As our summer mainstay, Aaron's going to be writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. This morning's three players, in our first installment: Jarrett Jack, Ishmael Smith, and Pau Gasol. Due to length, we'll hold off on an all-five grouping and post three more players later in the day.

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Follow Jarrett Jack on twitter at @JarrettJacko3.

Here we start. Not LeBron, not an All-Star, not a DPoY -- Jarrett Jack, the starting point guard of the New Orleans Hornets.

I want to get one thing clear, before we discuss our first player. The order here is completely random. Totally random. I set up a random draw for each of the 370 players from a 0 to 1 uniform distribution, then ordered the list based on that. No changing the order mid-stream, no rearranging deck chairs to get the players I like the most done first. I've done very little in the realm of actually examining the order -- to some extent, I'm going to be as surprised as anyone at the order the players come up. Helps make sure I stay honest with these, you know?

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that despite the list's random order, I'm not sure I could've personally chosen a better first player than Jack. Jarrett Jack is a prime example of that large swath of players that find themselves slightly under the standards for mass relevancy -- not quite an all-star, not quite egregiously overpaid, and not quite a college star everyone recognizes. If you saw Jack on the street, you might not recognize him -- he's a bit tall, and built like a mack truck, but he's not necessarily going to stand out in a crowd as an NBA player. In basketball terms, though, he's a bit too underheralded for my taste. Jack can play, if you give him the chance. And last season in New Orleans provides a good example -- Jack played more minutes per game than he ever had in his career, and the man produced. He put up the 12th of this season's 24 triple-doubles, held the offense down, and provided some defense on the perimeter within Monty's brilliant switching system on a Hornets team that was nowhere near as bad as its record, and nowhere near as bad as I'd predicted they'd be. He isn't a $10-15 million a year guy, but at the price he'll probably command after this season ($6-7 million), he'll probably be worth it as a 4th or 5th starter.

And then there's the personal story, which is wonderful. I don't want to belabor the point when you should just go and read Holly McKenzie's magnificent opus on the pair, but Monty Williams and Jarrett Jack's family have a long history together -- Jack's dad was one of Monty's strongest influences when Monty was a young player, and in return, as an assistant in Portland Monty helped raise Jack to play the right way when Jack was coming up in the league. It's a pretty neat story, especially when you hear either Monty or Jack talk about the other. There's clearly a level of mutual respect and kinship between the two that's rare, both in professional sports and in general life. It was a rare collection of factors and luck that conspired to bring Jack to Monty's tutelage in the first place, and a nice capper reunited them in New Orleans. Thanks to all that, we get an engaging pair that's fun to cheer for and makes each other better. All things considered? You probably could've guessed this, but I hope the Hornets keep him. Monty and Jack together again is one of those wonderful twists of fate that make the meta-stories of the league interesting.

It's one thing to read story after story about a player meshing with a coach and becoming friends -- they're heartwarming stories, no doubt, and interesting to boot. But the personal touch on Jack's parallel journey to Monty's first coached team combined with the Hornets' general need of a point guard makes this a pairing I really hope sticks. Jack's not my favorite player, per se, but he's by all accounts one of the good guys. To me, he's one of the myriad of people that make the NBA better than just any old sports league. Absolutely a good representative of the guys that make the NBA a league of people I really like, and the reason projects like this are so fun to me. So good on you, Jack, for being the guy you are. Keep rockin' it.

• • •

Follow Ishmael Smith on twitter at @ishsmith.

Ishmael Smith is a tiny guy. Maybe not relative to most of our readers, but relative to most NBA players -- he's 6'0", and from footage I've seen, I'd say that might be an inch generous. He's played for four NBA franchises (along with a single D-League crew) thus far in a relatively spotty career, never taking a particularly large role and never being called on to do much more than playing 10-12 minutes every two or three games. Unlike most marginal NBA players, Ish Smith has a glorious NBA skill that's led to a somewhat outsized NBA following: an absolutely electric transition game. Seriously. He may be a bit tiny, but Smith is fast -- if he gets the ball and has enough daylight to get to the rim, he's got the ability to dazzle. Never was this more obvious than in his brief jaunt at his 2010 Summer League play, where NBA aficionados got the chance to see undersized wonders in him and Pooh Jeter explode into semi-prominence and display their NBA-ready skills. In Pooh's case, it was an overall multifaceted game and a decent looking shot for a small guy. In the case of Smith, it was an electric ability to get to the rim and run NBA-level transition plays even without NBA talent around him.

Make no mistake -- if Smith was a few inches taller, a little bit stronger, and had a slightly less busted shot? He'd probably be a Ramon Sessions-type of player, very valuable to the right system. His transition game is absolutely sublime. For this reason, I'm holding out hope that the Magic resign him -- he's one of the more entertaining garbage time players to watch, and while he doesn't have a particularly high ceiling, there's something to be said for resigning a nice guy with a great motor and at least one entertaining NBA skill. I'm not gonna fool myself into thinking Ish will be a starter in the league someday, because he probably won't. But he can be a solid backup's backup if he works his shot a bit, and there's no doubt in my mind that as long as he stays in the NBA his transition brilliance will make him a compelling garbage time all-star. Fun fact: before he played his first NBA minute, people had a nickname for him. Ish "the Dish" Smith! ... whoa there, buddy, I didn't say it was a good nickname.

• • •

Follow Pau Gasol on twitter at @paugasol.

Pau Gasol is -- beyond his quality as a player, which we'll get to -- an interesting person. He's one of the most book-smart players in the NBA, having dropped out of one of the top medical schools in Barcelona at the age of 18 to follow his growth spurt and pursue a far more lucrative career in basketball. He didn't drop out because of grades, or some inability to hack it -- he dropped out because, well... if you were a 7'0" man with a talent in sport who could make hundreds of millions of dollars playing a game you love, wouldn't you? He actually thought, early in his career, that if he retired early enough he'd take a stab at getting his M.D. post-NBA and practicing medicine. Age and being all-too productive in the NBA put an end to that pipe dream, but (luckily, I'd say) hasn't put an end to the inherent curiosity of Pau Gasol. Despite the dropout, he certainly hasn't dulled down his interests or his tastes -- still goes to the opera, still volunteers at hospitals, still studies new languages to keep his mind fresh. He reads glorious thousand-page histories and plays French concertos on the keyboard. He does it all. A renaissance man in every possible respect.

As for his game? Fun. Historically, Gasol's statistical game is virtually peerless, and we'll get to that in a bit. Let's discuss his style in a more improvisational manner. Gasol is a bit emotional, at least in his on-court stylings -- he's got the mood and sensibilities of the Opera stars he loves to watch. Not in his ability to flop, no -- in his ability to simply emote that which he's feeling through his play. If he's frustrated, his play becomes out-of-sync and tenuous. If he's happy, his game has a certain element of joy -- every hook shot let off with a smile, every rebound pulled down with abandon, every bench cheer a cause for incredible celebration. It's not an broad mirror that overwhelms the way he plays, like Ricky Rubio's infectious enthusiasm or Manu Ginobili's pathological intensity. No, it's more a seasoning. A slight shade of emotion sprinkled over his already entertaining game.

And it makes Gasol, more than most players, something of an open book. Is he frustrated about trade rumors? Well, you'll probably be able to tell by watching him play. Is Kevin Garnett's illegal defense getting him down? There'll probably be a lack of pep to his step. Is he playing too many minutes? You'll know far before you realize what's going on. And so on, and so forth. It's one of the reasons the Lakers have been at their core a frustrating team for their fans -- Pau Gasol's game just seems to be so much better when he looks happy and confident. He's happiest when the Lakers are dominating. He's at his least confident when things are a bit rough. And so, somewhat predictably, many Laker fans notice the dismal depths into which Gasol sinks and scream and shout. Sometimes, they overlook the effortless dominance exerted by a happy and contented Gasol. They overlook the wonders Pau can produce when he's happy and at peace with himself and the league.

But that was then. This is now. Pau is older than you think. He's been in the league 11 years, which usually wouldn't be all that much, but he brought with him a ton of miles from his playing days in Barcelona and he runs a full-on all-out schedule for the Spanish National Team, almost every year. The description of his statistical game that you may be waiting for SHOULD come here, but I don't really have the heart to give it beyond the basics. Pau's last two seasons were two of the worst of his career if you consider them in totality -- which is pretty astonishing, given that he was a strong MVP candidate through the first two months of the 2011 season. He's played tired, exhausted, and far too much. His post moves aren't quite as effective as they used to be, his shot isn't quite as wet, his rebounding isn't quite as prolific, and he's simply starting to show signs of age. I was of the opinion that in 2009 and 2010, Pau Gasol was the 1b to Howard's 1a -- easily the second best big man in the league, and one could make a rather compelling case that he was the best.

Not anymore, though. He's now in a stage of his career where -- on this Laker team -- he'll be reduced to the fourth option on the offensive end and essentially turned into a spot-up shooter and rebounding whiz-kid. I'm not sure if I like it. Far be it from me to root for a Laker -- as a Spurs fan, you must understand, I'm not great shakes for the franchise -- but Pau is easily my favorite Laker of the last 10-20 years. He's just about the most interesting person in the league, his game provided so much joy to watch before the Lakers' recent downward spell, and the way Pau's game emanates emotion has always been an aspect I greatly respect. Now, as his age increases and his usage level drops to subterranean levels, I'm left silently wondering who in the world is really going to remember Pau Gasol. When we discuss Kobe's storied legacy in the future, and list off the greatest big men in the Lakers' history, who's going to be the one to bring up their Big Spaniard?

Well, okay. I'm a Spurs fan. So I probably won't be person to those discussions. But if for some reason I happen to be, I'll tip a hat in his direction. You should too. Think about him. Realize what he's meant -- to you, the league, his nation. Really. He's pretty excellent. So here's to you, Pau. Interesting to a fault, emotive to the core, and may never get quite the appreciation he deserves from the throngs of Laker fans descendent upon comment pages and sports bars everywhere. You did good. Wish everyone could've seen it before your game began the slow, plodding decline that old age brings all the greats.

• • •

At the end of each post, I'll be scribing riddles for the next batch of players. Whoever gets the most riddles right will get a shout out at the end of the next post. Tweet me your answers at @docrostov, or post them in the comments. If several people tie, I'll post everyone who tied. No overtime in this riddle-guessing competition, guys.

• Warriors fans are going to regret passing on Player #4 for a very, very long time.
• In a strange and inverted way, Player #5 follows in Chris Bosh's three-toed dinosaur-shaped footsteps.
• Now HERE'S a player I don't want anywhere near any team I like. The lovefest ends with you, Player #6.

These three will be posted later today. Enjoy.

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Here at the Gothic, we have a big and possibly-too-often restated goal. We want to start discussions. We like talking -- not merely to hear our own voices, but to really engage our readers and the mass online following of basketball as a whole. Now, there isn't a ton to talk about in a long offseason. I think we all know that. There's the occasional trade, of course, and this year we have the Olympics to tide us over. (And yes, we'll be offering a bunch of Olympic coverage as well -- don't worry about that.) But on the whole, there's not all that much to talk about, other than frittering away at the narratives of a season gone by and handicapping a season we as-of-yet know nothing about. Not much to ruminate. We'd like to allay that, at least partially -- we'd like to give everyone something to talk about.

