal was all-encompassing.

This brings me to my actual subject of this particular post -- George Karl, and where his fate should stand in the aftermath of a series that saw a generally-more-talented Denver team lose to the upstart Golden State Warriors. Karl made several high profile mistakes in this series. Like Brooks in the finals, he seemed to be the only man in the room (with the possible additional exception of Andre Miller) who didn't realize that putting the wizened Andre Miller on Stephen Curry made Curry's threes about as easy to convert as layups. Like Brooks, his high-regarded regular season offense stalled in their series loss, although Brooks' offense stalled against one of the better defensive teams in the league, whereas Karl's offense stalled against a permissive unit that not a soul would confuse with a merry Memphis grindhouse throwback. The thing that I keep coming back to, though? With both Karl and Brooks?

Align the timing differently, and both coaches would be praised to high heavens. For instance, imagine if the Spurs had pulled out game five, lost game six, then won a narrow contest in game seven. Imagine of Scott Brooks' season had ended in the Western Conference Finals. Would anyone watching have anything other than positive-regard for the man? His extension wouldn't just be a no brainer, it'd be a must -- this is a man who very nearly outcoached the greatest coach in the game today, after all! If the disappointment against Miami doesn't happen, Brooks is scot-free. And he's free to continue being -- generally -- a so-so to poor coach for a team that does legitimately need a better tactician. All because of a single series.

As for the Nuggets, it's worth noting that they finished just one game out of second place in the West -- if they'd won their matchup against the Spurs in the late season, San Antonio faces the Warriors in the first round and the Nuggets face the Lakers. Given L.A.'s injury issues and general inability to cover a faster team, it's hard to imagine a world where this Denver team doesn't win in 5-6 games -- perhaps they even sweep it. And if the Nuggets swept the first round, every single Karl critic calling for his head gets silenced -- it doesn't much matter what they do in the second round against the SAS/GSW winner, it "proves" Karl's system can succeed in the playoffs.

Net and net? My point is thus. A single series is a completely terrible barometer for a coach. You have to assess a coach by his entire career, his creativity, and his ability to react to trouble in his roster on a wholescale level. George Karl has shown that he deserves the benefit of the doubt for all these things -- Scott Brooks has shown the opposite. Having obscenely high visions for Brooks after last year's WCF was silly. He isn't that kind of coach, even if Presti wishes he would be. And the people watching know that (especially with his flaws being hammered home in this year's first round.) Conversely, making rash judgments about Karl thanks to one terrible series is absurd. He makes the team better, and a few poor decisions that didn't pan out don't make him useless.

• • •

OKC/HOU: The Thunder Will Beat The Rockets
Alex Dewey

It's ridiculous to suggest the Rockets have a greater-than-50% chance of doing something that literally no one has ever done. There's no way the Rockets have a greater than 50% chance of winning first home at Toyota and then winning a Game 7 on the road. That's insane. And it's not true. It's insulting to the Thunder's great season to suggest that losing 2 games in a row is more probable than winning 1 of the two. It's not true, and it's insulting.

But... is there something a little less insulting? Because Houston's chance of pulling off an upset that would make the world quake with chaos is surely higher than zero. In conditional probability, gamblers and actuaries alike have to adjust our odds constantly to the world-at-large surprising us. It's ridiculous to suggest a team down 0-3 has a really solid chance of winning four in a row, short, say, of the 3-0 team trading LeBron James with the 0-3 team for present-day Muggsy Bogues, who must play every minute at every game, at center, before Game 4. Or the 3-0 team having to play literally 5v4 against the 0-3 team.

That would probably do it.

But there's something a little less absurd about the feat if you condition on what has happened since. Even without the Westbrook injury, which hangs in the air of every attempt to analyze this series.

Let's look at the present moment: the Rockets have won two straight, one at home, one on the road. Just like they have to in order to win the series. So they've done exactly what they will need to do already. They just have to repeat the feat. And, what's more, it looked remotely sustainable. The Thunder crowd couldn't rile up their dispirited team. The Rockets fed off of the crowd both at home and on the road. Omer Asik hit some free throws. Harden has struggled, and the Rockets have actually picked up the slack. The Thunder's offense seems eerily similar to the Lakers' attack against the Spurs in the other bracket of the West; 1-4-5 because it's the only offense they can run. (Granted, the Lakers had worse and fewer shooters, and Durant is a transformational offensive player. They aren't missing their best stopper Thabo Sefolosha, and Derek Fisher is much more valuable than Antawn Jamison in any game that matters at this point, which is pretty strange to type. Kevin Martin needs one excellent game to completely change the texture of this series, and by "completely change the texture of" I mean "win handily")

But the Rockets just look better, for what it's worth.  It's not a 50% chance to win both games for the Rockets, but couldn't you make the case that it's pretty close to (or even better than) a coin flip for the Rockets in either game, individually? I think the Rockets are a better team than the Thunder right now, without any sort of irony. James Harden has not been outplaying Kevin Durant in this series, even at Harden's best. KD is playing at a transformational level, at least in the sense that he is almost singlehandedly the Thunder's offense (with an assist by Ibaka), and it's somehow not the worst offense in the history of the league, even though the Rockets are hurting him at the rim and from 3, he's making his bones at the line, and he's not exactly flopping to get there. A couple rip throughs and exaggerations a game don't explain 33.6 points, put it that way.

But Ibaka and Durant against Asik at the rim? So far I'd say (considering their relative importance) Asik has got their number, at least at the rim, at least when the Rockets don't need a secondary rim defender to slide over. Chandler Parsons, a quick and crafty scorer, against the pump-faking Ibaka and the slow-footed Perkins? That's almost unfair. Francisco Garcia has been checking Durant admirably, and not just in the "you tried hard, son." sense. Kevin McHale is having his guys play his and their game, and Scott Brooks and the Thunder look lost in the wake of Westbrook, in terms of offense obviously, in terms of defense subtly, but most of all in terms of energy. Reggie Jackson and Derek Fisher may have their skills (and obviously, for all his flaws no one can sleep on Fisher), but neither is deadly or especially menacing in any position on a basketball court. They just get open, and sometimes they hit it. And never having a deadly guard has a subtle price for the Thunder: The Rockets can afford to rest their attention and minds and bodies a bit when they aren't on offense. This allows them to play more frenetically on offense, it allows them to play a much more cerebral style in passing lanes. And it allows Omer Asik to have an extra full step that is all such a brilliant defender needs to get all the space he needs to be a deadly shot-blocker and contester. Asik doesn't need to step up on offense at this point, and neither does Garcia. And so the Rockets can essentially commit all their energy to precisely their best efforts. That's the real price of the matchup -- nobody on the Thunder can play his game, and nobody on the Rockets can fail to play his game.

