As advertised in our Prognosti-ranking series, we’re bringing our formerly retired series of daily vignettes — titled “The Outlet” — back for the playoffs. “Don’t call it a comeback.” Though, you can call it series 2, as we are in the title. Every day (or, rather, every day we aren't doing a larger and grander piece), we’ll try to share two or three short vignettes from our collective of writers ruminating on the previous day’s events. In this case, the previous few days. Should be a fun time. Today’s Outlet covers the depressing blowout of the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday as well as JaVale McGee's brilliant game against the Lakers on Friday.

• "Only at Nightfall: a Dirge for the Dallas Mavericks." by Alex Dewey.
• "JaVale McGee and the Imagination of the Imperfect." by Aaron McGuire.

Click the jump for the two pieces.

• • •

Only at Nightfall: a Dirge for the Dallas Mavericks

Alex Dewey

Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
--T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Last night their room-temperature pagoda of the Mavericks' weird, asymptotically aging superstars had its paper walls defaced and torn and its foundations set to flame. What remained was a distinctly depressing funeral pyre.

It wasn't sudden. The walls had bent and the supports had splintered before the walls fell totally. They tried, yes, but during the season, you could see the utter dependence of their offense on Dirk. Rick Carlisle lacked Barea or a functioning Odom or Chandler to go to, so the easy baskets, the garbage baskets, the restful baskets, were simply missing most nights. Their backcourt of Delonte and Beaubois and Terry and Kidd and Carter sounded great (all players you can respect if not necessarily love), but take energy, consistency, defense, and pick at most two for each player, and consider that you can only have two players or so at a time from the five. Yeah.

So the Mavs had a very good backcourt that nevertheless left a burden to the frontcourt (a burden of both energy and play-making). And unlike last season, the frontcourt couldn't deliver. Despite having legitimately fine personnel, the Mavericks found that without the dominant interior presence of the DPoY, their otherwise stout defense couldn't handle an all-out assault by a team like the Thunder with three penetrators with range and a physical frontcourt that wears you out, if nothing else. You could see the dependence of the Mavs' defense on crafty Shawn Marion holding down the perimeter (much credit to him), but this time it was one against three, and three won.The next line of defense couldn't handle the two inevitable leaks.

You could see Jason Kidd giving us shades of his prime this season (seriously, he could probably get a 9-10-10-10 line in the right circumstances) and Delonte West (of course) doing his straight-up-baller act, but it just wasn't enough and the frustrations - there from the beginning of the game - only mounted to a palpable sense of anger over a lost season. I was, truth be told, a little bit happy about it as it happened. I am a Spurs fan. I should celebrate, right? Jason Terry infuriated me for some reason - as he often does - by cutting the lead to 13 with a signature awful 3. But it stopped soon enough, and I can't say that I feel like gloating or even celebrating.

It was a simple equation: There just wasn't enough firepower and there wasn't enough extinguisher. And as for Dirk? Wanting; pyre, ensue. Durant's game-winner in Game 1 was a fluke, but Game 1 as a whole was the larger fluke, and I feel legitimately sad to say that the Mavericks in retrospect didn't stand much of a chance in this series, and that they were about as good as their record. I thought they had more in the tank, but there it is. I have some nostalgia, now - which is to say, in the adage, mild depression - over the once-great Mavericks now fallen. And though I tried to talk myself into celebrating their demise, I couldn't do it. I now hope they have a decent offseason for their troubles. It'd be worth it, just to continue this wonderful, maddening rivalry whose days are clearly numbered.

• • •

JaVale McGee and the Imagination of the Imperfect
Aaron McGuire

It's officially the postseason without reason. On Friday night, JaVale McGee outplayed Andrew Bynum and led a not-at-all hot shooting Denver Nuggets team to a big win over a lackluster Laker effort. Did anyone expect JaVale to do what he did? Anybody? As we all are aware, JaVale McGee is far more well-known for childish mistakes than any success he's ever had in his career. The boorish pursuit of a hilarious triple double, the blooper-reel mistakes, and the customary boneheaded decisions that make virtually everyone watching him wonder if he's got a full set of marbles. Last night, though, was quite possibly the best game of JaVale's career. Given the circumstances. Sure, he's had his fair share of big nights before -- a 28-18-5 game against the Warriors, a 21-15 against this year's Spurs, among others. But tonight? He was just so amazingly effective. Fun to watch. And more importantly? Fun to root for. He put up 16-15-2-2-4, injust 28 minutes. Such a ridiculous line.

Which is an underrated part of this game -- JaVale killed the Lakers when he was on the court, but Karl almost gave away the game by benching JaVale for extended Mozgov minutes. As an aside, I regret taking the Nuggets over the Lakers in our Prognosti-Rank series. I thought it was 50-50, but forgot the golden rule with George Karl. Unless his team has a distinct talent advantage, NEVER pick him to win the series. You'll be disappointed. Karl is a fun coach, but in a close series... his adjustments befuddle, he'll lean on crummy veterans too much, and he'll simply stop using his brilliant playcalling talent that led him to write several excellent books on the subject. Karl is the single most frustrating of the great coaches in the league today. I find him personally very engaging, and he clearly has all the coaching talent and know-how one needs to lead a team to an underdog win. But ever since the early 2000s, he just... freezes up, come playoff time. Stops calling plays in close games. Benches players when they start building confidence. It's aggravating beyond reason.