So here we are. ESPN has their crowdsourced #NBARank, Basketball Prospectus has its excellent preseason guide, and the esteemed John Hollinger has his thorough examinations of each player in the league for insider. And us, here at the Gothic? We offer for your consumption -- as both an offseason and an early season feature -- our Gothic Ginobili Player Capsules. Last season, before this blog even began, I did a whole lot of these. Seriously, a ton. In the GG archives we have a select few -- 30, to be precise -- but rest assured there were quite a few more. I completed 271 player capsules in the run-up to the 2012 season. They were posted on a private discussion forum, and most likely, will never see the light of day. They weren't at all edited, included more vulgarities than a classic J. Dana Teague rant, and some went far too long/short. It was a mess, basically.

This year, I'm going a bit loony. I've taken a list of every player in the NBA that played over 100 minutes last season -- that's 440 guys. I sifted through that list and took out 70 more players, because I couldn't find anything interesting to say about them and I needed to cut this project down to at least a moderately manageable amount. The plan, as it stands? Talk about the 370 players left. All of them. I've done some outlining, got some basic points set up, and worked the format down to where I get enough leeway to talk but enough structure to feel like everything comes together. I've compiled statistics for each player, articles, reports, et cetera.

And for the rest of 2012, I'm going to talk about them. Here's the plan, in a convenient and easily updated FAQ format.

• • •

WHAT'S THE SCHEDULE?

When I started this project, updates came Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with six players each day. This quickly fell by the wayside as an outright ridiculous goal, leading to the current structure -- one post per day, Monday through Friday, three players a post. Around 10-15 thousand words a week, give or take. Lots of writing. As of August's conclusion, I'm proud to say I've only missed two days -- given that I'm a third of the way through the project, I admit, I'm pretty surprised about that. Still.

IS THIS GOING TO BE ALL YOU GUYS DO FOR THE ENTIRE OFFSEASON?

This is going to make up the majority of the Gothic's coverage this summer. This is a fact. I know that personally, this will make up the vast majority of my posts this summer. That doesn't mean that we aren't going to have other neat content, though -- Tuesdays and Thursdays will remain content-rich days for us, with our stable of wonderful writers (Adam Koscielak, Alex Arnon, Jacob Harmon, and most likely one or two new additions you'll be meeting soon) scribing their thoughts and mores as Alex Dewey leads them forward into a H.A.M. set of content primarily composed of Olympic content, thoughts on the free agency market, and a new audio courtroom-esque feature we'll be introducing in a few weeks. We aren't resting on our laurels, here. Trust us.

HOW DID YOU CHOOSE CAPSULE ORDERING? WHY HASN'T [MY FAVORITE PLAYER] GONE YET?

I will state this over and over again, ad infinitum. People will forever continue to disbelieve me. (Or troll me by pretending to disbelieve me.) I will state this as clearly as I can. THE ORDER IS RANDOM. I didn't alter, modify, or change any of the player ordering that my randomizer produced. The only element that could be conceivably considered non-random is the fact that no computer randomizer is truly random in the long run -- they rely on set seeds in a pre-randomized list that for most programs goes on longer than most human beings can comprehend. But for all intents and purposes this is a random list. So, if you're wondering why a team has been oversampled in the first 20-30 players, or why your team's star hasn't come up yet? Blame random numbers, not me. (Or, alternatively... if you blame me, you also are obligated to admit that it is your belief that I have control over all random numbers. Because that would be a pretty awesome power for a statistician to have.)

• • •

Looking for an organized directory of all capsules? You've come to the right place. Check out our capsule directory, where you can filter and sort our completed capsules by player age, team, and position. Go to the team pages for team salary data and interesting stuff like that. If you have any feature suggestions for the directory, please feel free to comment on this post or email us at "staff [at] gothicginobili [dot] com". It's fun stuff.

As a tertiary feature, we will be featuring extended versions of certain capsules at other websites to spread the word. So far, capsules that fall under this designation of Player Capsules (Plus) include the following:

• The Egoism of Chris Paul -- Hardwood Paroxysm.
• Wade's World -- Hardwood Paroxysm
• Russell Westbrook, the Lawless Sovereign -- Hardwood Paroxysm
• Tim Duncan, Salt of the Earth -- 48 Minutes of Hell
• The Forgotten Dominance of Dirk Nowitzki -- SBNation Dallas
• Paul Pierce, the Role Model -- Hardwood Paroxysm
• Heel Turns with Dwight Howard, Laker Legend -- Hardwood Paroxysm
• Ricky Rubio, Can You Hear Me? -- Hardwood Paroxysm
• Defining a Hero with Andre Miller -- Hardwood Paroxysm
• The Flickering Candle of Stephen John Nash -- Hardwood Paroxysm
• Kawhi Leonard and Throwing the Haymaker -- 48 Minutes of Hell
• LeBron James -- the King and I -- Gothic Ginobili
• Kevin Durant and the Leaps of Youth -- Gothic Ginobili
• Bloomsday with Derrick Rose -- Gothic Ginobili
• James Harden and the Journey of a Lifetime -- Gothic Ginobili
• Chaos, Death, and Manu Ginobili -- Gothic Ginobili
• Kobe Bryant and the Memories of Man -- Gothic Ginobili
• Kyrie Irving -- Showman, Structure, Star -- Gothic Ginobili
• LaMarcus Aldridge and the Burden of Proof -- Gothic Ginobili
• Anderson Varejao and the Smile that Wins -- Gothic Ginobili

If you have more questions, ask in the comments below, or ask me on Twitter (my handle is @docrostov). Stay frosty.

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Hello, folks. Happy fourth. About a month back, we did a relatively successful statistical Q&A. I've been a bit absent lately, on account of residual hoops miasma, but I have today off work and it feels like a good day to bring the series back. Format is relatively simple -- for the rest of the day (or until questions dry up), I'll be answering reader questions. These can be on any number of topics -- from the offseason to the playoffs to what, pray tell, a vegetarian is going to make for dinner on the fourth of July. All's game. To start, we have an opening question from the man who had the most questions last time.

• • •

QUESTION #1: Is this your first question for the Q&A tomorrow? And yes, this is my question. from @sstewart1617

Why yes, Sam. It is. Here is a graph displaying all questions asked as of this writing for today's Q&A.

Congratulations. You were emphatically first.

• • •

QUESTION #2: Is Omer Asik a substantially more effective defender than Tyson Chandler or Dwight Howard? from @sstewart1617

The obvious answer -- simply thinking through their impact -- would be no. But when you look at the numbers, things get a bit confusing. Asik is an extremely effective defender. Looking at the overall numbers of team defensive performance when he's on the floor, the Bulls had a defensive rating of 100 with Asik off the floor and a rating of 91 with him on it -- that's the difference between a top-5 defense and a generationally revolutionary one. Tyson Chandler's on/off court splits were actually pretty bad this season -- with him on the court, the Knicks had a defensive rating of 102. Off the court? 100. Yes, the Knicks actually managed to defend better with Tyson off the court than on the court. In the case of Howard, though, you can argue that his numbers are slightly more impressive -- the Magic's Dwight-off-floor defensive rating is 109, which over a full season would likely rate out as one of the worst defenses in the league. With him on the court, they have a defensive rating of 101 -- top-5.

If you break the stats down into individual defensive stats per Synergy, Asik looks like a superior defender as well -- he sports the 24th ranked overall PPP rating of any player in the league, at 0.71 points per possession allowed. Tyson has the 104th ranked at 0.80, and Dwight has the 49th ranked rating at 0.74. His rating primarily comes off the strength of his recoveries on spot-up shooters -- NBA players score only 0.59 PPP against Asik on spot-up plays. Chandler is a bit better at isolation defense, and a bit better at defending post-ups -- Asik schools him on defending the roll man in the Pick and Roll, as well as spot-ups. Between Dwight and Asik, the same general format applies -- Dwight is better in isolation and against post-ups, but worse than Asik at guarding spot-ups and roll men. Overall, would I say Asik is more effective? I don't think so. He plays most of his minutes against bench men, and his minutes aren't meaninglessly low -- his foul rate is extremely high, and if he can't stay on the court, that does limit his effective value. But you could make a somewhat compelling argument that Asik is better than Dwight or Chandler at defending the pick and roll, or alternatively, at recovering on spot-up shooters. Which is a valuable skill. I'm not sure I really dislike Asik's contract -- if he can work on the foul trouble, he can be a top-10 center in this league. Getting one of those for a sub-eight digit contract is phenomenal.

• • •

QUESTION #3: Have you seen Troll 2? If not, why do you hate good things? from @AngeloCLE

I saw it when I was young. Don't really remember much of it. Perhaps I should see it again, someday. Especially since I make fun of Conrad about it on almost a daily basis.

• • •

QUESTION #4: Charmander, Squirtle, or Bulbasaur? from @AngeloCLE

When I was a kid, I picked Squirtle. If I had to re-choose I'd probably pick Charmander -- there just weren't enough good fire Pokemon in that game, man. Always ended up with an Arcanine or a Magmar or something, and that just aint right. It's kind of silly how many more water dudes there are than any other type. (The reason this is presently on my mind: I've been playing Soul Silver lately because I got it extremely cheap. Fun game, in a lot of ways. Kinda a slog, though, like most Pokemon games.)

• • •

QUESTION #5: Is there a big in the league that draws less fouls per 48 minutes than Matt Bonner? What about fouling someone per 48? from @sstewart1617

I'm honestly drawing a blank on where to easily look up foul drawing numbers, so I'll have to get back to you on that. I know it exists, somewhere, but I know I don't have it in my personal statsheets so that'd be a bit harder to get. The second one is easier. Here's a table with the five bigs in the league that foul the fewest times per 48 minutes.

Obviously, LeBron is first -- he's barely a big, and I'm not sure why my positional rankings counted him as one. Other than one name on this list, all of them are pretty expected -- Bargnani is notorious for never fouling, Durant has never fouled in his life, and Bonner is... well... Matt Bonner. The one name on this list that confuses me and will forever confuse me? ANDREW BYNUM. He had one of the 10 the lowest foul rates for a true center_ in the history of the NBA_ this season. I understand he's been a little lazier on defense, and I understand he's laid off his man a bit. But Bynum's ability to avoid drawing fouls despite playing a relatively physical game for a center is one of those things I will never, ever understand. Especially not last year where, again, he had one of the lowest foul-per-minute performances ever. EVER. It's ridiculous.

• • •

QUESTION #6: Is it just me, or does France have a really good chance to win gold this year, especially with USA and ESP hurting? from @sstewart1617

It's not just you. I think USA is still the favorite, but due to Spain's injuries, they might be second to France in terms of our greatest threat. There's a big x-factor for them, though -- if Tony Parker's eyesight is at all compromised or his game is off due to needing to wear goggles, etc... they're screwed. They more than most foreign teams absolutely depend on Tony to run their offense. I think he'll probably be fine, hence, I think they're our biggest threat. But yeah. USA is in a bit of trouble. I don't understand why Coach K and the Team USA brass aren't busting down the doors for Greg Monroe and Demarcus Cousins -- I thought Davis was a poor choice over the two of them to begin with, and given the absolute dearth of bigs on this team, I feel like they really need to shore up their rotation. There's still so many questions about this team's rotation, it's kind of shocking that they're still considered the favorites to win Gold. I mean, they are -- nobody's going to match CP3/LeBron/Durant in terms of pure talent. But otherwise, the team is older and in a bit of a tough spot. We're either going to need to play Durant or LeBron at center or play Tyson an insane (and impossible) minutes load. If I was a Knicks fan, I'd be pissed at the brass for putting Chandler in this kind of a position -- he's the Knicks' best player, and it looks like he's about to play way more minutes than any one man should have to in an offseason. Just some weird decisions from the brass.