Here's a thought experiment. Even if the Thunder would probably win 53 games without Westbrook and the Rockets would still win 45? I'm starting to think that the slack that Westbrook took up is potentially as valuable as the buckets that KD picks up, and those 8 games of difference are more a product of talent and experience rather than of sustainable playoff production. Westbrook takes shots with abandon, and yes, it's a frustrating prodigality, but the missing point here is that Westbrook only wastes possessions after creating them with abandon. The Thunder's futile attempts to pick up the slack for Westbrook suddenly makes him seem like the most irreplaceable player in the league, an ironic vindication of the Harden trade. If not a bit depressing for Thunder fans.

To put the most rudimentary numbers to the situation: When teams are evenly matched on a neutral court, it's a 50-50 battle. Say it's 60-40 for the home team, again, when the teams are evenly matched. So call it 24% for the Rockets, round up to 25%. So no, it's not 50% that they win both games. But, gosh, a couple coin flips? Doesn't that sound just about right?

"In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them ... There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen. ... Yet this difference is tremendous; for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa. Whence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good that will be followed by a great evil to come, while the good economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil." -Bastiat

Seen: the audacious disappointment of the Lakers. Seen: the apparent 70-win season snapped ingraciously from Kobe's hands by the Fates and the limits of the human body. Seen: A cascade of endless injury. Seen: a story of merely-average-and-decent looking suddenly ruinous when sneaking a peek at its price and pathetic prospects. Seen: An almost-literal dismantling by the Spurs. Seen: A desperate reliance on Earl Clark and Metta World Peace and Steve Blake. Seen: Dwight at 50% just long enough for the season to be anything but uphill from the outset. Seen: Some of the worst defense ever, by some of the best players in league history. Seen: Spectacle, frustration, outrage, schadenfreude, spin cycle, eerie commiseration from the unlikeliest fanbase. And, seen: A titan's fall.

Unseen: Hints of a revolutionary offense for two or three possessions at a time, in the right phases of the moon. 1-4-5, 2-4-5, 1-5, 2-5, whispered like cheat codes. Unseen: An owner dying and his team, at its nadir, recovering and making a season respectable through it all. Unseen: a leader of offenses elevating himself to a leader of men, getting himself to the place he needed to be in a seeming blink of an eye, both humbly passive and fiercely aggressive, in the same possession, in the same sentence, Kobe expanding his essential game as surely and as potently as LeBron and Durant, until what is left is something new. Unseen: The epidurals, the labrum torn and the indefinite absences that lasted minutes, the back surgery. Plantar fasciitis. A fanbase learning and accepting the hard truths of anatomy in chagrined mornings after devastating losses. Unseen: the regret after the schadenfreude, where suddenly it stopped being funny that Andrew Goudelock had to start, that Kobe just had to play that 45th minute against Golden State, all of us knowing he'd be alright.

Seen: An organization that doesn't know how to hire a coach. Seen: A coach that doesn't know how to communicate to players. Seen: Kobe leading through conflict (with a strange degree of success), Pau and Nash relegated to the margins, Dwight a young man pushed to the front, whose voice has relevance only because his body and mind have talent. Seen: Players that couldn't adapt, players that could, players that didn't have any choices. Seen: Earl Clark. Remembered: An almost physical anger when Clark started playing, having assumed he was injured, given that Antawn Jamison was getting 20 guaranteed minutes despite having with the transition and half-court defense of a toddler. Seen: A seemingly endless rotation of diminishing returns on number of roster spots. Seen: Role players that never embarrassed the Lakers to play, despite not really being able to play. Seen: Chris Duhon.

Unseen: The dismal bench of the post-Jackson years, having nearly the same problems. Unseen: Mike Brown being universally respected as a man, but in the end not quite commanding the full attention of players or the organization. Unseen: Phil Jackson barely able to walk, touted as a franchise savior for players that could barely lift their arms. Unseen: The subtle decay of age, before or after any trades. Unseen: Andrew Bynum, Unseen (and still an interesting idea): The Princeton offense. Mike Brown with a healthy team.

Unseen: The Lakers problems did not begin this year. Unseen: The Lakers have never made risk-free moves, but have always simply aggregated wise strategic decisions from a position of power as a wealthy, potent larger market. Unseen: Andrew Bynum, for months and longer at a time would sit in the several years before his trade to Philly. Unseen: Andrew Bynum being dominated by Dwight Howard as a prospect from floor to ceiling to upside to downside, even when the NBA collectively exempted him from the 3-second rule on both ends and called half the fouls against Dwight Howard. Unseen: The road not taken, for, as inevitable as it seems, the Lakers could have said "no" to Dwight Howard and Steve Nash last summer. They said yes, because the risks of their status quo were far worse than the risks of their new acquisitions. The Lakers made the right choice time after time, and only bad luck and calculated risk worked against them.

Unseen: Kobe's health problems aggregating every season, far beyond pain and fatigue. Unseen: That the perpetual battle of Kobe against injury was not merely a battle against pain but a battle against decay, against time, against his own apparent limitations as a leader. A losing battle, except on that last count.

Seen: That old cliche "heart of a champion" inasmuch as a seemingly sandbagging defense and an otherworldly collection of talent that dies in the first round can be said to have "heart". The Lakers fought. I saw them. They didn't play possessions; they played games. They were tired and they were banged-up and they were seriously injured. More bone against bone than a butcher shop. And they fought. This could have been a 30 win season that everyone decided to recuperate. But for pride, personal pride and the pride of a franchise, and an asymptotically fading hope that they always seem to stave off for another day, every day, the Lakers knew it was too important, and played. They showed professionalism and class and never acted like they were entitled to a win. They had a gameplan, and they executed it, but horror of horrors, irony of ironies, they did not have the personnel.