But I digress. What really struck me about tonight's game was not simply the level to which JaVale played but the way he recontextualized all his faults into things that actually helped the Nuggets. That, more than anything, is what made this game such a joy to me. He didn't box out particularly well (a very JaVale move), but he still skied for rebounds and ripped them out of the hands of Bynum, Gasol, and any Laker wing who happened to catch the ball. He didn't go for the halfway difficult (but customary) layups -- he used his athleticism to acrobatically spiral around the defender to the other side of the basket and finish an absolutely brilliant (and devastatingly unguardable, when he's making it) lefty hook. And he still had -- as expected -- a completely unnecessary boneheaded move that, at the wrong time, could've cost the Nuggets the game (referring, of course, to his attempts to be a point guard running the break that resulted in a turnover). Even with that, though. It was hilarious, it was off a steal anyway, and if that's his only turnover of the game... you really have to live with that. And again. IT WAS HILARIOUS.

JaVale's success here never seemed like something he can't do on a regular basis. I don't know if he'll follow through, but this game set the bar for what a helpful JaVale can look like. And that's what it boils down to. I don't know how consistently he can give a team this kind of a workhorse effort. But for one night (at the least) JaVale McGee has taken the myriad of things that make him such an irascible, imperfect player and turned them into strengths. He has taken the legendarily scatterbrained growing pains he spent years frustrating Wizards fans with and recontextualized it -- his bonehead moves, his constant turnovers, his over-exuberance blocking the ball may not have been the struggles of a player who'd never put it together.

Perhaps it was just the overflowing imagination of an imperfect, growing player trying to do things that -- at the time -- we could make little sense of. Perhaps the problem with JaVale has never really been JaVale himself, but the way we understood his trials. Or maybe he's just a hilarious, flawed player whose overlapping strengths and weaknesses will forever perplex even the cleverest of analysts. Whatever the case may be, I'm excited for this series to play itself out. And I can't wait to see the next chapter in the baffling playoff debut of the incomparable, indescribable, and utterly inscrutable Pierre McGee.

Hey, Gothers, what's up? Last time we met I had a long anti-HoopIdea piece. Judging from the feedback, I'd say the frustrations I expressed were quite real and quite prevalent in the NBA blogosphere (even if my piece itself wasn't exactly flawless). Now, all that said, I have always appreciated deeply the writing at TrueHoop blog in general. Their coverage of the Sloan conference has been superb, among the many, many other things that they've done quite well. Whether I agree with them or not, they do tend to be one of the more thought-provoking NBA blogs on the web. For example...

In my HoopIdea piece, maturity was the name of the game. A couple days ago at TrueHoop, after the miraculous Clippers' comeback in Memphis, Kevin Arnovitz found Gilbert Arenas to meditate on the elusive conscience, or lack thereof, of the NBA's great tradition of chokers and closers. The piece is quite good. I want to call attention to one of the things Arenas says, because it strikes me as being poignantly half-true. Check it out:

His creativity lets him do that. It's a shot he thinks he can make. Just like Kobe. If you think about the best players in the world, they have no conscience. They try anything. They do anything. Brett Favre -- he threw any pass he thought he could throw. That's his creativity. That's what he's like. He's going to fail and he's also going to win.

But a guy with a conscience won't pull that trigger.

Arnovitz, voicing the natural response, counters "that Kevin Garnett has a conscience, that he exercises an uncommon discipline and has still been one of the best players of his time." But Arenas responds immediately with the hilarious rejoinder: "And that's why he doesn't get the ball in the fourth quarter." The dichotomy Gilbert paints is stark, but not uncommon in NBA culture. Overall, Arenas is giving us an exceedingly-well-expressed take on conventional wisdom, with a dose of Arenas's own creative flair.

• • •

It's interesting stuff, especially coming from Hibachi: There's little that's more creative in basketball - little that brings to mind athletic genius in basketball more readily - than a player creating their own shot. There is a certain brilliance in scorers that often evokes the sheer joy of a body in motion - as in ballet and figure skating and dancing and David Foster Wallace's Federer. It's why for many the GOAT conversation begins and ends (as maybe it should) with Michael Jordan, who was not only the greatest scorer ever, but simultaneously the most brilliant and efficient athletic genius that basketball has ever seen, remaking the game a little bit on a nightly basis. It's why - years after his prime - Kobe still gets a bit disproportionate share of the MVP and All-NBA First Team votes. Not just because his play is still consistently and inexplicably great (of course it is), but also because his moves are ever more laser-focused and deceptive and beautiful. You can tell from just about anything Kobe has said publicly that he revels in the spectacle of a game-winner. That spectacle in essence is the instant narrative running from the do-or-die-problem to the impossibly courageous protagonist to the impossibly brilliant solution all in a neat arc that places Kobe at the top. It's a narrative that places Kobe's game exactly in its right place: in the hallowed pantheon of bottomless creative genius, while deigning to let the mortals afterwards scrutinize (to no consequence) the infinitesimal flaws of his masterpiece. The rings are a longer take on the same story.