• • •

QUESTION #7: If you had to manage the locker room of an NBA team, which would it be? (factor in: player personalities, coach, location, etc) from @TheWagOfMutombo

I wouldn't mind living in San Antonio. So... the Spurs. Pretty easily. Beyond the Spurs, I think I'd enjoy the Suns -- Alvin seems like a nice guy and that has always seemed like a locker room with a lot of cohesion. In terms of a locker room I absolutely positively would NOT want to manage... any team that has Dwight Howard. Or the Knicks. Would not want to manage either of those. Interesting question, though.

• • •

QUESTION #8: Among the final 6 candidates, who would you select for the final 3 on the US Olympic Team? from @soconnor76

For those readers who aren't familiar, here's the list of the final 6 candidates:

• James Harden
• Eric Gordon
• Anthony Davis
• Rudy Gay
• Andre Iguodala
• Blake Griffin

Honestly? I kind of hate this list. As I said before, unless we want to try playing Love at Center, Tyson Chandler is on pace to play an insane number of minutes in this year's Olympics. Blake will be fine, but he is not an all-world defensive big by any stretch of the imagination and he's never consistently played Center. Neither Cousins or Monroe adds a ton defensively to the team, but at least they're used to playing that role on the court. Hibbert would be an interesting choice too, but I seem to recall him saying he didn't want to play for Team USA a long time back. Anyway. Out of this list, I'd pick Gordon, Griffin, and Iguodala. In that order (IE, Gordon before Griffin before Iggy) -- while Gordon and Iguodala don't seem like obvious choices, they and Tyson Chandler made up the core of the 2010 team's stifling defense (ESPECIALLY Gordon, whose defense absolutely flourishes in the international game) and we're going to want a team that can keep leads without scoring when our big three hits the bench.

EDIT: Excellent point from @rscotham. Roy Hibbert already played for the Jamaican National Team. This makes him ineligible for the U.S. Olympic team, which is why he has no interest. He actually can't. Sorry, Roy.

• • •

QUESTION #9: Based on his rookie season, what's the best comparison you can draw for Kyrie Irving? from @AngeloCLE

This is always a fun one to answer. In terms of PER, Kyrie recorded the 6th best PER by a rookie guard in the history of the league -- the players above him include three Hall of Fame guys, Chris Paul, and the always-underrated Walter Davis. The only point guards above him were CP3 and Magic. In terms of players who shot as well as Kyrie did, there's a single candidate -- Stephen Curry, who's the only other rookie guard to ever shoot over 35% from three and 85% from the line while averaging > 4 assists and > 17 points. Kyrie only played 30 MPG, though -- his per 36 stats (22-4-6 on 47%-40%-87% shooting) have been matched or bettered... well... never. Even on a per-36 basis. If you cut down the points, you get a few point guards of note -- namely Billups, Nash, and Price. With a little bit of Manu thrown in for good measure.

All this leads me to this. What's the best comparison for one of the most efficient scoring point guard seasons of all time? If I absolutely had to pick a player comparison, it would be Mark Price at his prime. A little less talent around Kyrie, so the assists aren't quite as high. But as a rookie, Kyrie Irving was a more prolific scoring Mark Price with a bit less of the passing and a bit more of the rebounding. This should make Cleveland fans pretty happy, given that Mark Price is dreadfully underrated and -- in terms of peak production -- one of the 7 best point guards the league has ever seen. This should also make Cleveland fans pretty happy because, you know, KYRIE IRVING WAS A ROOKIE LAST SEASON.

... Man, I love Kyrie.

• • •

QUESTION #10: Assuming Nash deal goes as proposed, how do Nets/Knicks stack up against Miami? Expectation wise? Salary wise? Your thoughts? Also: These Nets/Knicks deals have to make Miami look like geniuses from a Salary/Skill ratio, right? from @netgregory

Whoooo boy. This is gonna be a big one. So, the deal he's referring to is the just-broken prospective Nash sign-and-trade between the Knicks and the Suns. The Suns would receive Toney Douglas and Iman Shumpert, while the Knicks would recieve Steve Nash on a 3-year $30 million dollar deal. Steve Nash is 38 years old -- the deal will take him to his 41st birthday. Which is crazy. But from a broader perspective, there are three main things to think about when you consider how New York's two teams match up with the reigning champions. They are as follows.

• Who's going to defend LeBron? In the case of the Knicks, the answer is complicated. Before Shumpert went out, there were some possessions where Shump cross-matched LeBron. If I remember right, he did OK. That option is gone if the Knicks succeed in landing Nash, but it's worth noting that it'd probably be gone anyway. Shump is coming off a deadly knee injury that's going to (most likely) linger for at least a season -- if we're thinking simply about 2013, Shump's absence probably won't hurt the club all that much. He was going to be absent for a while anyway. But the Knicks DO have Chandler, who can defend LeBron when he drives -- the Nets can put Gerald Wallace on LeBron individually to help make LeBron's spot-up shots a bit harder, but LeBron's forays to the rim will be absolutely impossible for the Nets to stop with a Teletovic/Lopez front line. I'd say that Chandler's presence at making his drives harder (thus forcing him into more long range shooting) would make the Knicks a better defensive team on LeBron than the Nets. But they're both going to be pretty helpless to stop him.

• Assuming LeBron and Wade stifle the team's two best scoring options, who's going to score? Again, both teams don't rate out particularly well, here. The Knicks will -- assuming Melo and Nash are having trouble scoring -- be reliant on Chandler and Stoudemire to create offense. If Deron and Johnson are being stifled, the Nets will rely on Brook Lopez and Wallace to create for themselves. One thing that Sebastian Pruiti pointed out the other day -- and it's a fantastic point -- is that Teletovic has a somewhat slow release on his shot. Because of that, defenders in the NBA are most likely going to be able to double off of him and pressure Lopez. The addition of Johnson and Wallace will help against most teams, and it will make their offense significantly better -- but against the Heat, where they have two lockdown defenders that can switch onto JJ and Deron to a lot of success, that may leave Teletovic's man free to help onto Lopez off Teletovic knowing that his release is slow enough for them to get back into position and still cover his shot. So against Miami, I'd think Lopez will see about as many doubles as he has the last few years. Which means massive inefficiency from a scoring standpoint. At least for next year, I think the Nash-Chandler connection would help the Knicks come out on top in this matchup relative to the Nets. Barely, though. And if Crash has a bounce-back year, the Nets are going to be better at this. (Both will be pretty bad though.)

• Who wins the board battle? Miami was not a great rebounding team last year, and one of the few places they found themselves below-average was as an offensive rebounding team. Teams with top rebounding centers tended to give the Heat more trouble than they perhaps expected, including the Magic, the Celtics, and the Lakers. In the case of the Nets, they have superior rebounders at every non-guard position -- Deron, Johnson, and Wallace are all fantastic rebounders for their size. Lopez and Teletovic, though? Lopez is one of the worst rebounding centers in the league, and Teletovic was only able to average about 6 boards per 36 minutes in the Euroleague -- that's not a good sign. Chandler is a great rebounding center, but Amare is relatively poor and without Fields the Knicks are probably going to be sporting below-average rebounding players in three of their five positions. Because of the fact that I could see Chandler outrebounding Lopez and Teletovic BY HIMSELF, I'll give it to the Knicks -- but don't be surprised if the superior guard/forward rebounding from the Nets makes them a better rebounding team.

So, in sum, I'd say the Knicks match up slightly better against Miami. But only slightly -- these are all close between the Nets and the Knicks, and they're also all pretty atrocious matchups for both clubs. The Heat don't just outclass both these teams from a talent standpoint, they also match up pretty damn well with both of them. Which leads me to the next question from this set -- salaries and expectations. The Heat are in a really bad salary position two years from now -- it's very likely that both LeBron and Bosh will exercise their early termination options on their contracts and get the last max 4-5 year deal they'll get in their careers. Which means that if the Heat want to get better, they really need to hope they can attract players this offseason and next offseason -- two offseasons from now, even if they resign both LeBron and Bosh, resigning them will make them ineligible for most of the useful exceptions.

The Knicks and the Nets, though? They're in a worse spot. Neither team will have any options whatsoever to really remake their roster in an intelligent way. The weaknesses they show in the next two seasons will be almost impossible to allay, and that's what makes their position especially poor. Neither of these teams, as constructed, can really compete for a title. They're essentially in the same position as the 2009-2012 Atlanta Hawks. Their ceiling is a somewhat entertaining team to be made second-round fodder by Indiana, Miami, or Chicago. That's it. That's their ceiling. And they've put together a roster with absolutely no flexibility or avenues for improvement. They basically just need to hope every single man on the roster makes a quantum leap while their coaches suddenly become the next coming of Popovich. Both of these teams should be entertaining. The Knicks will be a Nash-led offense with a Chandler-backed defense, and that should be good for 4-6 in the east. The Nets have a chance to be one of the best offenses in the league, although their defense will most likely be bottom-10 -- so they'll be 5-8 seed in the east. But do they get better? Do they compete for a title? Not really. And while I eagerly await watching these teams next year, I wonder if mortgaging your future like that is really a good idea on their part.

I don't think so. But you're welcome to disagree.

• • •

QUESTION #11: How awesome would a Kyrie/Harden backcourt be? How much should the Cavs give up to try and get him? from @sstewart1617

It'd be pretty awesome. With Kyrie, Harden could play to his strengths a lot more -- as a cutter, as a spot-up three man, and as a general pressure-salvo to keep the defense honest on the team's star. I've been saying for a while that the Cavs should be trying really hard to trade for Harden. Essentially everything but Kyrie should be on the table -- as much as I love Varejao, he's essentially the perfect trade piece for a deal like this, because he's an underpaid-relative-to-his-production top-6 center with the ability to play PF or C depending on the matchup. He's exactly what the Thunder need. A package of something like Waiters+Varejao+Gee+Thompson for Harden would be a lot to give up for the Cavs, but it's probably what the Thunder would want to make the deal happen. Especially if it happens post-extension. Still. I think the Cavs should have Presti on speed-dial -- a Kyrie/Harden backcourt would be immediately the best backcourt in the league, and if you can manage to keep a semblance of the Cavs' front line, that's a top 4 team in the East with the potential to get even better.

• • •

QUESTION #12: Are offenses actually more efficient when they feature a "true" starting point guard instead of a score-first point guard? from Tim Varner of 48 Minutes of Hell

Tim sent in a bevy of great questions, which will make up our next three. This is the first of them, and it raises a good point. Many commentators get a tad salty when discussing so-called "score-first" point guards -- the conventional wisdom, as most know, is that offenses get significantly better when you're using a "true" or "pure" point guard that defers more than he scores. At least, that's the conventional wisdom. Does it still hold true? To answer this, I'm going to look at the last two years of offenses.

I will name off the 5 "purest" starting point guards in the league in that year according to PPR -- Pure Point Rating, a statistic that measures how pure a point guard is from a passing/turnover perspective -- and how their offense ranked in the league that year. This doesn't necessarily differentiate a scoring point guard from a passing point guard, but in general, the more possessions you use on offense the higher your turnovers are going to be. Thus, this is a decent pastiche for a short back-of-the-envelope analysis. Let's get the table together.

The answer? Not really. Conventional wisdom seems pretty incorrect, here -- in 2011, the offenses helmed by the top five "purest" point guards actually did worse than the rest of the league. In 2012, they did better on average, but that's only because Tony Parker was considered one of the five purest point guards that year due to a dearth of pure point guards -- most would consider tony a scoring point, and if you take the Spurs #1 ranked offense out of that fivesome, once again do the "pure point offenses" lose out to the field. So to answer your question? No. Offenses aren't more efficient when they feature a "true" starting point guard. At least not recently.