They were never out of any game nor could they ever seem to get out of the woods, in a game or in the season. They could have done some damage if more guys were healthier, earlier. Every game seemingly came down to a random like Gerald Henderson missing a tip-in or a tricky Philadelphia team finding a mysteriously truck-sized hole on the interior. I rooted for them to lose, up to the last night of the season, but I also wanted to see their opponents win, if that makes sense, and in the end I finally gave up on rooting for the mediocre and disappointing Jazz over the mediocre and fascinating Lakers. I graduated from hater to... well, still, screw the Lakers, but still... there are things that are seen and unseen about the Lakers that are important to the basketball culture, and this season was a unique look at some of the unseen things - the media cycle really causing the problems as much as it was expressing real problems. Unseen: How important the team is for the game when they're relevant and the chaos that ensued when they weren't. Unseen (and sickening): Every Laker's injuries being used to cast doubt on all his previous accomplishments. I didn't really understand the cable deals and the historical relationship that NBA fans have with the Lakers - the weird 30-faced die all of whose faces read "Beat LA" except one that keeps getting break after break and finally lost more than anyone could have known. I got to see who in the media was actually watching the games. Hint: You have an excuse not to watch the Spurs; you don't have an excuse for the Lakers. I got to see the strengths and weaknesses of every player.

The Lakers had the most interesting season of all the teams this season, and it was not because of hype. No, the Lakers, traditionally they of the limelight and the hype and the spin cycle, played a season that was almost scarily substantive, in which the seen could not hide from the unseen, and in which the unseen haunted every positive moment and tempered every negative moment. Championship runs are sometimes preordained as the world collapses around the team, leaving them only to hold serve and survive. Fun seasons for would-be contenders are derailed by a single injury or a single rotten break, and we laugh sadly about the injury or break and get back to talking about the team's wondrous passing or defense. And we remember these championship and also-ran seasons and talk about them with animation and pride as fans. The Lakers this year weren't a team to talk about with animation. Sure, you could talk about them with the grim certainty of time and the fascinating uncertainty of circumstance, but it's hard to get excited about that. But you could talk about them with pride, and, what's more, give them this: At all times ever-present for the Lakers were distant hope for a title and distant fear of a terrible injury. When the seen and unseen are standing as brothers in the same room, can any dream or catastrophic nightmare that we utter in confidence ever be so justified?

Hey, all. Aaron here. Both Alex and I have an enormous wealth of statistical expertise on our side -- I've got a degree in statistical science and work as a professional statistician in the banking industry, he has a degree in salamander geography and used a calculator once. Given this, as the 2013 Playoffs soldier on, we're planning to occasionally tackle statistical quirks and curiosities we find interesting or elucidating. Answer the questions that we forgot to ask in the first place. Et cetera, et cetera. Today's topic: Denver's mountain air. Or, more accurately, the diminishing returns thereof.

Entering the playoffs, things looked pretty simple for any garden variety prognosticator. Chalk looked poised to reign -- none of the one-through-three seeds in either conference looked even remotely prime for an upset. Teams had either finished the season strong (DEN), faced opponents that were so depressingly injured that they could solve their late-season struggles (SAS), or were simply in a class completely beyond their opponent (MIA). It just didn't look like there were going to be any upsets on the top-line -- if anything, perhaps there'd be an upset in the 4/5 spot, but those are scarcely upsets at all. Chalk, chalk, chalk. Chalk everywhere.

"Well..."

As we stand, the Warriors are on the verge of a monumental upset. Don't sell this Nuggets team short -- they won 57 games, posted a home efficiency differential that makes lambs bleat, and feature a wealth of talent with an excellent play-calling coach. The Warriors limped into the playoffs with a late season slide that took them from a contender for HCA to the verge of the eight seed -- for a short period of time, it actually looked like they were a threat to miss the playoffs. During the 2013 calendar year, the Warriors posted a regular season record of 26-25, just ONE game above 0.500 -- the Nuggets were 40-10. So you must excuse me if I'm hammering the point home a bit: this Nuggets team is a good team, and what the Warriors are doing is reasonably surprising (even if I wrote several good -- and strangely prescient -- reasons why the Warriors had a good shot at the upset in the Gothic Ginobili series preview).

One of the few things we thought we knew going into the playoffs was this: the Warriors couldn't possibly beat the Nuggets at home. That was part of why many smart analysts chose the Nuggets in 5 -- even if the Warriors match up reasonably well with the Nuggets, there was theoretically no threat of Denver dropping any of their home games in the first round. Simply impossible. The Nuggets were 38-3 at home this season. Entering their first round series, they'd won 23 straight home games. Of course, that ended up being a somewhat silly worry -- the Nuggets were a few errant calls and an Andre Miller explosion away from losing game 1, and they got thoroughly embarrassed in a game two blowout that wasn't as close as the 131-117 score made it seem. Down 3-1 with their backs against the wall, it's tough to figure out how to handicap these Nuggets. They WERE unbeatable at home -- are they, still? Or was the appearance of infallibility bunk to begin with? In our first installment of our stat-based playoff feature, I'll examine that question.

• • •

To start out, here's a bit of the "how" behind my examination. We could simply look at win-loss records to see if the Nuggets have lived up to expectations in the playoffs. That's sort of silly, though, because we have a wealth of other information. To try and take into account the severity of the effect and the true measure of Denver's home performances, we'll be looking at Denver's margin of victory in each series since the first round expanded to 4 games in 2003 -- that's 12 series results in 10 playoff appearances by Denver, so we'll have ample room to make a few observations. For each series played, I've compiled the following statistics:

• The basic stats -- Denver's seed in that year's playoffs as well as their W/L record.

• SRS -- Basketball Reference's "SRS" rating for both Denver and their opponent in the given playoff round. SRS is useful for this exercise because it's a pace-adjusted rating measured at a baseline of zero -- a team with an SRS of 7 is 7 points better than average, whereas a team with an SRS of -7 is 7 points worse than average. This means that you can create neutral court expectations with SRS -- that is, a team with an SRS of 2 versus a team with an SRS of -2 would be expected to win a neutral-court matchup between those two teams by four points. If they win by more, they've overachieved. If they win by less, they've underacheived.

• Playoff & Regular Season Home Stats -- how Denver performed at home during that year's playoffs and that year's regular season. Includes playoff W/L as well as the differential in those wins and losses. Same with the regular season. Nice side-by-side look.