At least that's the theory. It's littered with problems here and there: Like all memories, we remember disproportionately Kobe's most extreme, exceptional successes and his most extreme, exceptional failures (we see the latter with perceptions of LeBron). And because of the media's fawning and Kobe's impressive persistence, we tend to allow ourselves to forget the failures over time.

No big deal: After all, selective memory isn't so much a problem for, say, works of art, because art lives in the memory as much as it lives in the moment, but also because not all art is created equal. When I went to the Art Institute of Chicago about four years ago, I saw a whole lot of paintings, but I mainly only remember seeing a gigantic Seurat and being shuttled around by my friend. When I went to the Peggy Guggenheim collection, in Venice? I basically only remember this one (god, what a cool concept, though, right?). Part of it is that I'm not an art aficionado, but I select for the very best (and occasionally very worst) memories I have: melodies, experiences with friends, algorithms, wines (check out Riesling, peeps), proofs, ideas, and mathematical constructs. I remember the best and forget the average cases.

Just like art, moments in sports are not created equal, and it doesn't do to remember them equally. When either the apparent leverage of the game/moment in question was high (buzzer-beaters, Finals performances, rivalry games) or the seeming improbability of the moment in question is high (that time Tim Duncan hit that three against the Suns), we ought to have selective memory. Those are career-defining moments, even if at the end of the game or series Pau or Bynum shot much better than Kobe, etc.. Quite seriously, basketball is a rational game, but a) who can remember the aggregate intuitively? and b) who would want to, given the choice? Putting aside the valid statistical arguments: Basketball features expression prominently, just a notch below efficiency, and it's a valid, defensible choice to choose the former for some people.

Granted, I dislike Hero Ball and the way in which Kobe consciously fashions his legacy for the media (remember, when he manipulates the media, he's reaching out and manipulating you and me). I think, as I always have, that Kobe's pecking order quotes are a mockery of the game of basketball and the team concept. If Kobe is to be defined by heroic wins, then he should also be defined by his tragic losses, however loudly he himself may lead the train of confident rationalizations for his fanatics to give senseless, endless voice to later. All that said, Kobe is an athletic genius like MJ or Bird or Magic, and in Arenas's parlance, you could rightfully say that Kobe has no conscience, and his mind and creativity are that of a great assassin. And it's a lot of fun, therefore I can't fault Kobe for his molten passion nor his relentless drive to express this individual passion through the game of basketball.

I want to be clear that I am absolutely exalting Kobe up to this point in this piece, despite criticisms. I think that Kobe is the greatest of all time with respect to some perfectly reasonable perspective that I happen not to share. He's certainly not the greatest winner or the greatest scorer, but his refinement and competitiveness and creativity and constant becoming and selfishness in some strange sense make Kobe - flaws and all - the most ideal version of Kobe.

• • •

But reflecting on Kobe in the wake of Gilbert's comments about conscience, I'm drawn again to that parallel bastion of their mutual era Tim Duncan. Tim Duncan is just as much an athletic genius as Kobe. If you doubt this, I'd just note that when he really takes over a game, he usually doesn't do it by hitting a bank shot or a 20-footer over and over: he usually does it by immensely creative, persistent and-ones and off-balance jumpers, crisp interior passing, impressionistic defense (as Aaron puts it), and - like a composer - taking the established themes of success and varying those themes endlessly and complexly over the course of the game as defenses try to contain him (and analogously, as our minds try to frame him in a finite view). Tim Duncan is an athletic genius that revels in his and-ones and tricks and buzzer-beaters like any other player.

And yet Duncan is known as a quiet, efficient player. For good reason: Duncan makes the game as simple as possible for himself and his team and only intuits the situation within a simple framework. By the time Tim Duncan's swift and incisive mind has gotten to a configuration of players, his space of choices has become as limited and as simple as a gunner trying to "get buckets" or a defensive savant to "get stops."

I think we elevate Kobe over Duncan partially because Kobe's in a big market and Duncan's not, but beyond that? The main difference comes from the way they present their genius. Kobe flaunts his gifts to anyone that will listen, but Duncan is the true assassin, hiding his secret weapons and infiltration methods until they're declassified, leaving bullets in his clip until the final scene. Or maybe Duncan simply never has to deploy his full genius, because he has cultivated the full collective powers of his team in advance. Or maybe there's something a bit more sinister and amazing in Duncan's approach that cuts to the heart of competition.