• • •

QUESTION #13: How much has Manu Ginobili declined in the last 3 seasons? from Tim Varner of 48 Minutes of Hell

This is pretty easy -- not much at all. Last season, Manu put in one of the most efficient seasons of his career -- he played limited minutes due to the injury woes, but put up per-36 averages of 20-5-7 on percentages close to the god-tier 50-40-90 mark (53-41-87). The season before, Manu played more minutes than he'd ever played before and averaged a per-36 mark of... wait for it... 21-4-6. And the season before that, when he was up for a new contract? Manu put up a per-36 mark of (stop me if you've heard this before)... 21-5-6. Manu's minutes have been fluctuating wildly these last few years as Pop tries to find the best mix between too much and too little, but one thing is certain. There's been no indication of a dropoff or a decline so far, despite the injuries. He's been playing above his career averages and playing his hardest. As he does. Chances are high he can put together at least one or two more seasons where he produces at a best-in-class level for his position, albeit in limited minutes.

• • •

QUESTION #14: Wouldn't the Lakers be better off to trade Kobe Bryant and keep both Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum? from Tim Varner of 48 Minutes of Hell

Sort of a sacrilegious question, but I'll bite. It really depends on the package. While Pau/Bynum is a great big-man pairing, Pau is playing slightly out of position as the big forward and might be better suited to play center going forward. But if a Kobe trade would theoretically bring in a few decent wings, a solid point guard, and a backup big man that can eat some of Pau's minutes? This sort of a trade would probably bring more value to the Lakers in the long run, especially considering that Kobe HAS shown signs of decline these last two years (unlike, funny enough, Manu -- Manu's older than Kobe, but his minutes have been managed better by Pop than by Phil/Brown/Kobe himself, and as a result, he's stayed significantly more efficient than Kobe).

It's unlikely Kobe (or anyone) has a "bounce back" season after the age of 30, so if the Lakers could move him for a big package of young prospects and solid guys, it's probable they'd win the deal. Problem is, Kobe has a no-trade clause and a huge trade kicker (if I remember right). So... no, that wouldn't happen. Even if they could get Kobe to agree to a trade, Kobe wouldn't let them do it if they were leaving another team's cupboard bare. So it really, really isn't going to happen. And even a Pau trade is rather difficult -- Pau is a 31-year-old that's declined quite a bit the last few years, and he has a massive trade kicker that makes him really hard to move. But if the Lakers really want to improve to a title-contending level, that's probably what they're going to need to do.

• • •

QUESTION #15: I did a rough statistical analysis of Kawhi Leonard's rookie season and his actual & per36 #s were very similar to Danny Granger's rookie year, which surprised me a bit. Do you think Granger's production since then is a good expectation for Kawhi going forward? from @ChattJacket20

This is an interesting question. I've thought pretty long and hard about what to expect from Kawhi going forward, and my conclusion was relatively similar -- going forward, I think it's reasonable for Spurs fans to expect Kawhi to eventually evolve into a player something in-between Danny Granger and Gerald Wallace on the offensive end. If he focuses more on developing his offensive creation game and his scoring, he could be a 20 PPG type player -- if he focuses more on developing within the team concept and focusing on his rebounding, he could develop into a Gerald Wallace type. On defense, he'll almost certainly be superior to Danny Granger, and comparable to Crash -- the question is what he choses to focus on out of the scoring/tertiary stat dimension. I think Granger's a good comparable, though it's sort of like one out of a series of 3 or 4 possibilities.

• • •

QUESTION #16: Dwight said he didn't want to play second fiddle to Kobe. If he does get traded to the Nets... is he the 2nd banana or the 3rd banana? from @afa_moritz

Depends on how willing Joe Johnson is to defer. Johnson has been the first option on every team he's been on since Phoenix, and he left Phoenix partly because he wanted to be "that guy." The Hawks rather explicitly showed that he's not. If the Nets were to most efficiently use their pieces, I'd probably have them playing inside-out with Deron playing a sort of high-power Hedo Turkoglu role and Joe Johnson spotting up to play the Rashard role on offense -- with that kind of a setup, they could probably be one of the 4 or 5 best offenses in the league, and Dwight could carry them to becoming a top 10 defensive team. More likely, though, the ball would stay in Deron's hands far too much, Joe Johnson would be their secondary option, and Dwight would be playing off-ball in almost every situation despite being one of the most dominant post options in the league.

I don't think Avery Johnson is a good enough tactician to put together a 2009 Magic-esque offense, even with pieces like that -- more likely see him going the Mike Woodson or Paul Westphal route of scarcely planned offenses that mostly just coast on the talent of their perimeter players. As you might've noticed, I think Dwight might be a bit wasted under Avery. Especially with Joe. We'd have to see, and it's possible the Nets hire a few offensive guys who can figure out a scheme and build a Stan Van Gundy-style offense. But I have a sinking feeling the Nets would be a pretty awful place for Dwight to land, at least in terms of how that team as composed would utilize him. I could be wrong, though. Also, just to point out -- yes, Dwight wants to be the 1st option. If he leaves the Magic, it's unlikely to happen.

• • •

QUESTION #17: How will discovery of the Higgs Boson change the way basketball is played? from @deimachy

For a few years, it won't. But the Spurs will pick it up in a stash pick, and in 5 years, it'll come over from Europe and wreck havoc on the game. Whoops, sorry, just spoiled the end of the next lockout. I think the spoiler alerts mean it's time to wrap this up. Thanks for the great questions, ladies and gents. We'll do this again in a month or two, when the season's a bit closer. Keep chill.

• • •

So, as with last time, there are a few ways to submit questions. First, you could tweet me at @docrostov. Second, you could simply post them on twitter with the hashtag #gothicginobili. Third, you could leave a question in the comments. I'll be answering questions until I decide to make dinner. So ask away, friends.

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There are a few things in sport that are universally understood and respected. Foremost among them is the clarity of a simple win. You score more points than your opponent? You win. They lose. In virtually any sport! No partiality at play, no subsectionality to grapple with -- it's binary, it's Bernoulli, it's beautiful. Sure, there are different types of wins -- distilled to its core, sports analytics is primarily the process of determining probabilities behind the binary outcomes presented to us. It's all about taking binary outcomes and converting them into a continuous scale that allows for more gradation. Which win was a better win? Which pitcher is more than the sum of his direct outcomes? Which team was blessed by luck? Analytics let us answer these questions. They let us find the threads of continuity that underline the binary outcomes we respect and live by as fans. It takes the all-too-simple framework of winners and losers and lets us expand into the types of winners and types of losers. It lets us go deeper.

Smart people use smart analytics and deepen their understanding of the games we watch. That seems self-evident to most of us. But there's a funny element to following sports. As much as we try to look past binary outcomes and analyze on a deeper level, we're still following sports. We're still looking at a world of wins and losses, and that binary thinking is omnipresent in all we assess. And the funny thing is, the idea of wins and losses and the principled understanding of binary outcomes as they relate to sports actively harms our ability as fans to properly assess common scenarios and situations. Take this motivating example. Today, the Houston Rockets traded Chase Budinger to the Minnesota Timberwolves for the #18th pick in the draft. And I propose to you this: neither team lost.

• • •

Absolute steal for the Rockets. The 18th pick in the draft is (historically!) an excellent place to find talent -- in the last five drafts, teams snagged Chris Singleton (promising defensive piece for the Wizards), Eric Bledsoe (the Clippers' 3rd best player on their 2nd best team of all-time), Ty Lawson (one of the preeminent BAMFs in today's NBA), JaVale McGee (planking master), and Marco Bellinelli (extremely sonorous last name, best Marco in the league). What did they have to give up? Not all that much! Chase Budinger is a goofy looking white dude. He plays beach volleyball, but he certainly doesn't play that much basketball for the Rockets. He played a paltry 22 minutes per game last season, and was emphatically behind Chandler Parsons on the Houston depth chart by the end of the year. He was chosen #44 in the draft -- #44! The dude doesn't even make a million dollars. Morey is a brilliant tactician, friends. Look at that. He just flipped the #44 pick in the 2009 NBA draft for the #18 pick in the 2012 NBA draft -- generally agreed to be a deeper draft.

Anyway, moving on. Absolute steal... for Minnesota! The 18th pick isn't really all THAT great. Look at some of the excellent, excellent work Eric Maroun has been doing at Hardwood Paroxysm this week. According to Maroun, "if a team is in the market for a below average to average foreign player or guys that end up playing in Europe once they leave the NBA, the 18th slot is the place to be." Indeed, while the last five years have been decent for the pick, historically this isn't a very great place to be. Lots of Eurostash busts, lots of roleplayers, lots of projects. And you can knock Budinger to hell -- it won't really matter, because the kid's alright. Your draft position is a lot like your college GPA once you get into the real world. Sure, it's an amusing anecdote that some people will (in passing) ask you about. But after you get your rookie scale contract, there's not a GM in the league who gives a crap where you were drafted. What matters is how you have produced, or how you CAN produce.

And in that respect, Budinger is just fine. He will immediately be the best wing player on the Timberwolves. He's coming off a season where he averaged about four three pointers a game, and shot 40% on them -- adding a sharpshooter like that to a team with a talent like Ricky Rubio is going to be fun. He's not great, defensively, but neither are the Timberwolves. And Budinger comes with the nice twist that he's actually decently athletic, and can make a few above-the-rim plays if he gets set up in a good situation. Is he an excellent rebounder? No. But you have Kevin Love and Ricky Rubio -- two of the best rebounders at their positions -- alongside him to take the load off. He's a low-usage spot-up shooter with a defined niche and a few sincerely excellent skills. Yeah, he's funny looking. Yes, he was a 2nd round pick. No, I don't understand why the hell that matters here. He's on one of the most cap-friendly contracts in the league, and his per-36 numbers (15-6-2) would tend to indicate he's a player that will help the Timberwolves work, offensively. Not to mention he's returning to his first coach's wing, as Adelman had two years of watching Budinger. If he supported the trade, I don't really see where you can fault Minnesota for doing it. Nobody is going to know Budinger better than Adelman.

And speaking of which... do the Timberwolves even want another rookie? The Timberwolves sported an average age of 24.4 last season, lower than every team but the Wizards and the Bobcats. Barea and Ridnour are their only players that'll be over 27 this season, and their only core rotation players above 25 will be Pekovic and Milicic. That's it. Budinger isn't exactly a grizzled vet, but he DOES have three years of experience in the league and the experience of playing a relatively decent role for a playoff-caliber team. He'll be 24 next year. The Wolves are filled to the brim with prospects, and at some point, they need to start putting together an actual team. Doesn't it fit that goal to trade a relatively middling-value pick for an established sharpshooter on one of the best contracts in the league whose age and demeanor fit that of their two best players? There's been much talk about how Houston intends to try and move the 18th pick in the draft with their other assets for Dwight. I think that's a pretty excellent idea, and it's great for Houston. But really, it's not like the Timberwolves are in any position to do that. The 18th pick, by that metric, is significantly more valuable to the Rockets than the Timberwolves. And Budinger (who will on day #1 be the best wing player on the Timberwolves) is more valuable to the Timberwolves than the Rockets, who feel Parsons is their future at the wing.

Doesn't this sound mutually beneficial to you? Seriously, am I missing something? Who loses?

• • •

There are bad trades, yes.