• Home Expectations -- Finally, the crux of the analysis lies here. Very simple calculations, because in this case, simplicity lends itself to cleaner analysis. For Denver's "predicted" Home Court advantage, I assume that their home schedule "evened out" in any given season. That is, that their overall home court differential reflects Denver's performance against an average team at home. Then I use the difference in SRS ratings between Denver and their opponent to either add to or subtract from that predicted differential. If they're better than their opponent in SRS, that adds to their predicted home margin. If they're worse than their opponent in SRS, that subtracts from it. Then I simply show the actual playoff home differential minus the predicted home differential. In essence, that gives you a one number view as to whether Denver lived up to expectations, surpassed them, or underwhelmed in any given playoff season. Red indicates an under-performance, green indicates an over-performance, gray indicates too-close-to-call (remember, small sample size means large margin of error -- I rounded to five for this one.)

That's the rundown. Now here's your table.

A few observations to guide you through, here.

First, it's worth pointing out the obvious -- Denver has been astonishingly good at home. Over the past 10 seasons, the Nuggets have gone 3oo-102 at home during the regular season and 291-275 on the road. That's a heck of a split, and I'm reasonably sure that's the largest in the league. They've beaten teams by an average of 7.4 points per game on their home floor over, once again, the past 10 years. There's no low sample size at play in that part. That's a huge sample. They just dominate at home, period. Regular season teams have no remedy for Denver whatsoever.

Second, it's also worth pointing out the again-somewhat-obvious -- Denver isn't nearly as good at home in the playoffs. They're 15-14 at home in the playoffs over that span, and they posted an outright negative point differential at home in 6 of those 12 series outlined above. On average, they've outscored opponents by 3 points over the 29 home games in this study. Given their respective average ratings compared to their opponents and their regular season performance, Denver would be expected to outscore opponents by 6 points per game in those 29 home games. That means that the Denver Nuggets have on the whole underachieved in their playoff home games in the past decade, occasionally by large margins. (In fact, if you take out their outlier series against a wounded Hornets team in 2009, they've underachieved by an average of FIVE points per game below expectations.) Given the data, we can state with relative confidence that Denver simply isn't the same home team in the playoffs that they are during the regular season.

Something's different. But what?

• • •

I've got a few theories. None are airtight, but there's probably a grain of truth to each of them.

• THEORY #1: The atmospheric boon of the regular season is the bane of the postseason. I used to live in the Southwest. Someday, I plan to live there again. The atmosphere is invigorating, and the hiking is sincerely beautiful. Whenever I visit home for a long period of time, I undergo a day or two of calibration before I go on any hikes or big projects. Because it takes a little while to re-acclimate myself to the air and the weather. I have a suspicion that the same is true for an NBA team. The Nuggets have all season to acclimate themselves to the invigorating mountain air of the Denver expanse. In the regular season, though, most NBA teams have one to two days to do that at the very most. In the playoffs? They have significantly more time. As an example... before their game two blowout, the Warriors were in Denver for six straight days. I think they -- and many others over the years -- simply got themselves acclimated to the Denver air. And they nullified the usual Denver advantage.

• THEORY #2: Pace of play bears some responsibility. Over the last decade, the Nuggets have had a number of different teams. But they all seem to exhibit a similar general theme. They rely more on transition points and athletic brilliance than a methodical half-court game -- on both ends of the court! Most of the teams the Nuggets have played in the past decade have had the ability to play slug-it-out halfcourt grinds, slowing Denver to a halt and keeping fastbreak opportunities to a minimum. This obviously applies to their early-aughts playoff games against the grindhouse Spurs, but it also applies to this Warriors team. Consider -- this team relies on Iguodala to steady the foundation of a defense that's rudderless and flagging without him. But Iguodala works better in a free-flowing defensive schema. When you're facing a team that can kill you if you give even an iota of space in a prolonged halfcourt set to the best shooter in the game, a free-flowing defense like the one Karl schemed doesn't work quite as well. You need a dogged insistence on sticking to your man and keeping him from getting open, not a flowing system of switches and band-aids.

• THEORY #3: George Karl's few flaws can be magnified in certain situations. I'm not ready to be one of the hordes of people who are shoveling dirt on Karl's grave or calling him a terrible coach based on the results of a single series, or a somewhat underachieving past. Looking at the numbers, this isn't an insanely awful trend -- it's significant but it isn't life-threatening, I suppose you could say. I'd subscribe to theories #1 and #2 far quicker than I'd entertain anyone trying to tell me Karl's a poor coach, also. Those simply seem like bigger deals to me. And when it comes to designing out-of-bounds plays and building creative offensive systems, coaches I'd rather have at my side are few and far between. ... That said, he has a few odd tics that can doom teams in the playoffs. Those who've followed the Nuggets for extended lengths of time know what I'm talking about. As a recent example from this series in particular, his tendency to ride his veterans over the young talent has almost single-handedly doomed the Nuggets in several games. Andre Miller is one of my favorite players of all time, but he can't guard Stephen Curry at all and just about everyone knows that. Karl still put him on Curry for extended lengths of time, only for Curry to go NBA Jam-type hot against Miller's wizened defense. The Nuggets needed something different, but he stuck to his guns. That's something Karl does from time to time, and it can certainly shave a few points every now and again on a low-percentage move that simply doesn't pan out.

Now, let's step back a bit. The Nuggets can still win this series. They have two home games remaining, and although they're a sub-0.500 road team, the Warriors are as prone to a bad shooting night as anyone. A 3-1 disadvantage with two of three games remaining at home isn't a death sentence. But the Nuggets are on the brink, and it's worth wondering if maybe -- just maybe -- we've been overselling their home dominance all along, all based on a few regular season trends that simply don't apply in the postseason.

Or... it's just God disguised as Stephen Curry. Take your pick, really.

For a background of and explanation of Prognostirank's purpose, click here. In a nutshell? It's a reverse-order ranking of all teams left in the playoffs, prognosticating on their playoff prospects and ranking them from worst to best. We then rate -- on a scale of 1 to 5 bullets -- our confidence in each prediction. Five bullets indicate a "very confident" prediction, one bullet indicates a "substantially wavering" prediction. Today's post outlines teams #5 to #3 -- or, the last second round exit and the results of our projected conference finals. See part one for first round ousters and part two for second round ousters.