Maybe Duncan has had to actively stifle his athletic expression, time and time again. Maybe - like Kobe - Tim Duncan has the constant itch to express his individual greatness, to prove how he is streets ahead of his opponents' minds. Maybe Duncan feels like sacrificing efficiency to prove his own creativity is a sign of poor discipline unbefitting to a man whose teammates call him captain. There are some sentiments that a man can never express to his family without putting all his other expressions to them into doubt. There are some roads not taken that we cannot romanticize without losing our grip on the present. There are some things that an artist feels are deeply true but must never voice to protect and comfort the integrity of art and of the human condition.

With Kobe we get the vicarious pleasure of facing our doubters and haters with an impossible problem and watching ourselves find the impossible solution. You don't wonder what you'd have missed if Kobe had plodded away unselfishly for his team. Probably Kobe could've been a player with 90% instead of 85% of Jordan's offensive efficiency and maybe won a few more playoff series. But he also wouldn't have been Kobe.

With Duncan we don't get vicarious pleasure, we don't get to vicariously prove ourselves individually again and again, we get only the vicarious weight of responsibility: We have the ability to find impossible solutions, but with it we also have the unspeakably sad and earnest discipline never to express or even to explore most of these solutions fully. With Duncan we get conscience, sacrifice, and responsibility. I'm sure Tim's happy with the way things have turned out and have continued to work out. I just wonder sometimes what we've missed.

The most telling sign of maturity is to accept the consequences of our actions, whether those consequences are accidental or essential to the nature of the action. Since it's generally hard to deny the essential consequences of our actions (if you steal something or assault someone, you are pretty much by definition hurting the victims), most immaturity takes the form of denying the accidental consequences. "I meant to <steal from, scare them, block them> them, yes, but I never wanted it to get out of hand like this. They weren't supposed to <move into the path of the knife, retailiate, faint, etc.>," is the essential refrain of the immature, and as we get older it becomes more and more unsympathetic. We all take risks in life, and owning the negative accidents of those risks is just as important as owning the negative essence of those risks.

This definition of maturity also applies to the accidental and essential consequences of our words, systems, and ideologies. In the recent NFL bounty scandal, Gregg Williams and the Saints were wrong because their actions had essentially negative intentions and consequences. To use a phrase from our deceased Guru, the Saints were "violating, straight up and down," the spirit of professional athletics. There is no excuse -- even in a violent sport like football -- to hurt players intentionally in structural ways. You try to win, and you try to play hard (even if inflicting pain in the short-term is part of that). But the second you try to hurt someone structurally you become an assailant, little different from a common criminal.

• • •

As a teaching example, let's change a couple things so that the Saints' situation has more nuance. Let's say that Williams had completely avoided the bounty system. Boom. Just like that, it never existed. Let's also say the coach avoided those absolutely horrifying pregame speeches where he talked about specific injuries to target. Instead, let's suppose that in his pregame speeches Gregg Williams would simply point out certain players' structural weaknesses and say something like "Bring the pain. You know who will feel it most." Is he still culpable?

In this lightened example, Williams still has opened (if only slightly) the Pandora's Box of chance. It's not a stretch for an intensity-fueled linebacker or two to take his speech to to heart and decide to focus on hitting that one Pro Bowl fullback's ACL his coach mentioned as his motivation. Perhaps he'll even feel that causing such an injury would gain him respect with Saints coaching and management. So, in the game, suppose the linebacker hammers the fullback's knee with calculated malice, and the fullback's career ends right there in one brutal hit. Is Williams to blame now? He's probably not culpable, right? Maybe Williams only mentioned the dude's ACL to give his defense hope that they could stop a talented-but-vulnerable Pro Bowler. That's perfectly reasonable, and Gregg Williams is in this example almost certainly not at fault for what a stray linebacker does. Williams is in the right legally, probably morally, and certainly ethically in his capacity as a coach.

On the other hand, perhaps Gregg Williams would in this example later take stock and recognize that focusing on some guy's ACL in the pregame speech may have had the accidental consequence of putting that poisonous thought in that linebacker's head. Perhaps Williams would choose his words and incentives more carefully in the future. Or perhaps he would explain to himself that this is football and in order to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs. Maybe if you're an NFL fan that's how you explain the bounty scandal in the first place. Maybe you see the bounty scandal as an accidental consequence of a football culture that at its essence is truly about achievement, swagger, teamwork, and toughness. Maybe you see the concussion issue the same way. Perhaps the only truly bad people here are the one's involved long in covering up the ill effects of the concussion. And -- only after that -- the people like Williams that mired in the most hateful parts of their sport to manipulate the NFL's culture of machismo into a culture of violence.

My point is not to take a side on this issue, though you can probably tell I'm decisively against Gregg Williams and the Saints at least. Whatever you feel about the bounty scandal, my point is that -- as a mature adult -- you must own up to the accidental and the essential consequences of the sort of league you promote. If the kind of league you like also leads to some disabled 45-year-olds down the road, then you must have those disabled 45-year-olds in mind -- at least in your peripheral vision -- when you're watching. If the kind of league you like also leads to a wussy, 2-second-long fights by preening superstars that've known each other since they were 5 in place of actual toughness (link to 99% of NBA fights)? Well, you have to own those consequences, and tendinitis, and your favorite little backup point guard TJ Ford lying supine and unable to get up and retiring a day later. You have to own that as part of owning the spoils of the playoffs of the present-day NBA.