Sometimes, a team simply shanks a trade so badly you wonder how any NBA decisionmaker could've possibly approved it. The Salmons trade, the Foye/Miller trade, et cetera. But these are more the exceptions than the rule, much as we try to assert otherwise. More often than not, if you simply step back and examine the various motivations at play, trades simply make sense. Teams trade pieces that don't fit on their own team for a piece that fits better. We don't live in some perfect video game NBA world where teams trade players exogenous of fit, only trying to match the talent of the players. We can spend hours on Twitter arguing about who lost a trade. And far be it from me to pretend I don't do this -- I'm just as guilty as anyone at getting mad at my favorite teams for a trade that doesn't make sense to me immediately.

But it's rather important to realize, as these conversations go, that motivations differ. Value is not, contrary to popular belief, binary. Or even monotonic. Just because a team got the best player in the trade doesn't mean that the other team didn't receive something they valued greatly. After all -- a trade wouldn't have happened otherwise. Both sides have to agree, you know. One can criticize the motivations, and one can analyze the true value of the traded pieces. But realize this: there isn't always a loser. Trades aren't binary games, although we love to analyze them like they are -- they're more akin to ever-changing multi-factor optimization problems, and there's never any one right answer. Lovely, complicated, and wonderful. But different. And while forcing them to fit the same dichotomies we use for workaday analysis of sporting contests and binary thought is easy and simple, more often than not, it simply doesn't work.

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Heartbreak. Noun. A special pain, reserved only for those who care the most.

So blurry, yet so clear. A lawnmower, a mailbox, a white picket fence. A teacup pig, amidst a menagerie of lovable creatures. A kick, a cry, a child. Future, family, friends. Lunches at home, vacations to paris, a wedding. These are things -- previously discussed, dissected, distended -- that flooded my thoughts after the words flashed across the screen. It was a silly time to reflect on that. We'd had about two years to think about those kinds of things. But no longer. She would not vocalize it. She would not say it over the phone, not this time.

"Aaron, I don't think this is going to work long term." We talked. I sniffled. She left.

And things fell apart, as they are wont to do.

• • •

The year was 2009. I sat slumped in my couch. That year's Cleveland Cavaliers -- the greatest basketball team my adopted sporting home had ever seen -- were no longer. LeBron James walked off, refusing to shake the hands of his betters. I agreed with him, and I seethed with righteous fury. I wrote text file after text file comparing him to Jordan. I wrote screeds about why Mike Brown wasn't as bad as people said. And I watched helplessly as an overmatched Magic team was crushed by a Laker team I felt was the equal to my Cavs. Because the Magic -- while they won the series -- were not better. Not to me. They were a team whose three point shooting got incredibly hot. They were a great team -- one now horrendously underrated -- and certainly as good as the Cavs. But not against the Lakers. Not against a team like that, with those weapons and that defense. But the Cavaliers defense, against that Laker offense? LeBron James, guarded only by Trevor Ariza? The series would be close, it would be seven games. But it would be a Cavaliers title. I really believed that. And somewhere, deep inside, I still do.

And don't think the dreams end with the broken heart, they don't. I still had -- and sometimes, in a sick twist of my mind, still have -- dreams. They featured vivid, pulsating dreamscapes of the Q. A crowd so loud your vision gets blurry. The confetti paper -- wine and gold -- falls from the rafters, but the rafters open, and it falls once more from heaven. LeBron and Mo hugging as the confetti fell. Zydrunas Ilgauskas staring up into the rafters and soaking in the roar of the crowd, as Kobe and Bynum looked on. I imagined David Stern, coming out and presenting the trophy -- Mike Brown chortling, the young cad. Ben Wallace, Delonte West, Anderson Varejao. They all pose with the trophy, and LeBron smiles. They take fake pictures with the trophy, as they did when life was fun. They grin and bear it as reporters ask inane, babbling questions. They walk off into the sunset, the team forever marked in history -- years later, when all the players have retired and the game passes them by, the bond remains. A 50 year old LeBron James goes to a team reunion party. They smile, and pour some champagne. It tastes the same as it did then. They talk of their younger days -- the wild ones. They were great, once. They were champions, and nobody will ever take that bond away. But there is a cold sweat in my dream, and my lips are parched. I thirst. And I just wake up.

It's never true. It was not to be. And it never will be.

• • •

The year was 2012. I sat slumped in my couch. That year's San Antonio Spurs -- the team I'd loved more than any team I'd ever had the blessing to follow -- were no longer. The feeling was familiar, the stinging pangs of despair and desolation. And, of course, anger. The one-sided refereeing, the Thunder fan mockery, the constant drumbeat of trolling and vitriol over Twitter -- less than a week after the Spurs brought the entire basketball world to a collective paean to the beauty and wonder of their offensive might, analysts dissected the team. The verdict, as I fumed and steamed and pounded my fist into rocks? "Simply not that good." It can't be that the Thunder -- a great, wonderful team -- had some hot games and got some contributions from their role players I felt were absurd. It's impossible that in a bout between two evenly matched teams, four games of uneven calls could tip the balance. There's no way that the Spurs' defensive problems were mainly magnified by things like Ibaka's perfect night, or that a just-as-poor Thunder defense went on an unprecedented hot streak. Sports is about winning and losing. It is about heroes and villains. The Spurs were the hero, then they were the goat -- they were the losers, so our amateur historians saw fit to bury them amidst the glassy sands on the island of misfit teams.

But these Spurs were my winners. They were my favorite collection of players I've ever followed. They were a beautiful achievement in movement, and a system, and a blossoming of Popovich's incredible ideas into a new and fearsome reality. They dominated the league in a way that no offense-focused team ever seemed to do. They redefined what basketball meant, for a time, and they spent so much of their time teaching and helping people learn about the game. They were my wonder, my steamboat in a bottle. I came home every night for over a month to a new Spurs victory, or accomplishment, or something. I won back my faith in a team -- the 2009 Cavaliers had broken me, and my bittersweet dreams of their brilliance made me wary of every thinking I had a team good enough to win it all. A team that would bring back the feeling of being on top, of watching my favorite players hoist a trophy and celebrate. I resisted for so long, but the belief grew. The belief that there was truth to the Spurs -- truth that was not simply mine. To their style, their gravitas, their accomplishments. I thought there was a truth that would make them show everyone their glory.

It's never truth. It was not to be. And it never will be.

• • •

And then, there's me.

Sports dreams are sports dreams. Life dreams? So, so different. The stakes are higher, the love greater, the investment so much more whole. With a team, you simply dream of happy memories and a public understanding of why you love your team so much. You dream of being a part of a whole, a cog in the giant machine of your favorite teams. But when you dare to dream for new things, for better things, in your life? You are not a part of a whole -- you dream to be whole. To soothe another with your very presence, and come together to create a perfect whole. As I reflect on our relationship, I realize I didn't have that. Not yet. I felt we could, and that it was something we could've done. But it means little now.

The relationship is over. I cried. I panicked. And now, I enter that fugue-like catharsis of regret, and recover. I am young. I am smart. I will survive. In the ruins of my dreams and love will someday rise my better. A better mate, a better man, a better me. But today, I am not that better man. I am feeble. I am weak, and I am sad. I lie awake remembering the dreams I had, not the dreams I've yet to make. And yet to break, too -- this is hardly going to be the first time I rend my heart, or break a dream. I remember the dreams that came before the latest in my assembly line of the old and cracked. I try to piece them together, to make them whole again. I try to take in the hope and wonder I felt at this year's Spurs team. I squint and lie awake and think of the Cavaliers long-past. I think of other girls, the ones I left behind, and I think of the things I can do in the future.

But it all comes back to the horrible truth; what's broken is broken. Gone is gone.

The lone and level sands lie silent in their wake, mocking me. I have the strength to retort no longer.

Heartbreak. Noun. A special pain, reserved only for those who care the most.

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You'd think -- after a game like last night -- I'd be raring to write a piece on Westbrook's enigma of a night. It was marvelous. Twenty field goals for Westbrook -- to put that in context, he made as many baskets as every other player on the Thunder combined. His distribution was crisp, for him. His defense was fine. His thirst was tangible. And then -- on the cusp of defeat, with a 95% probability of a loss -- he extinguishes the last of that 5% with a somewhat silly foul, one that erases the entire rest of his game. In some ways, I agree with Danny Chau's likening of Westbrook's classic to Rondo's incredible game two performance in this year's ECF. In others, I don't -- I actually don't think Rondo's was on the same level as Westbrook's, and the level of cosmic unfairness that permeates the current "well, he gave the game away" talk is vastly above anything Rondo has ever faced.

I'm not, though. These finals are still a sore subject, especially as a fan who feels the Spurs would both match up better with the Heat. I put many of my season-long impressions of the Thunder on hold after the conference finals. I thought they needed quite a bit more in the way of "unsustainable" developments to beat the Spurs than people tend to admit, I still think they absolutely lack a good organizational presence in their coach, and I firmly believe they desperately need a better playbook. After the Western Conference Finals, I thought they'd figured those out -- I put my negativity on hold. Of course, now, all of that stormed back to loom full-form over the proceedings. I still do think they can come back, but my lord -- 3-1 is a tough deficit in the Finals, and winning three straight against this Heat team is going to be a hell of a task. But. Alas. So, instead of writing a full-fledged piece about Westbrook, or Durant, or LeBron? I'll write a piece about possible transactions. The why, the what, the how -- a mini-primer of sorts on two of the popular Thunder trade rumors that have been floating about. Continue the jump.

• • •

The big starting question: the team just won the west, as one of the youngest Finals teams ever. Why would they trade at all?

This answer is on it's face simple, but probably deserves some numbers. So let's table up.

A lot to unpack here, so I'll start with Westbrook. The exact terms of Westbrook's extension haven't been announced -- I guesstimated the terms here, based on the released final number of $80,000,000 over five years. For Harden's extension, I went a bit smaller, guessing that he'd recieve a contract worth about $75,000,000 over five years. I've included four key sections at the bottom -- the total OKC salary they're on the book for if they don't extend Harden and let him walk, the total amount if they extend him for my assumed contract and don't amnesty Perkins, and the picture if they extend Harden but dump Perk (and Ibaka, and Maynor), and finally, what happens if they dump Perk but resign everyone. I also did include qualifying offers in the totals when they existed, because I didn't think it was fair to assume new contracts for all of them.

But I digress. Next season is a really big year for the Thunder. It's the last guaranteed year on the contracts of Serge Ibaka, Eric Maynor, and James Harden. Assuming James Harden gets a market-value contact (and as one of the three best shooting guards in the league, trust me, he will get a market-value contract) this puts the Thunder in a legitimately awful position. Even if you assume that Maynor resigns for a bargain deal at $4-5 million a year (not a totally fair assumption, as he's way better than most people are remembering), Ibaka is going to command at least a $7-10 million dollar contract on the open market, if not more. Which starts to get you into "impossible salary situation" territory.

Don't believe me? Look at the table. Even if they amnesty Perkins and let Cole Aldrich become their starting center, if you add a $10,000,000 salary for Ibaka to their total in 2014, they'll be well over the 2012 Luxury Tax line. And that's with a roster consisting of just ten players. The situation gets worse in 2015, where they'd -- even without Perkins -- be almost $10 million over the 2012 tax line if you add in a $15 million dollar salary for Ibaka/Maynor combined. That total, worse still, would spread across just seven players -- with no extension for Thabo, Collison, or Cook allotted for. And even worse, they'd be locked in to a very hefty repeater tax starting in 2016 -- again, with less than half a full roster.