• • •

TEAM #5: LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS (Western 4th seed: 56-26, SRS of 6.43)

• Series prediction: Clippers WIN in the first round, LOSE in the second round. ( • • )
• Three most likely end results: 7-7; 4-3 then 3-4 ( • • ), 11-10; 4-3 then 4-3 then 3-4 ( • • ), 3-4 ( • • )

This Clippers team is better than you think it is. It really is. I was incredibly close to picking them to upset the Thunder -- I'm on the fence just enough that I went chalk instead, but the Clippers are a good team, and they're better than most people think. While Clipper fans and general league aficionados have made a habit of noting that the Clipper team that won 17 straight games early this season isn't the Clipper team that's come to play in April, there are two main mitigating factors that make me think that particular storyline is becoming overplayed.

• Paul was injured early in 2013. He's been working his way back to health since, and in recent weeks, he's finally looked as healthy as he was during the streak. The Clippers' general performance has reflected this -- L.A. made a strong push for the three seed with a seven-game winning streak to end the year, and what's more, they haven't lost a game in regulation to a lottery team since March 19th. Yes, the Clippers looked pretty awful for a few months, and lost to lottery teams galore. But they certainly haven't lately.

• The vast majority of L.A.'s trouble lies with the bench, not the starters -- I covered this in passing back in late March, and it's held true since. Their once-dominant bench lineups that led to an overestimation of the team's prospects have been absolutely abysmal in recent months. In the playoffs, a team's bench gets fewer minutes and the Clippers get to return to their starters, who are quite the effective bunch. So, yes -- L.A.'s bench was punching above their weight to start the season, then proceeded to punch well below their weight immediately thereafter. In the playoffs, it doesn't much matter WHERE the bench-as-a-whole punches -- on a team like this, the starters are going 40+.

Additionally, this could just be a gut feeling, but I get the sense that in a playoff scenario the Clippers would match up reasonably well against the Thunder. This may seem like an odd statement to make given that the Clippers were quite literally the only Western team the Thunder swept in the regular season -- the Thunder won 117-111 in OT in OKC and won by scores of 109-97 (no Chris Paul, and L.A. had it within single digits in the last minute) and 108-104 in L.A. And that's true. It IS a pretty weird statement to make, given that the Thunder are 4-9 against the other four best records in the league -- San Antonio, Memphis, Miami, and Denver. But 3-0 against the Clippers, and THAT'S their matchup disadvantage? "Sure, Aaron. Makes sense."

Really, though -- each of the games L.A. played OKC was a close contest, and that was despite the fact that L.A.'s bench was god-awful in every game. That bench won't be playing quite as much in a playoff situation. Chris Paul shot 2-14 in OKC's overtime win. I don't see that happening often in a playoff situation. And even with all those mitigating factors, OKC managed naught but a few close wins? Look -- the Clippers aren't unbeatable, and there's a reason I picked them to lose the series. But this isn't going to be some kind of evisceration. With a healthy Chris Paul and a healthy Blake Griffin, the Clippers run a non-systematic offense that thrives on transition buckets and a cobbled-together pick and roll with whatever parts and pieces Chris Paul can salvage from the refuse around him. The Clippers have a few individual pieces that thrive against the Thunder. Chris Paul traditionally does well against Westbrook, and Blake Griffin operates very well against Ibaka's block-happy ways when he goes up strong and makes it a point to finish. Jamal Crawford is markedly less efficient than Kevin Martin, but Kevin Martin relies on open shots in a Matt Bonner-esque way -- I don't think the gap between Martin and Crawford is going to be nearly as large in a playoff situation as it is in regular season production.

All that said? I still can't pick against a team that won games by an average of 9 points per game, even against an underrated and underappreciated Clippers team that's come a long, long way since the Chris Paul trade.

DEWEY'S TAKE: In D&D alignment terms, this team is neutral-neutral tending towards neutral-evil. Did I get that right, Tim Duncan? I'm sorry, I just don't know the game that well. :sweats: I only bring up alignment because back in the day, Aaron and I came up with an alternative alignment chart for players of a certain position: Solid-neutral-scrappy axis, and a solid-neutral-sketchy axis. This is a quality-independent alignment. You're solid in the first axis if you're like the Spurs or Warriors, getting wins through solid, fundamental play. You're scrappy if you're the underdog getting inexplicable wins. You know, like the Mavs or Jazz (even the Lakers!). Sketch is self-explanatory. Operative example being: Did you ever get a win by whispering a swear in your young impressionable opposing point guard to psyche him out? Then you're sketchy. Why all of this, Alex? Why? Well, because the Clippers are the solid-sketchy team to end all solid-sketchy teams and Chris Paul is their king. Chauncey Billups, Caron Butler, DeAndre Jordan... it's like this team took the old, weird Clippers of 3-5 years ago and made them good without fixing any of their ugly, jaw-chomping weirdness. It's wicked sketchy. And can you possibly be any more solid-sketchy than Vinny Del Negro? His name literally translates to "Lawyer of darkness, comically played by Joe Pesci." That's the literal translation. I think this about says it all.

• • •

TEAM #4: INDIANA PACERS (Eastern 3rd seed: 49-32, SRS of 3.34)

• Series prediction: Pacers WIN in the first & second rounds, LOSE in the ECF. ( • • • • )
• Three most likely end results: 11-7; 4-1 then 4-2 then 3-4 ( • • • ), 9-7; 4-1 then 4-2 then 1-4 ( • • ), 7-5; 4-1 then 3-4 ( • • )

I kind of used New York's Prognostirank capsule in the last post to discuss the many merits of the Indiana Pacers in a series against the New York Knicks. So it would be rather fitting to use this post to explain what I meant by the last line of my New York post, where I noted that the Knicks would be the stronger matchup against Miami, even if the Pacers are the better team with a significantly more elite defense. Essentially, it all boils down to their relative strengths. I discussed in the Rockets/Warriors posts why I felt the Rockets and the Warriors had a chance of throwing their first round matchups into possible upset scenarios despite being clearly inferior to the better teams they're facing. Essentially, it's the 2009 Magic theory -- take a ton of threes and barrel into the other team in an effort to force the refs to give you a lot of calls. The threes and the fouls add variance and throw the better team off their game -- it gives you a chance of closing the quality gap in 2 or 3 games of the series on variance alone -- you'll then have 4 chances to simply catch the better team on a bad night and hope you grind one out.