• • •

Aaron and I have been unreasonably frustrated by the shrill of anti-tanking rhetoric that has consumed ESPN's formerly excellent HoopIdea series. Let's get one thing straight before anything else: tanking absolutely sucks for everyone involved. It distorts the playoff picture, makes games less worthwhile for fans of a team, and gives all too much power to 6-7-8 seeds once they've clinched a playoff berth. What the Warriors had to do to keep their pick was a travesty and a debasement of a competitive league. They should never in a million years have had that specific incentive to tank or lose a first round pick entirely. No one should ever have to trade for Richard Jefferson. My hands are bowed in prayer. And #1 seeds should get to choose their first victims as a privilege of their seeding. Most everyone agrees with these things. I'm cool with it, Aaron's cool with it, and the 2011 Spurs would DEFINITELY be cool with it.

What I'm really not cool with is the immature (as I've framed it above) attitude that HoopIdea takes towards unintended consequences. Listen, as extreme socially liberal fiscal libertarians with a healthy respect for leftist economics and an encyclopedic knowledge of War and Peace, Aaron and I have been fascinated by and fixated on the accidental consequences and the epistemic limitations of essentially well-intended economic and social systems. Pretty much ever since we met each other. Some of our favorite teaching examples:

• Prescription drug crackdowns that ultimately make life a living hell for pain patients.
• Government spending on various in-and-of-themselves positive things that ultimately combine to crowd out valuable private investment that would have been more efficient to solve a broader problem and suited to finer granularities of individual and collective problems.
• Insanely complex tax and legal codes (whose complexity is built on generations of intelligent and prudent minds) that by their complexity alone end up favoring the well-represented upper classes over the poor and the minorities of this country, even without getting into the cryptic racism and sexism of various popular legislation.

Or, we could get to the truly relevant example. That is, a sports league whose draft lottery -- intended by the powers that be to create parity -- ultimately ends up incentivizing losing under certain circumstances.

• • •

Look, I get the imperative for the Hoopidea project. It's a fine goal. But you know what? Economists spend their whole lives trying to eliminate these sorts of unintended consequences and (better yet) trying to understand and harness the unintended consequences to become a force for good when possible. Politicians may spend their entire careers trying to eliminate the occasionally insane bureaucratic waste and complexity of our government and end up having to maintain their position by producing yet more flotsam themselves. Have you seen The Wire? That was kind of the main theme with the chessboard, really. And the main theme is rather similar. It's really hard to solve these problems. I find it appalling that a few smart and talented intellectuals who have been selected for their extensive basketball knowledge with no apparent training in economic systems are lecturing the rest of us about perverse incentives and the small-scale evils that an overall good idea can produce. Especially with an inconceivably flimsy grasp of their own unintended consequences.

Let's be honest. If many of the solutions to eliminate tanking proposed by the HoopIdea project were to be adopted, a team will end up contracting. The next day, as they're clearing out Stern's office (he had left in disgust and shame after hearing about the contraction) they're going to find a copy of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations." They're going to wonder why the hell they had underestimated his (all considering) massively credible approach to the business end of basketball. And they're going to wonder why their own unintended consequences had to be so dire. As we've said -- tanking is an abomination of basketball. But in the league as it currently projects to be for many years, there are worse unintended consequences than a tank-and-renewal strategy in which the vast majority of teams feel they have a punter's shot at a title if they can tank for a few years.

Believe it or not, as much as Stern's aversion to contraction may seem outdated and quaint, it also stems from the fact that teams are not just in a market competition with each other. The idea that they are is an incorrect convolution of the league's economics with the league's goals as a sporting competition. Teams rise and fall in direct proportion to the rest of the league's success and failure. Contraction as a real and ever-present option would massively deflate the currently huge price tags on NBA franchises. Teams are not sales reps pushing against each other, they're more akin to countries vying for power while valuing peace above all else. Teams are not tanking because they want to lose, they're tanking because they want to win, but are intelligent enough not to confuse 5 extra wins (a single outcome) with a healthier franchise (a robust process). They're tanking to show the rest of the league what a hard time they're having competing in a deep, solid league. These teams that are making a case that they - and not their comparably hungry counterparts - should have the most claim to the next shipment of rice and wheat.

In the history of unintended consequences, this is more or less about as innocuous as it gets. We don't have teams trying to lose eternally except the Clippers and various other cheap owners, and there are plenty of good disjoint solutions to those problems, anyway (like the recently-raised salary floor, for example, that Aaron has often noted was perhaps the best new provisions in the new CBA). We have to have tanking because tanking that is strategic and consistent with respect to a few key rules is massively preferable to the unintended consequences of nearly everything HoopIdea has yet proposed. If HoopIdea wants to continue to be taken seriously in this respect, they ought to gather their best anti-tanking ideas together and then go further... to organize their best ideas into one or two key manifestos or visions of the future in which tanking is reduced or severely curtailed, and replaced with substantially better and less prevalent perverse incentives.