People talk about the OKC salary situation in a rather flip manner, but they shouldn't. There's no owner in the NBA -- Bennett included -- who can reliably pay the onerous repeater tax as a general rule going forward. It's a very effective dissuasion tool to keep teams from hoarding talent. The Thunder can't -- realistically -- stick with their core long term without letting some pieces go. It's just not possible. And even if it was, the complete and utter lack of flexibility Presti would have to improve the roster is not sustainable as a model for keeping a contender fresh -- especially not when you have a GM as creative and excellent at value trades as Presti is. So, when I started hearing rumors that the Thunder were looking to do some big moves -- even as they played in the finals -- I wasn't surprised. It's simply another extension of Presti being such an excellent manager. He knows this is a problem, he sees it, and he's trying to think of ways to stave it off at the pass and maintain a strong roster around their beacon. Risky? Perhaps. Necessary? Indubitably.

So, I'll discuss two of the oft-mentioned trade ideas: Westbrook for Rondo, and Harden for picks.

• • •

Trading Russell Westbrook for Rajon Rondo

Let's go over one thing that never get mentioned, before we discuss the idea. This trade -- as the mental exercise is presented -- is literally impossible. Not "needs some adjustment" -- impossible. Westbrook recently signed a max extension whose exact terms won't be known until next season, but we can make a few guesses. He'll be paid somewhere in the range of 14-16 million in 2013. In that year, Rondo will make 11 million dollars. Due to trade rules, the only way that Boston could put together matching salary (and both are luxury teams, so they do need to match) would be to add JaJuan Johnson AND Avery Bradley or Greg Stiemsma to the trade. That's a markedly different trade than a simple swap, and changes the complexion of the argument.

Still, if a straight swap was possible, I'm going to go a bit against the grain. I actually think a straight swap -- Russell for Rondo -- would be a relatively awful move for Oklahoma City to make. First off, there's the finances. Rondo makes less than Westbrook, but it's about three million a year. That's really not enough of a gap to matter when you're almost $15 million over the cap. And if the Thunder had to take back tertiary pieces, as they would, the financial impact is nil. If the main reason you'd want to make a trade is to free up space and gain more flexibility, it makes absolutely no sense to deal with other contenders. You have to take back salary if you do that. You simply can't straight drop salary. And in that sense, the Thunder with Rondo instead of Westbrook solve absolutely none of the problems outlined above. They'll still have to drop two of Ibaka, Maynor, and Harden if they want to be an affordable team.

Most importantly, though, is the matter of fit. People get on Westbrook's case all the time because he "doesn't distribute" effectively. I've got to challenge this. Westbrook's problem isn't necessarily that he distributes poorly. He isn't phenomenal, but he's still among the best at getting the ball to guys who get open, and according to one liberal definition of hockey assists, he's actually the best at the league in personally setting up plays that result in scores. He has a lot of flaws as a passer, that's true. He can't pass while stationary. He can't magically get the ball through two or three defenders -- he's no Manu, or Nash, or Rondo. However, I'd challenge that in Westbrook's place, virtually nobody in the league could average more than 6 or 7 assists per game. Why, you might ask? Simple. The Thunder -- to a man -- are absolutely terrible at getting open. Atrocious at it. Watch their off-ball movement. Stagnant, aimless, very little institutional knowledge of where they need to be to collect the pass. People blame Westbrook for not getting Durant the ball, and yes, Westbrook occasionally misses an opportunity or two. But so does everyone. The difference -- and the reason Westbrook's assists are so low and his passes so rare -- is that the Thunder simply don't have plays that get guys properly open. Westbrook drives the defense and forces it to react, then hopes that in the reaction they leave some passing angle open. If not? He shoots it.

If Rondo was in Westbrook's position, you suddenly lose the stopgap "chuck the ball up and hope it goes in" plays that Oklahoma City's offense depends on. And don't underrate it -- the Thunder were essentially in a tie for the best offense in the league this year. Boston was the 27th best team in the league in offensive rating, tied with #25 and #26. Worse than the dysfunctional Nets, Kings, and Bucks. Boston is a fantastic defense, but point guard is the least important position on the court, defensively. Can we really expect OKC's defense to improve enough with a Rondo-Westbrook swap to offset the removal of their guaranteed 2nd option on every possession? Can we expect OKC's supporting cast to suddenly learn how to get open if Westbrook leaves the team? I like Rondo. He's a unique enigma of a player that would make almost any team in the league a bit better. The Thunder, though? Don't see it. And the difference in salary simply isn't worth it.

• • •

Trading James Harden for picks (#2 + Henderson from CHA, or #4 + #24 + #33 from CLE)

This, on the other hand? Would be smart from the Thunder's perspective, I think.

Let's not beat around the bush. Yes, this is a short-term downgrade. In 2013, the Thunder would be worse -- under this scenario, they're essentially giving up their all-star caliber third man for a completely unproven high lottery pick and (in the Charlotte case) an underrated defensive bench guy or (in the Cleveland case) several low lottery picks. On the other hand, though, it would instantly clean up their books going forward -- it would allow them to not only keep Maynor and Ibaka, but probably keep Collison and Sefalosha as well. Add the Perkins amnesty, and it's possible they could be a player for some free agents in the summer of 2013, if they decide to let Ibaka walk. The move would adds a huge x-factor to the Thunder's core. It has the potential to take what looks like a highly expensive, CBA-ravaged contender and turn it into a perennial factor, on a relatively reasonable budget.

Who would they take? Good question. I've heard a lot of different ideas. Perhaps they'd take Bradley Beal, and simply slot Beal into Harden's spot and see if they can play the same role. They could go defense over offense and take Michael Kidd Gilchrist, developing him to play a Kawhi Leonard type role in their system going forward. They could go big and take Thomas Robinson, from Kansas, hoping that a Robinson-KD or a Robinson-Ibaka frontcourt can work defensively. They could also take one of the really big risks -- they could shoot for the moon with Andre Drummond, knowing that if he busts they've still got enough of a core to contend but if he doesn't they've essentially got an all-time great team. One of the nice things about this draft is that you can, if you're a team with pieces like the Thunder, talk yourself into almost any permutation as one that could theoretically work.

Again, it would be a risk. I like Harden to continue improving going forward, and I feel like this is a risky move. But is it really riskier than resigning Harden and becoming the 2nd incarnation of the Miami Heat, completely dependent on three players with no room for error on your supporting cast? I don't really think so. And that's why -- although it sounded silly when first announced -- I think this might be something Presti is actually considering. And when you say "why would he think about it now! THEY'RE IN THE FINALS!" I'd beg you to slow down -- the season's compression and the general lateness of everything means that the time between the finals and the draft is compressed as well. In fact, last year's finals game six happened a year and a week ago. If the finals go six or seven, the draft will occur less than a week after the last game of the finals. If you're a GM, you need time to put a deal like this together -- yes, he'd be thinking about it now. It's his job, you know?

• • •

Sorry for the somewhat sparse content lately. Trust me when I say that starting in about two weeks, we will be making it up in spades -- we have a simply ridiculous amount of offseason content slated for publication. It's absurd. Watch out for that. Also: watch out for a piece tomorrow, either something from me on the moment where I stopped hating LeBron or something from Alex on... secrets. Stay frosty, friends.

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This post has virtually nothing to do with basketball. Fair warning.

I grew up exclusively in the southwest, but that's the past. Now I break bread in the east. Come college, I was eastward bound to Duke University -- when it came time to move to the professional sphere, my own pinecone didn't fall all that far from my alma mater. I work in Virginia now. I have a week of training this week. Not terribly relevant training to my job, but required and necessary. So last night, I took the long drive to Washington D.C. And, as I try to do once or twice a week, I called my dad up. It was late on the east coast -- I'd actually timed the drive so that I'd miss most of last night's finals game, because I'm not quite over the Western Conference Finals and it's still hard to watch these two teams. But dad's still in the southwest. So I grabbed the phone, dialed the number, and gave him a ring.

Last Monday, I was able to have dinner with my dad -- he had a meeting in D.C., and I had a conference in D.C. It was surprising for both of us -- despite everything, we were able to have a nice father's day dinner. A bit early, but still -- when you live thousands of miles away, you take your blessings where you find them. Most of what we talked about was current events, on Monday -- the situation in Syria, the presidential race, interesting medical breakthroughs, etc. Perhaps because we'd stuck to current events on Monday, we still had a bunch to talk about on last night's Father's Day drive, as the night air whipped past and the traffic morphed from the open Virginia drift to the dismal crush of the District's fare. We talked about his new projects for his company, his magazine, and his politics. We talked about my cousin's upcoming wedding, a little, and I surprised him by revealing I'd be home in Arizona for a week in July. Average stuff. Then, kind of out of nowhere, we talked about being an editor, and the mechanisms of writing. And for me, the memories spun.

• • •

A bit of context, given to me by a boisterous AM Radio announcer before my dad and I started talking. On Yahoo! Sports Radio last night, the host was asking listeners to call in and tell him how important his listeners' dads' rooting allegiances are to the sports teams they love. "Did you root for your dad's team? How did your dad's sports fandom impact your own? How did your dad instill in you a love of sport?" This all really amused me, because of the odd roots of my own sports fandom, and the inherent assumption that one's father was "responsible" for one's sports fandom as a general rule. For me, the answers to those questions are: nope, not at all, and... well, he didn't. Why? Because my dad really, really doesn't like sports.

I never met my father's father, but I heard some things secondhand. His father was demanding and insistent about sports in his youth, ordering that he try out for his high school teams and try to play sports he had no desire or interest in playing. He was constantly compared to his older brother -- a football star -- in a critical manner. He commentated sports games, a bit, when he worked in radio and TV. But he simply wasn't a big sports guy, he didn't much enjoy the games, and he never really developed strong rooting interests. Perhaps that, in some ways, was a reaction to his own father's insistence on sport in general. But my father made explicit attempts to not do the things his father did. He neither demanded I participate in sports nor demanded I avoid them. He didn't push me one way or the other on a team to root for. He -- in short -- was as agnostic as a man could be on the subject of sport, and prescribed me no specifics. He let me pick my own path.

• • •

What's important, though, isn't what he didn't like. The story of how I became a sports fan is for another time. The real story, and the reason I felt I needed to write this, was more a lesson on how a father can teach without enjoying or understanding the thing the student wants to learn. On the drive, we had a long discussion about being an editor. My dad -- for the first time in his career -- is editing a publication. He's the editor of the newly established CardioSource World News, and with that, experiencing all the wonderful management boondoggles that being an editor entails. For once, I feel like I have a bit of experience in something that's a slight bit new to my dad -- in college, I was the art editor of a publication, and for the last eight months I've been (obviously) the editor here, at the Gothic.

We discussed some of the mechanisms of writing, and editing. Not just writing itself, but managing writing. As an example, there's a new writer we're thinking about bringing on here. I really like his work, but as with all writing, I feel like it's some work that'll take some juggling -- just as Alex and I have to do with our own work, it's extremely important to make sure that your writers and your staff are put in positions to succeed. If you have a writer who's great at subjective, philosophical pieces, don't force them to write comedy pieces. If you have a writer who excels if you give him room to think, don't breathe down their neck and bug them for pieces every week or two. If you have an author writing articles that don't have an audience, edit it brutally and try to teach the writer how to aim the rifle.

So I talked a bit about our prospective new writer, and the things I was planning on doing to make sure we put him in a position to succeed. I talked about mistakes I'd made (and continue to make), and shared some funny stories -- my dad shared the time he was so tired he wrote a piece twice, I shared the time Alex wrote a 4000 word piece that I split into two pieces ... which Alex then turned into TWO 4000 word pieces (!!!), et cetera. Funny stories all-around. And we talked about the difficulty of handing over prized ideas to your writers, and how things that sound so easy -- writing to an audience, writing things people want to read, making sure your writers are writing things that really fit their skillsets -- are all actually really hard things to juggle in practice. Dad was a natural at it all, obviously. He likes talking about the gears and cogs that underlie the clockwork precision of the best writing -- he likes the process and the journey almost as much as he likes the destination.