New York, Houston, Golden State -- they all do this. It makes all three of them susceptible to both sides of an upset. You can already see that happening in the NY/BOS series. If the Celtics had an even remotely functioning offense, they would've won game 1 and had a chance of snatching game two. They look weak. But look at the three point shooting -- if New York goes on one of their 45-55% three point shooting nights, they're completely unbeatable. They'd blow out the 1996 Bulls. That's where the variance helps in a series where a team is completely outmatched. Having a high leverage production point where one or two made baskets changes your overall game that much gives you an extra edge. If it can give you 2 or 3 "completely unbeatable" games in a single series, as it so often does? You're golden. You can get situations where the 2009 Magic beat the 2009 Cavaliers. Balky or not, that was an incredible upset and it came on the back of somewhat unsustainable three point shooting. The Knicks can do the exact same thing, every once in a while, and that's why they'd stand a shaky chance to make a series of it against Miami.

The Pacers? They're good. Don't get me wrong. And don't think I've completely given up on the idea that Indiana could upset Miami. There were only two teams in the league that won the season series with this year's Heat -- the Pacers and the Knicks. (Weird stat, huh?) They both have a shot at an upset, even if the Heat are a markedly better team. While the Knicks would try their luck by imposing high variance shot-making, the Pacers would try theirs by forcing low-percentage shot-taking. We often forget that the Pacers thoroughly dominated Miami in their first two contests this season -- the Heat continually lost Paul George off-ball and found themselves stymied by Roy Hibbert's dominance in the paint. In all of the matchups, Paul George did a very good job on LeBron and it made the Heat somewhat mortal. The Knicks could beat the Heat -- the Pacers could too. So... why not pick them instead of Miami?

Miami's better. That's all there is to it.

It's conceivable that the Indiana defense mucks up Miami enough that they can't blow out the Pacers, but it's tough to fathom how Indiana scores as easily as they did in the first two games of the season series over the course of the conference finals. Consider -- Indiana dropped the last game to Miami when they were in the midst of their run-for-the-ages win streak. The Heat found themselves thoroughly befuddled by Indiana's length defensive scheme in the first two games, unable to get good percentage looks up and unable to score when the game was on the line. But in that last win? Miami siphoned offense from an unfamiliar source -- the champs leaned on one of Mario Chalmers' best games ever and tried to feature Chris Bosh in a Toronto-esque Bosh-driven offense. And it worked. The Heat got up big to start the game and the Pacers offense could never quite get in gear enough chip away at the lead. Therein lies the little nugget that keeps me from picking Indiana to win the game -- the Heat are one of the better offenses we've seen in the last several years, and they STILL have wrinkles of versatility that defenses can't gameplan until it's too late. They have such a wide variety of different looks they can give you, and over the course of a series, I trust Spolestra to experiment and tinker each game until he finds a combination that works on that particular night. If Indiana gives Miami even a tiny bit of daylight, and lets them take a 10 point lead? I just don't see how Miami's improving defense lets Indiana's offense back into the game. The Pacers have a shot at the upset, but it's a shot at an upset -- they aren't the favorites, and I can't in good faith pick them to be.

DEWEY'S TAKE: In Hoosiers, there's a great scene where Gene Hackman wakes up in a restaurant, only to find that all the people there speak only in one word - "Malkovich." He has traveled through his own portal.... Wait, sorry, that was Being John Malkovich. Sorry. Anyway, yeah, the point is, that was a movie that took place in the same state as the Pacers now play. And just like Hackman's iconic "Coach Carter" from that film, Frank Vogel has inspired his Pacers to play a brand of defense that is as stifling as it is hip. Hip meaning "in style" and "how Roy Hibbert or David West checks you on a screen; that is, when they aren't outright shoving you". The Pacers are led by all-around savant Paul George, not to be confused with guard Hill George on the same team. The Pacers represent some sort of perfect combination between the Bob Knight and Ron Artest win-at-all-costs insanity on the one hand, and on the other, the total, relatively unimpeachable uprightness of the recent Pacers. They are the most Mike Brown team in the league, until (sources tell me) Mike Brown returns to slay them in the Conference Finals with the Cavs next season. Note: Information in this blurb was provided by many reliable sources, including, and limited to, Mike Brown.

• • •

TEAM #3: SAN ANTONIO SPURS (Eastern 2nd seed: 58-24, SRS of 6.67)

• Series prediction: Spurs WIN in the first & second rounds, LOSE in the WCF. ( • • • )
• Three most likely end results: 11-9; 4-2 then 4-3 then 3-4 ( • • • • ), 11-7; 4-2 then 4-1 then 3-4 ( • • • ), 7-6; 4-2 then 3-4 ( • )

Again, Oklahoma City? Why do you have to keep doing this? Why do you hate me?

Alright, that's not quite fair. The 2013 Spurs are an interesting bunch. They're hard to handicap. During this long season, the Spurs have had several moments where they've looked unbelievably dominant -- they've had stretches where they look to combine the all-time great offensive execution of the 2012 Spurs and the Duncan-led defense of the 2007 Spurs, with Bowen replaced by Leonard and Green as the de facto perimeter stoppers. Possession after possession goes by with strong stop after strong stop, not a rotation out of place or an easy shot allowed... all while they whip the ball around at the other end and get wide open threes and at-rim layups. From time to time, the Spurs see fit to embody beautiful basketball. They have moments of unbeatable guile.

And yet... they aren't unbeatable. At all. The biggest problem -- and the struggle that many Spurs fans are having this season -- lies in the disconnect between San Antonio's best moments and their worst moments. The Spurs are supposed to be a hallmark to consistency and dogged persistence. "Lock down every possession. Never take a bad shot. Move the ball." Et cetera, et cetera. This season, though, that hasn't been the case -- this Spurs team is prone to go on 5-6 minute stretches of lazy, uninterested, selfish play. For short stretches, they simply don't move the ball or rotate effectively. They complain to the refs and forget to get back on defense. They take tentative steps and they sulk as Popovich tears into the team with his customary fury. At its best moments San Antonio's defense looks like a title-winning throwback to the ones that won Duncan his rings -- at its worst, it looks like a yet more shoddy imitation of last year's flawed defense. At its best moments San Antonio's offense looks like another generation-defining tour de force in ball movement and brilliant playcalling -- at its worst, it's a ball-sticking offense with no creativity and a general air of disinterest.