These manifestos - like all the ideas that have ever succeeded in history - should lay out clearly (in both positive and negative senses) the essential and accidental consequences of their vision. Emphasis on the negative -- an ability to achieve self-awareness of your pet idea's flaws shows the maturity that befits a truly great thought. It would filter out much of the "this lineup is so pathetic they obviously want to lose #StopTanking" patronizing inherent in the campaign, as well as the growing aura of immaturity that has surrounded their unnecessarily thoughtless attack on a problem that deserves not just invectives and rants and denouncements, but mature solutions that own their own consequences.

The game between the Spurs and the Thunder approached its conclusion. Ritualistically, as he sat on the bench waiting for the buzzer so that he could leave, Richard Jefferson reached a hand over his shoulder and received a piece of paper. He glanced down at the paper, holding his stats for the night: Exactly 24 minutes, 10 points on 8 shots, 4 rebounds, 2 turnovers, 2 personal fouls, 1 assist. Half the game he'd been on the floor in a 20-point loss, and in his 24 minutes on the floor his team had been outscored by 10.

Jefferson smiled at the other stats: all zeros the rest of the way. Every zero Jefferson saw in his statline was like an injection of a mind-shattering drug that sent him to the center of the universe, to the Void. Even the non-zero stats - such as the points, the rebounds, and the assist - were aligned in asymptotically-perfect balance - barring the allowance of fractions into the statsheet, Jefferson had been as neutral as humanly possible in the defeat: He had neither contributed nor been a detriment to his team. He was the Void.

Richard Jefferson was Nothing.

• • •

And yet there was a paradox, an unbecoming twist in this annihilating thread. For, in order to get to this deliciously-calibrated neutrality, Richard Jefferson had made a thousand choices that had consciously determined this non-effect. The apparatus that he'd wielded in order to ensure neutrality was so elaborate and efficient that by comparison Moriarty's threads would belong on a single marionette. Jefferson had controlled the universe in order to create dull silence. He had snuffed out a part of the sun solely in order to create the room temperature room. So his zeal to become nothing had begotten another becoming, and in this other sense of becoming he was becoming God, was becoming Everything. A towel damp with sweat wreathed a powerful, swiftly-receding head and at once he was dry and the buzzer had sounded.

And in the locker room after the game, Jefferson's neutrality continued unabated. He promptly gave a postgame interview calculated to be so reasonable it could raise no alarm, then donated a reasonable percentage of his fortune to charity. After he'd dressed and said a reasonable number of goodbyes to teammates, he'd sat down - with reasonable posture - in the middle of the AT&T Center's darkened court and put dozens of wet towels over himself, so that he was utterly covered. If you didn't know where to look, you'd think he'd disappeared.

He was truly Nothing, now.

The next day they'd announce they'd traded Richard Jefferson for Stephen Jackson. Sitting in that gym with no eyes upon his signature tat and no media to feel one way or the other, Jefferson knew he'd be traded. For, in the midst of all his fantasies of being Nothing, the prescience of his causal apparatus gave him inspiration and - transporting himself many months into the future - Jefferson suddenly heard the happy shouts from all around him in the empty gym. The shouts - Jefferson noted well - promised things that he could never deliver as a player.

It would be a banner year for San Antonio, and laughing, madcap Richard Jefferson - his size, his acumen, his spirit, and, most importantly, his matching contract - would be the central agent of the change. He would be Everything precisely by being Nothing. There was an unaccountable perversion of logic in this paradox, though, and entombed in his fortress of towels he started to shiver. For suppose he were not straddling the line between ultimate power and abnegation of the same. Suppose - and this intensified his shivers - that he were not any different from any of the other competitors he interacted with. What if the apparatus of mediocrity Jefferson had built into an idol were no more complex nor more brilliant in its unifying designs than that of his teammate Tim Duncan? Suppose - after all had been said and done - that Richard Jefferson were merely an average player with an above-average self-awareness. Suppose the grand stage of basketball - so perfect and so central to his dreams of self-annihilation - were nothing but an eternal series of attempts to move the lever of one's team up and one's opponents down. And suppose further that Jefferson had only to try to move the lever up and none of this might have happened.

Now Jefferson knew he would be traded, but all happy thoughts of paradox and omnipotence peeled away from him with sudden, unwanted haste, much like were peeled the towels that had been draping him, and with no obstruction his eyes met bright lights of center court. His warmup T-shirt barely could veil a weeping mask of clay and confusion.

He'd been found in the center of the gym, and the random trainer on staff seemed pleased to see him.

"Were you... sleeping out here, Richard?"