And as I hung up and reflected on the conversation, I realized that despite his lack of experience in the management side of being an editor, it should've been obvious to me from the start that he'd be an old hand at the entire process. Because my dad -- in a way -- has been an editor all his life. He always has been -- and though to a lesser degree as I get older, always will be -- the editor of my life. Just as it's important for me to make sure I'm putting our writers in positions where they can kill it, night-in and night-out, my dad spent my formative years making sure I was always in a position to succeed. He gave me the opportunity to build my skills, even if the places I was building my skills had almost nothing to do with his personal talents -- as a cameraman, as an artist, as a mathematician. He's a professional writer -- I'm a professional statistician. He's a sports agnostic -- I'm a die-hard fan. He writes medical presentations -- I write sports pieces, and things of a lighter breed.

We're different in so many ways. But even though he doesn't quite "get" the things I write (whether on sports or mathematics), or the things I work on all the time, it was his hands-off approach (with a small push to follow my interests) that prepared me so well for the trials and learnings of my adulthood. It was his ability to instill in me a love of the process, and a love of getting it right. It's his ability to teach me to self-edit, and to trust my own abilities as far as I can throw them. I still edit everything I write 4 or 5 times before I publish it. I love the process behind making a piece so much more than just plopping it down, and in developing my understanding of what makes the journey valuable, my dad set me up to be in a place I could never have reached without the frame of mind and the love of life he so strongly instilled in me.

My dad is a great editor precisely because he's spent the last 40 years "editing" his own life, the last 21 "editing" mine, and the last 16 "editing" my brother's. My father -- whether he considers himself it or not -- is the greatest editor I've ever known. This is pretty impressive, given that his first official position as an editor came less than 6 months ago. But -- to any of the people he's touched -- it's really not surprising. And as I reflected on his life and my life (along with the interactions thereof), I realized how lucky I was to have a man like him to look up to. It was yet another reminder of just how blessed I've been in my life.

• • •

I have some trainings this week, hence my drive. I'll learn about d-optimal experiment designs and some newfangled interfacing of SAS and SQL processing. None of these are things that my father cares for, or would find value in -- at least personally. He's a writer, after all. But the lessons of my father aren't simply constrained to the things he found interesting or the things that are relevant to him alone. They're constrained to the way I look at the world, and how he inspired me to focus as much on the process as he does. No, today isn't father's day. Maybe this post would've fit better there. But I don't think it really matters. Because father's day or not, there's no such thing as a "bad" day to appreciate what you've been blessed with.

Here's looking at you, pops.

For poignant appreciation of another great father, check out David Malki!'s incredible late-aughts essay on his father's love of flight. It's by far the best thing you'll read all day.

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There's a sick twist to those in sports offered to those who enjoy constant, unending success. At Tiger's peak, one began to find themselves more compelled when he lost than when he won. Usain Bolt wins track championships every year -- the last time I saw him on the front page of ESPN was this shocking loss. Every medal Michael Phelps loses this year will only make him more compelling. When the 2011 University of Connecticut Women's Basketball team lost its first game in 90, it was national news. It's an interesting wrinkle to a legacy of consistent success. At some point, you actually invert the properties of selection bias. When you miss nearly every shot you take in a game, your makes are that much more memorable. When you make nearly every shot you take in a game, your misses are that much more memorable. Just ask Skip Bayless. And on that note, like clockwork, it's another LeBron post!

• • •

LeBron James recently got quite a bit of flak for saying that he and Dwyane Wade probably needed more rest. This led to a lot of outrage, on Twitter and in isolated columns. On The Basketball Jones, for instance, Tas Melas made a strong point that as the best defensive player on the Heat, it's LeBron's absolute responsibility to guard Kevin Durant for the majority of the game. Many made a lot of a fuss over the point that Kevin Durant and LeBron James played the exact same number of minutes. LeBron didn't "look" tired. He was shirking his responsibilities as a defensive player, one could say. And, after all -- he looked fine last night, exhaustion wise. Even though he was lagging defensively and didn't have his legs under him on most of his 4th quarter jumpers. As you may have gathered from my somewhat snippy tone, I disagree with this typecasting. Quite a lot.

Let's go over some numbers.

• In the past 20 years, 118 players have averaged 41 MPG or more in an 8+ game playoff run. LeBron accounts for 7 of those 118 -- that's every single playoff run of his career. Nobody else has more than 5 -- in that period, Jordan and Kobe tie for 5 seasons averaging 41+ MPG in the playoffs, with Jordan having 5 runs in 6 playoff runs with > 8 games and Kobe having 5 runs in 13 such playoff runs.

• In the duration of LeBron's playoff career -- 2006 to 2012 -- there have been 414 playoff games where a player has played over 45 minutes in a single playoff game. LeBron accounts for 45 of those -- 11% of all games. Nobody is anywhere close to this number. Kobe has 14 -- he's in second place.

• Overall, LeBron has played 4862 minutes in the playoffs over the course of his career, in 112 games. This makes him 41st all-time in playoff minutes. That sounds reasonable, until you realize that he got those minutes in fewer games than anybody above him on the list. He's 5th all-time in career playoff minutes per game, in a virtual tie with the 70s Bulls' Bob Love and right below Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, and Allen Iverson.

The takeaway here is relatively simple. LeBron James -- whether the commentariat wants to admit it or not -- has throughout his playoff career undergone a completely unprecedented minutes load for a superstar to play in the modern era. Take whatever stat you want. He's played more than double the number of fringe outlier games with three or fewer minutes of rest in the playoffs than any other player. Every single LeBron playoff run appears in the top 100 for average MPG in the last two decades. He's 5th all-time in career playoff MPG -- and that in and of itself is something of an accomplishment, as in the top 30, only 6 are active players. The game was different when Wilt and Russell averaged 46+ career MPG in the playoffs. The league was less athletic, the toll on the body was less, and the spotlight wasn't nearly as high. What LeBron has done throughout his entire career in regards to his minutes remains absolutely bonkers, and one of the craziest underreported NBA stories of the modern era.

• • •

The underreporting of a rather amazing story also leads to some -- frankly -- incredible cognitive dissonance on our parts. We tear LeBron to shreds for 3 or 4 minute lags in a game where he's playing more minutes than virtually anyone on the court. Who's to say that Kobe, Wade, or Melo wouldn't have the same sort of offensive lag if they consistently played this kind of a load? We isolate LeBron for biting criticism because he didn't take on the hardest defensive assignment in every minute he's on the floor, even though he's defending positions 1-through-5 at various points in the game at an incredible rate. I'm not quite as high on his overall defensive quality as most commentators, and in fact, I do think he spent most of this year taking occasional possessions off at a 2009 Kobe-esque rate on the defensive end. But his defensive versatility can't be argued, and it can't be ignored that he gives you more raw minutes of consistent all-defensive team stops than any other prime defender in the game.

It's much like the way Stockton inserted himself into the most valuable point guard of all time discussion -- at some point, if you put together enough all-star caliber years, you've made yourself an all-time great without a single transcendent season. If your franchise drafted Stockton, you've drafted a full 20 years of all-star point guard play and an impossibly strong building block. Is that more valuable than, say, Mark Price -- a player who (for my money) had a better peak than Stockton but only could give his teams about 7 years of prime brilliance? Most would say yes. In a similar sense, LeBron plays so many minutes that at some point you have to give it to him. His defensive performance -- while not in-the-moment as good as Iguodala, Allen, or Bradley -- wins in value due to the sheer quantity of his stops. LeBron is the most valuable perimeter defender in the game not because he's the BEST defender, but because his minutes force him to play so many guys and his versatility allows him to cover so many players that he's able to transcend the small gap in quality through sheer persistence.

But the problem with this is that, as with the examples I began the post with, it makes his flaws all-the-more obvious when he does find himself exhausted. His brilliant defense in the first half of games and his brilliant offensive command of his team will inevitably fade for stretches. Usually these are just a few minutes, but because he spends so much of the game playing at a level we're not used to seeing ANYONE play at, his moments of weakness and exhaustion stand out all that much more than his consistently solid play. With most writers ignoring his minutes load, or rationalizing it (incorrectly) as something that "everyone" does or that something a physical freak like LeBron "should" be able to do, the broader story -- that LeBron individually gives more minutes and production to his team than any superstar since Jordan -- gets lost amidst the mockery over his poor fourth quarters or his "passive" refusal to guard the best scorer in the game. On the offensive end, LeBron uses 34% of the Heat's possessions, and usually plays a key role in the ones he doesn't directly use. On the defensive end, LeBron and Wade are responsible for a defensive scheme that forces them to cover multiple players and stay active.

I'm having trouble thinking of more than 1 or 2 guys who ever had to do in their careers what LeBron is being asked to do every night. Duncan and Olajuwon come to mind. Dirk last year comes to mind, until you consider the defense and contextualize the minimal role Dirk had in the Dallas Defense. Iverson played a similar minutes load, but his defensive responsibilities were barely a thing that existed. Deng plays a similar minutes load as well, but his role on offense is MARKEDLY less than LeBron's, and honestly, I see far more articles highlighting Deng's absurd minutes than I do those outlining LeBron's. Why? Partly because of the star bias -- we remember the minutes star players are on the court more than the ones they aren't, and as thus, we mentally assume that most stars play the same amount. We don't have the collective mental faculties to contextualize the big differentiators between LeBron and other stars, in terms of minutes -- it's the same reason that even when a statistician watches every game they can get their hands on, they still like seeing the stats to see what they missed.

And you know what? This all makes me a bit aggravated. I'll definitely be writing a different post on the matter later next week, but I don't want to beat around the bush -- I have Cleveland roots, and I have absolutely seethed with distaste for LeBron James for the last two years. I can't stand the stupid "get over it" crowd, those who are quick to whine that Cavs fans are too judgmental and mean to LeBron. Absolutely can't stand them. But at this point, I find that I ALSO can't stand completely baseless criticisms of one of the greatest talents in the history of the league. I can't stand the fact that fans and the media have decided to completely ignore fatigue as a real factor, and I can't stand that LeBron is being held to a standard that nobody else has ever been held to in the history of the sport. This overarching conversation has had an effect on me that I never, ever expected would happen. It's made a lifetime advocate of the Cleveland Cavaliers -- a person who (still) can't really stand LeBron James and probably never will -- actually a bit sympathetic to the plight of a millionaire who soullessly ripped out the hearts of his fellow fans on national television. That's ridiculous. The narrative has officially divorced from reality entirely.

And as an NBA fan? Whether I like LeBron or not (and I certainly don't), I hate it. Absolutely positively hate it.

• • •

I know a lot of people want to hear what I think about the Spurs series. I'll tell you what kind of a day I had, after my favorite Spurs team ever lost a series I'm still not over. I woke up and called my boss. "DNP-SAD" was my diagnosis. Sat in bed feeling low. Ate a few strawberries. Made my girlfriend lunch. Got up and went to work for a half-day, and did a dang good job because I'm pretty OK at my job. I went to the store. I saw a kid with a Lakers hat. My stomach turned. I cursed. I went home. I played Diablo 3. I got a sandwich, I watched the subject of this post put up a great performance that reminded me of better times in Cleveland, and I went the hell to sleep. So, yeah. I'll write it. Eventually. But not while the wound is fresh. Not now. When it's something like this, recovery doesn't mean forgetting, it means remembering. And there's a lot to remember, for me. So that's that. For now.