The most frustrating part? The Spurs embody both on a game-by-game basis. In the last game of the regular season, San Antonio scored 23 points in six minutes of play against the Timberwolves, with strong defense and insane offense leading their run. They scored 72 points in the other 42 minutes of the game, shooting horribly and playing completely disinterested basketball in a blowout home loss to a terrible team. Same tale-of-two-teams story was true in their recent loss to the Nuggets -- they went a sterling 14-0 in 6 minutes to start the game, then proceeded to get destroyed 96-72 over the other 42 minutes. It's a Jekyll and Hyde thing. Early in the season, that pattern would reverse -- they'd have 42 interested minutes and 6 completely lazy minutes every game. I'd ask "which is the real Spurs team", but that's not right. They're both the "real" Spurs -- this year's Spurs team is an object in contrasts more than any other Spurs team in recent memory. They are a flawed team with a stratospheric ceiling and a subterranean floor, and a team that has an irritating habit of reaching both their ceiling and their floor in any particular game. No lead feels particularly safe -- as a fan -- when simply you don't know what Spurs team you're getting from quarter to quarter. It's a bit mortifying.

San Antonio's title shot hinges on the Spurs limiting their disinterested coasting as the playoffs go on. Their top-tier game is a game that can play with any team in the league. Their bottom-tier game is a game that can get beaten by anyone -- the Bobcats, the Kings, the Hawks without their 4 best players... anyone. For that reason, I just can't pick the Spurs to win the title. I wish I had faith -- I don't. If they play their best, and they play consistently, they can win it all. But because of their inconsistency and their inscrutable lows, I can't pick them to beat a team as good as the Thunder. I can't pick them to go on a hot streak and win the title. They could do it, certainly. They have the talent: in extended minutes, Duncan is the best center in the NBA and Tony Parker is a first-team All-NBA point guard, the 1b to Chris Paul's 1a. Kawhi Leonard is a budding all-star with all-defense potential, and I suspect Manu Ginobili may have one vintage playoff series left in the tank. That's a killer four-man closing lineup, and it gives you a lot of versatility -- you can pair them with another perimeter stopper in Danny Green and play small, you can pair them with Tiago Splitter and play a modified two-towers, you can pair them with Gary Neal for instant-offense, and you can pair them with Matt Bonner if you want the internet to love you. But if they don't focus? If they coast?

They'll be out early, and their uncharacteristic foibles will be the only thing to blame.

DEWEY'S TAKE: What do I say about the Spurs that I haven't said about the Spurs? Take a thousand-yard view, Alex. The Spurs are a team that historically has combined the best of both worlds, of innocence and experience. Every title they've won has seen unfathomably young and inexperienced players stepping up... but also mentored heavily by unfathomably old and experienced players. Tim Duncan has gone from column A to column B, but he has maintained the best of both worlds himself, crafty worldliness and wiles on one hand, freakish athleticism and mental freshness on the other. A microcosm of the Spurs at large, Tim seems to be able to turn whatever he has on whenever the Spurs have needed him. The remarkable thing about the Thunder series wasn't that the younger team won, it was that the younger team won by elevating itself -- as if in an instant -- to the wisdom and experience of the Spurs. The Spurs' hopes largely hinge on young players such as Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green pulling a similar form of identity theft on the now-tested Thunder.

• • •

A few end-matter notes -- I'll be putting up the final part of the prognostirank series (with my run-down for the finals and my finals predictions) on Wednesday. Note that every single one of my predictions are already chosen -- I haven't been editing the picks to adjust for anything we see in the intervening playoff games, and I'm not gonna start now. I'd like to thank Hoopchalk for their excellent Playoff Preview Capsule series (used for some of the initial scouting here), as well as NBA League Pass and Basketball Reference for the game-watching experience and the stats to draw on when writing these.

Stay frosty, friends.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is a fictional tale. It marks the return of "John", Alex Dewey's alternate reality San Antonio ballboy. This story is set after the recent Golden State win over San Antonio's backups.

I was wandering the halls aimlessly when Richard Jefferson stopped me in the halls to explain something. "John, here's a doozy."

"What is it, RJ? I'm busy," I said. I wasn't even being sincere, I was just being a jerk so he'd hurry up. RJ had a tendency to could go on interminably. Without my terse influence checking him at every turn, that is. "Hurry up, RJ!"

"Frig, okay, so one time they got together this panel of Hall of Famers and league observers to choose the 50 best players of all time."

I had heard of this. "Yep. 50 greatest players of the last 50 years? Yeah, I know all about that. James Worthy was there, but I think someone got snubbed, right? Something like that."

"No, not that one," Richard said, and I immediately grew skeptical. "No, that one was in... like, 1996. I'm talking about 2009, when I was with the Bucks."

"Oh. I don't remember that. So what?"

"I was ranked, like, #40, John."

"Of all time? What? You? Richard Jefferson? The man who would forget the ball if it weren't attached by years of tireless practice not to screw up on a basic level? The man with a tattoo of his initials in cartoonish block letters inside a circle? That absurdity of a man, that living anathema to greatness and grace? You? Richard Jefferson? The fortieth best of all time?" I thought of every insult I could that was technically literally accurate.

"Yeah, the very same Richard Jefferson as you see standing before you. I was ranked #40."

"But... how could that have happened? Was there an announcement?"

"Get this, there was a single press statement from the NBA on the Internet. I remember seeing it and getting a few supportive e-mails, like, within minutes."

"WHAT?" I was in utter disbelief. Richard Jefferson had never won a championship; instead his team tended towards likable underdogs that overachieved and never got remotely close to an upset when push came to shove in the trial against the true best team in the league. Tim Duncan, Shane Battier, Manu Ginobili, Chauncey Billups, and Dwyane Wade: These are among the so-called alpha dogs that have knocked off RJ from the playoffs, stymieing his championship ambitions. If you can even call RJ's drifting, always-waning existence any way ambitious. It's a possibility that Richard Jefferson was never even the 40th best player in a singleseason. He'd never earned -- and had scarcely deserved -- even a single All-Star berth.

He was just on a lot of good teams and had apparently made some serious league observers think he was the Nets' proverbial ace in the hole for several years. Sure, he'd had some impressive playoff performances, but I just laughed. I'd seen RJ bumble passes that a child could convert into an easy 2. An inspiring high-flying athlete in his peak (he'd once jumped a file cabinet in the Warriors' front office, just to show he could), Jefferson lacked the feel for the game at the highest levels that tends to weed out such gimmicky high-flyers. But being both athletic enough and fastidious enough to not only keep his job but thrive, Jefferson had still commanded a lot of respect from the people outside the league. An ultimate ambassador, as he was.