Jefferson felt some reasonable amount of embarrassment, laughed off the situation for a perfectly reasonable amount time, and then jumped millions of feet into the air as if he were a bird of some tremendous and terrifying wingspan. What was left over from the ascendance gracefully gave an interview the next morning, saying basketball was only a business and trades a necessary part of that business. He had no complaints for anyone, and as they handed him an itinerary and wished him well, he gave a brief look to the sentimental sky before thanking them and moving on from that unfortunate stage of his life.

One of the many tiny, awesome moments in this NBA season came when a team was making intentional off-the-ball fouls on DeAndre Jordan. It was one of those all too familiar "Hack-A-Shaq" moments where everyone stopped and shrugged their shoulders. The announcers slyly analyzed the strategy and talked about the free throw shooter's form and psychology. The audience grimaced at the spectacle. But -- meeting a dismal wall with a force of light -- Chris Paul used this moment to out-think the universe. See, just as the intentional foul on Jordan occurred, Chris Paul (manning the point and far beyond the top of the key) shot an insane, improbable 40-footer. Do I even need to specify? It was good.

I love that. I mean, I've watched a lot of basketball and I'd never seen that, at least when the foul was so blatantly intentional. In one stroke CP3, a preternaturally cerebral and gifted player, used his fantastic shooting ability to more than neutralize -- to actively punish -- the absurdity of Hack-A-Shaq with an equally absurd rejoinder. Unfortunately, the officials -- probably with the same puzzlement as everyone else -- didn't give Paul the benefit of a four-point play for his teammate to finish and Jordan simply went to the line. I'm pretty sure the sheer novelty of Paul's actions were the only reason they didn't get an and-one. In any case, every off-ball foul I've ever seen that was called during a made basket has led to an and-one. This one didn't. But the silent rebellion of a superstar against the most commonly dismal strategic ploy in the book remained.

• • •

Paul had taken advantage of his great knowledge of the game and had applied it in an unfamiliar, almost completely unprecedented setting. It was so clever that to me it evoked other masterstrokes of strategy such as Paul Westphal's intentional technical, Ricky Rubio's inbounds delay, the creative invention of the dribble, the Eurostep, the cross-over dribbles and variations, small ball, and so many other great facets of our great game.

Of course, on the other hand, you could also frame Paul's move as the kind of bend-not-break mentality that has also led to unsavory outcomes like flopping (himself a great practitioner of the dark arts), working over the refs (again, one of Paul's favorite domain), and the Hack-A-Shaq strategy Paul was responding to in the first place. Much of what we dislike about NBA basketball (say, absurd free throw attempts, superstar calls, inconsistent officiating, make-up calls, rip-through fouls until recently) is partially explained by the rational approach of innovators to rules with perverse incentives, even if the rules themselves are the structure needed to create the innovative improvisation that makes basketball great in the first place.

Gamesmanship is a double-edged sword, and nowhere is this illustrated better than in basketball. Since the HoopIdea project has focused on flopping and tanking above all else, I thought it would be well to talk about flopping in the general language of gamesmanship that produces it, to see if we can't get some meaningful insights.

• I've seen some talk about the worst and most egregious floppers being fined and otherwise developing a reputation as such as an incentive against flopping (never mind for a moment that such reputations [like, say, Kobe Bryant's brilliant, First-Team defensive acumen] are often false and misleading, especially late in a player's career). But I'd challenge that. If a player doesn't flop all season and then flops 5 times at crucial moments in Game 7 of a playoff series, well... their flops are probably more important to their season and career than all of those of a notorious flopper put together.

• Leverage is something that every fan of the game intuitively understands and the players with great gamesmanship such as Chris Paul (and Shane Battier) have perfected. As Truehoop has pointed out (and as Paul certainly understands), the relative importance of crunch-time performance extends to all aspects of crunch-time play, including steals, assists, and getting to the line. And yes, including flopping for an extra possession or free throw trip. The number of flops matters far less than the accumulated leverage that a player exerts in making all of his flops.

• If we want to keep the intelligence of the game of basketball, gamesmanship must be an important operative concept. Nothing is more offensive in basketball than players that can do one or two things and otherwise completely misunderstand the parts of basketball that everyone watching and everyone else playing understands. You know, like efficiency, boxing out, establishing good position, etc.

If you accept this, and you further accept that the officiating crew is inevitably fallible and inferring intent to flop is incredibly difficult (no matter how obvious you may think it at the time) and the overhead of implementing more officials is both prohibitive and deleterious to the sport... you also begin to accept the fact that flopping is absolutely inevitable. Basketball has a complex rulebook which, while not especially hard-to-understand, opens the door for subtle bending of the rules and of the officiating. There will always be workarounds to every earnest attempt (attempts that have been mostly successful) to make the sport as much about pure basketball competition as possible.

That said, there's absolutely no reason the rip-through has to be a foul on the defender, and as we've seen, the NBA found that rip-throughs had no real benefit to its style of play and only mediocre-to-worse consequences. In other words, the NBA solved for pattern and navigated the perverse incentives, and at the end of the day realized that what is not inevitable is calling a rip-through as a foul. Yes, flopping is inevitable, and I'm sure there's some complicated tree-branch metaphor between basketball, gamesmanship, and flopping where we can't cut flopping because it's not on our property or we'd have to cut the whole tree down or if we cut it off the tree would no longer produce delicious oranges (like Chris Paul) or something. But this rule change has shown that we can successfully prune flopping of its most unsightly boughs.