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After Friday's Celtics-Heat thriller, a lot of print was inked about the Celtics' offense. This was reasonable to me. After all, it was the 7th game the Celtics had played against the Heat this season, and the Celtics had done a remarkably good job on offense against the Heat. In seven games, the Celtics posted offensive ratings of 104, 101, 129, 86, 96, 119, and 116. For a team who averages an offensive rating of 100, that's above average for all but the last game of the regular season and the first game of the Eastern Conference Finals. Normally this wouldn't be all that weird -- after all, teams have irrationally good offensive performances against certain opponents all the time, right? True.

Except that the Heat are the 4th best defense in the league, and the Celtics the 27th worst offense. If the Celtics averaged what they average against the Heat -- again, the 4th best defense -- they'd average an offensive rating of 107 over the full season. That would be the 5th best offense in the league. And the sample size is now 8 games -- so small sample size is no longer a reasonable excuse. THAT'S absurd, and I understand why that was the story. However, as an avid reader of NBA Playbook and the like, I'd like to direct your attention to an unheralded factor in the Celtics’ Game 3 win last Friday: the absolute clinic the Celtics put on defending foul shots.

• • •

Here, we will start at the first free throw I noticed the Boston defense straight up shut down. We'll go frame by frame.

LeBron takes the free throw after a rushed, hurried dribble -- he throws his hands up, as if to say "Hark! Foul! Hark, I was fouled!" Why? Look behind him. Ray Allen, showing why he's still a force to be reckoned with on defense. Bone spurs or not, few in the league provide the threat of a chase down free throw block as well as Ray Allen (5.3% of attempted free throws while Allen is on the perimeter result in blocks, according to Synergy, second only to Mo Williams at 9.0%). Look at LeBron's right foot, separating ever so slightly from the ground. He hears the booming footsteps behind him. He's been there before. He knows what's coming -- Ray Allen, the free throw chase down specialist strikes again.

Unfortunately, Ray is unable to complete the block on this play. But as Bill Russell reminds us: "The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot." Sure enough, LeBron's arc is distorted by Allen's phantom presence. In fact, Ray was relatively busy on this play, as we can hear from the baseline microphone.

"Heh, looks like I evaded your block, old man."

"Watch carefully. I slathered the rim with WD-40 while you weren't looking."

"But... wouldn't that mean it'd slide through like butter?"

"Aw, shucks."

"Heh, you have much to learn about free throw defense, LeChoke Shames."

The force of the raw, veteran savvy-laced insult throws LeBron off balance, almost as though there's a boxer's push. If it weren't for that unsightly (but heavy) beard LeBron's been growing, as you can clearly see in this freeze frame, LeBron would've not only missed the free throw but quite literally fallen over.

Ray Allen's clutch defensive play here deserves a ton of credit. Most work-a-day analysts think that your one-on-one defense ends when the shot is taken, but they're wrong. Real defenders know that your defense ends when the player goes to sleep at night sobbing because your insults and petty criticisms have rocked their self confidence to its core. Ray Allen knows this. And let's not dispute how thoroughly this changed the game. After this free throw, LeBron James went 0-4 on all four free throws he missed. Ray Allen: game changer.

Here's the play in real time.

• • •

We will move on now to a late game free throw, where the brilliance of the team free throw defense overwhelmed me.

Seems pretty average, right? Look to the right of Chalmers. There's Ray Allen, but he's not going to hog all the credit. Ray isn't rushing for the chase-down free throw block this time. It's up to his teammates to stifle this one with some expert team-ball defense. Let's see what they do.

Look at Paul Pierce's hand, where he signals the play, and KG's silent nod of approval. If they weren't communicating with each other telepathically (like a team, because teams do this), here's what they'd be saying:

"I've scouted his free throw form, Kevin. He's going to try a double three-sixty whoop-foul hang time feet set shot with a strong follow through and a smile for the camera. He learned that one at Kansas."

"Gotcha, Paul. I'll channel my anger into an invisible floating brick. It will float in the middle of the hoops on both ends of the court, for the sake of completion, and ensure his free throw bounces the HELL out of that hoop."

"Man, it's pretty cool being a team who knows Free Throw Defense."

"Yeah, and telepathy is pretty cool too."

"Is the brick engaged?"

"AUGUHUGUGUGHUFGUGUHHUGUFIFHU--"

"I can always count on you, Kevin."

We see that Doc Rivers has gotten his team to buy in to their team defensive schemes with a remarkable focus and tenacity. Ostensibly their team culture of "Ubuntu" -- a Swedish word for liver and onions -- saves the day once again. Mario bricks the free throw, Pierce gets the rebound, and the game is saved.

Here's the play in real time.

• • •

Using the powers of my spectra-phantasm screenscanning technology, I was able to achieve insight into how Doc Rivers defends free throws. Unbeknownst to us watching the national telecast, Doc Rivers hangs a gigantic obscuring set of large semi-transparent letters in front of players taking free throws. They say "Demo Mode" on them, which is really quite clever -- mode is an anagram of demo, which shows how the Celtics can challenge the free throw from either side of the court, right or left. Nice one, Doc. Though, call me a purist, but the practice of hanging giant floating semitransparent letters to block free throw shooters seems slightly illegal to me. Still substantially less illegal than poisoning the opposing locker room's water supply, though. So I suppose as an organization the Celtics are making some progress. By the year 2050, they'll be down to jaywalking!

It's also worth mentioning that this is -- realistically -- where Boston's defense makes its bread. Seriously. On missed free throws, Celtics opponents score 0.00 PPP, a number far and away better than any other sort of defense the Celtics (or anyone else in the league) can throw at a team. Indeed, in Game 4 we saw Miami completely going away from the free throw strategy to start the game.

NBA officials, to a man, are unbelievably corrupt and furiously angry at Boston, consistently calling the Celtics for fouls that they could not have possibly been responsible for (Source: Tommy Heinsohn). But Boston's free throw defense completely neutralizes this disparity, and if the Boston Celtics can continue shutting down the Heat's unguarded foul shots, we'll have to add a new catchphrase to the well-worn list of basketball tropes. Defense wins championships, keep the ball moving, make the extra pass, and now... against these Celtics? "There's no such thing as a 'free' throw."

Goodnight everybody.

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This is part of a two-part series. For observations on the Spurs and the Thunder's specific matchup, see 48 Minutes of Hell.

As one of my questions in Monday's Statistical Q&A, I fielded a question from the imitable Tim Varner of 48 Minutes of Hell. His query was whether the Spurs stand to gain in OKC smallball lineups by pushing the pace and playing fast. In short? Yes. I covered that today in detail at 48 Minutes of Hell, but there's a lot of interesting tidbits to be had in this table, enough so that I felt a separate post was necessary analyzing the trends and tendencies of the non-Spurs teams. To examine, I've produced this table that shows the W/L record, the offensive and defensive efficiencies, the eFG%, the efficiency differential, and the free throw rates of our four remaining teams in four distinct buckets of possessions. First bucket includes all games with under 91 possessions; the second includes 91-95; the third is 95-100; and the fourth and final bucket includes super-fast games with over 100 possessions. These are roughly quartiles of possessions. I placed in red a team's "worst" pace and in green a team's best.

Looking at this table, some interesting takeaways after the jump.

• • •

• BOSTON: Bet you didn't expect this, huh? Out of all the paces the Celtics play at, one stands above all others as the absolute worst they could possibly play at. I refer, of course, to... an absurdly slow game? The Celtics force the pace low by Doc Rivers' own desires -- in the Big Three era, he has always preached a defensive-oriented strategy of keeping as few possessions as possible. This season, though, the Celtics have been bloody awful when they play their slowest. When they have under 91 possessions in a game, the Celtics have a losing record (12-15), a defensive rating WELL above their season average, allow teams to shoot almost 50% from the field, and barely ever draw fouls. On the other hand, when they play to a league-average pace, they're a really excellent team -- a +9 differential, fantastic defense, and a sparkling 16-4 record. Had you shown me Boston's numbers before I did this exercise, I wouldn't have believed it. But it's true. When the Celtics play super-slow, they're a terrible team. Doc Rivers may deserve a bit of blame -- no other team is more inefficient at forcing the tempo that suits the team best, and to some extent, that's on his game plan. Not a full extent, but certainly to some.

• MIAMI: Little rhyme or reason to the Heat's numbers, though some funny stuff here. They average a differential of +7.1 in games with over 100 possessions, but somehow managed to go 5-4 on those games in the regular season. Which means they won those 5 games by over double the margin they lost by. Absolutely silly. Overall, the Miami defense actually gets a bit better as the pace goes up -- their real problems come on the offensive end. I take back my first statement. This actually makes a lot of sense to me. As a team highly reliant on two players, it stands to reason that there is some sort of upper limit on the number of possessions LeBron and Wade can use up in a single game. The more possessions the Heat use, the more likely that one of those extra possessions is something useless, like a Joel Anthony layup or another bricked Battier three. Thus, their offense gets a bit less efficient as the possessions rack up and they're forced to burn more possessions on their atrocious bench. As a mathematical example, assume LeBron a usage rate of 33%. In a 90 possession game, that's 30 possessions -- in a 100 possession game 33. That means that Non-LeBron players used 60 possessions in the 90 game and 67 possessions in the 100 game. What this means, big picture, is that even if the ratio is the same there are more possessions spent on players you know can't really give you much. In simplified terms... how easy is it for two players to have 50-60 out of 80 points in a slow paced game compared to 70-80 points out of 110 in a fast paced game? It takes more effort, and it takes an increase in a player's usage above and beyond simple extrapolation.

• OKLAHOMA CITY: To hearken back to economics, the Thunder are in an odd position of not really having big marginal advantages over anyone in any one area, despite a lot of strengths when averaged across buckets. Their only real weakness is that they simply can't play slow-down, knock out ball the way a team like Miami can -- indeed, the Thunder actually were better than the Spurs at super-slow games, and far better than the Celtics. But against the Heat, that relative strength becomes a massive boondoggle. The, conversely, the Thunder are well above average at a faster-paced game... but still significantly worse than either the Heat or the Spurs! The only decisive advantage the Thunder really have in terms of pace is to play a very normal, league-average 91-95 possessions. My theory is that the Thunder defense gradually breaks down as the game gets faster, but the offense (isolation based and transition-heavy as it already is) doesn't have a second gear that allows it to become more efficient in a fast-paced setting. It's worth noting that the Thunder are fantastic at the league-average play, and in today's 48 Minutes of Hell post, I covered how the Thunder need to get back to their game and a league-average halfcourt pace if they want to get back into the series. I reiterate that here.

• SAN ANTONIO: This is much like my statement in the Q&A, and by far the simplest relationship. As the Spurs get slower, the Spurs get worse. As the Spurs get faster, the Spurs get unbeatable, improving on both the defensive end AND the offensive end. They also shoot better, which speaks to Chip Engelland's yeoman's work in ensuring the Spurs maintain proper form on quick, set shots and the Spurs added efficiency when they force a transition-heavy, D'Antoni style of play. I discussed this a bit at 48 Minutes of Hell, so I won't belabor the point. But really: the Spurs are great when they play fast, and more than any other team left, they're the best at dictating the tempo and forcing teams to play fast. A deadly combination, that.

Long story short, I just mathematically proved why I don't want to watch the Heat-Celtics series! Therefore, I'm going to sleep through it. You know how I do. If that offends you as a reader, then I suggest that you link to YOUR mathematical proof in the comments. I promise I will read it and review it, and perhaps rethink my stance.

... Nah, probably not.

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