"They'd actually singled me out because I was an active player. I still remember it... 'Richard Jefferson of the Milwaukee Bucks, #24, from Arizona.' No. 40 all-time! The press release said they'd be honored with a plaque commemorating their accomplishments. I for one was shocked." Such did Richard reveal his best quality -- his earnest honesty and relentless reasonableness about the whole thing, seasoned with a nice dose of almost pathological humility. He seemed to re-enact his shock with his eyebrows as he told me all of this. "I absolutely did not know what to make of this information."

"I'm seriously doubting this ever happened. Did you dream it? Did you take too much cough medicine the night before, RJ?" I said mockingly. There was a slight hitch in my voice, not unlike Jefferson's characteristic hitch in his shot that had completely destroyed his game in his old age.

"No, I swear this really happened," Richard said sincerely.

"I believe you BELIEVE this really happened, Richard. I just don't know what to make of the possibility that it actually happened. It seems rather absurd on its face."

"Aww, here it goes. OK. Look, the press release calling me #40 was taken down after just twenty minutes up, probably for someone to realize they'd miscalculated a tally or something, I figured," and then he said with confusion, "But they never brought it up again, like it never even happened, that's what was so weird."

"Yeah, that must be a weird thing for you to think happened, but that probably didn't." I said, fully hamming up my doubtful perspective.

"Shut up, John," and I was taken aback by this, "Seriously, shut up, I'm telling a story."

I thought about throwing in a u mad bro, so characteristic of my youthful scorn for any sort of sincere passion, but thought better of it. Richard seemed almost distraught about this omission. "I just wanted to know who was actually there, even if it wasn't me. I'm fine not winning them all, but I feel like I had something taken from me, you know, and I wanted so badly to get it back. I don't have the nice e-mails they sent and I don't have a record of the list, and the NBA never officially acknowledged it. John," he said, "They washed their hands of the one truly supportive gesture of the historical legacy of Richard Jefferson, however absurd you may think him. They washed their hands utterly."

"Damn. Yeah, okay, I can see that," I said with not a little diplomacy in my tone, trying to imagine how Tim Duncan would comfort a teammate that had just missed a game-winner. "So, did you ever find out what happened?"

"Yes, just last week I was visiting the Walton home in San Diego. You must know Luke Walton, we went to Arizona together, and Bill Walton, the legendary center."

"Yeah, I mean, we just played the Cavs a few weeks ago, he was there. And I've seen Bill courtside every once in awhile. He can barely walk."

"That's right, he can barely walk," and Richard was suppressing a smile to get to talk about Bill Walton. "But he loves the game of basketball, John. And he loves his children, and I've always been able to go and talk to him when I've needed to. Yeah, he can barely walk. But he's a very interesting person, to say the least. If you asked him the greatest player of all time on any given day he'd tell you someone different. Some days it would be like Cedric Ceballos, other days it would be Manu Ginobili. Not even kidding. And... for one blessed day, Bill Walton woke up... apparently after I'd made a visit to his family, and he wrote down "Richard Jefferson" and "Luke Walton" as his favorite players of all time. Bill was also one of the people involved in the tallying of the ballots (for reasons passing understanding), and what he told me is that no one had chosen Luke Walton on their lists, but that a couple college observers had remembered my run with Arizona and given me a 50 spot or something. And the way the points were tallied, that was just enough for me to slip into 40th place.  He told me this all while sipping a gigantic iced tea and lemonade, John."

"Do you believe him?" I asked.

"Truthfully," Richard said, "I feel like he could have been telling the complete truth, an utter fabrication, or something far in between. It's not a stretch to give me #50."

"Yes it is," I interjected quickly.

"Damn. Frig. Okay, I mean, yes, it is. But it's not a stretch that someone that watched me in college and sees me in the playoffs my first 5 years and the Olympic team and overrates me in the pros and puts me #50, no?"

"Okay, fine, no, that's not a stretch."

"But yeah, I figure a few guys legitimately give me #50, even #45, and, well, Bill Walton and a couple of his buddies in the Hall get together and say 'Hey, let's put RJ in this thing, he's a nice young man! George Mikan won't mind. Bernard King won't mind.' And they put me at 20 or something, and suddenly they're dealing with a few players like me and a few others that are getting these nostalgic votes that aren't really fair, and so they count up the ballots and decide that they really don't want to honor all the players that got voted in, but they don't want to fudge the vote by getting a legit candidate out of there. So they figure, hey, most of the players that deserve it have already been honored, and the rest probably don't deserve it that much."

"Ah. So they considered scrapping it entirely."

"Yeah, they did. They went ahead with the press release, otherwise I wouldn't have any clue that this had happened, but they went forward with that doubt hanging over it, is what it sounds like from Bill. Again, I'm not sure how far to trust his tale, he once told me eggs were filled with rainbows if you open them at the perfect full moon and put them in front of a telescope and you could eat the rainbow and it would taste like Skittles."

"What in God's name?"

"But I mean, his story about this vote seems pretty legit, no? Sounds like a lot of marketing campaigns that never took."

"Yeah, I guess, RJ."

"My understanding is that they scrapped it as soon as they got the first returns from Stern saying that it was a travesty that I was placed at #40 and that 'he didn't care how much publicity it would cause, it's an embarrassment to lists. Take it down, never mention it again.'"

"And they did."

"I still hold out hope that when Stern is gone they'll put it out there."

"But probably not."

"They probably never will, John, but at least it's a mystery resolved. I can rest easy."

Richard Jefferson, in addition to having an absurd bald head and a bad record in the clutch, apparently had the gift of resting easy. Because I found that I couldn't sleep for the nights following RJ's revalation, furtively tossing and turning in a cold sweat. I thought of all the shams of history that had ever been raised even a shade above mediocrity by a whimsical eccentric peddling nepotism in all his advocacy that the figure in question had happened to visit the day before, or something similarly arbitrary.

I shuddered at these shams that in a hundred years children would be taught to idolize or even emulate in habit, thought, and pattern... for I myself was once a child, brought up in this way! And worst, I thought of the pain - if the soul be immortal - to be one of those shams watching from the afterlife, to know that in a hundred years your poverty of ambition would be falsely rewarded. I shiver.

In the week since that day, I have fretted and bungled my deadlines and obligations in a sort of tragic irony that the Greeks would have relished, thinking of myself remembered falsely as the 40th greatest mop virtuoso of all time. I mop now with a hitch, perhaps for evermore.

Richard smiles as he passes.