That's a modest goal, but like the decades of legal scholars pushing for modest goals, we must be prepared to accept that we may not be able to solve many of the problems we raise without making sacrifices, and that the truly pertinent problems may have to develop into obvious wrongs before we can in good conscience correct them. When the strategic blights on the game we aim to correct are also strategic innovations from some of the sport's brightest lights, truly separating the two and addressing the problem is at best tricky and -- at worst -- virtually impossible.

Los Angeles (GG) -- Frustrated with what has been called the "disgusting" level of competition in the NBA's Eastern Conference, Western Conference teams announced jointly on Sunday that they would be seeking secession papers, effective immediately.

"Look, Kyrie Irving and Anderson Varejao were a credible playoff team before Andy got hurt," new Western Commissioner Adam Silver said, "We love both of those players, here, and they did have Ramon Sessions and, um, Alonzo Gee. We'd love to have them in our new league. But enough is enough. Kyrie and Andy were -- by themselves -- a credible threat to steal an 8 seed spot. That's simply not right. In the Eastern Conference, the teams that stumble blindly into talent and depth despite themselves bungle away that talent and depth. And the teams without talent and depth? Jesus, don't even get me started."

"Except for the Celtics and Bulls," Silver added, "they're pretty good." Silver proceeded to announce that the West would be retaining the Celtics and Bulls, who were deemed "close enough" by an independent committee to an average West Coast team to count. With these acquisitions, the as-of-yet unnamed Western Basketball Association will be composed of teams holding 42 of the previous 52 NBA titles, and 18 of the last 20.

Once populated by deep, historically interesting franchises like the 90s Bulls, Knicks, Magic, and Pacers, the Eastern Conference has grown stale in ensuing years, despite having roughly as many franchise players as the West and being hyped in each preseason as finally bridging the talent gap. Even sources from within the conference seem dissatisfied with the level of play. "Listen, do you want to know why Jason Kidd, Rasheed Wallace, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett finally broke through when they went to the East? Here's a hint: it's not like they got any better at basketball," one Celtics scout told us confidentially, adding, "The most benevolent thing Sam Presti ever did was to send over an above-average shooting guard. The Eastern Conference hadn't seen a team with 3 above-average players on the same team in years. Besides the Pistons, of course, who went to six Eastern Conference Finals in a row. The Pistons!"

The response from the newly-seceded teams has been mixed. While most players in both conferences support the move, Pau Gasol, starting Power Forward for the Los Angeles Lakers, was reported to have screamed "No! Ricky!" through muffled tears before being reminded that the Timberwolves were still in the Western Conference. Upon being reassured that Jose Calderon would be the only remaining Spaniard in the Eastern Conference either, Gasol had no further tears or comments.

Silver added that "the Magic suck and the Hawks coast through every game. Fuck that noise," while calling attention to the large number of teams on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. "Get it," Silver said with an uncharacteristic grin, "the East coast."

Notably absent from the secession talks was the Miami Heat. Scattered comments from the Heat organization and players indicate that Pat Riley is "fine" with staying in the east. More thorough investigations point to more enthusiasm. LeBron James, for example, was seen buying a trophy case as big as a house.

With no definite purpose, JaVale McGee stepped heavily upon the March snow that lined the Denver streets. He told his new teammates that he needed a day to himself, to look for houses and neighborhoods. But if you could just see his face -- could follow his gaze as it moved upward to the vague mountainous altitudes in the distance -- you'd never see a glance to a realtor's name or the height of a ceiling.

Now JaVale was walking along a smoothly paved sidewalk. As he walked along the perfectly smooth concrete, JaVale nevertheless felt no surprise at tripping slightly over his feet every fifty paces or so. That was custom for him. But on his brows were gratitude and shock. For despite all his customary tripping, he hadn't yet fallen and scraped his knees. This was something new.

• • •

Most professional athletes go into slumps and streaks every now and then. With the psychophysical obsession that drives them, generally these athletes organically develop conscious rituals. These rituals are designed to avoid changing or continuing their current luck. To put it one way: You don't change the deck chairs when you're hitting .500. You change them in every way possible when you're hitting .100. But the man walking wide-eyed through Denver - just as surely a professional athlete - knew nothing of these slumps and streaks. His lot was to be consistent, no matter his rituals or approach. A bulwark of consistently met expectations.

However, this consistency wasn't of the Duncan type. Without fail, McGee's consistency was peppered with short bouts of unaccountable mental clumsiness, clumsiness that called into question his effort, dedication, and intelligence -- all in one stroke of cosmic meanness. He knew about the endless reels of inexplicable athletic failure he'd exhibited, knew these highlights were replayed endlessly in the minds of every basketball fan. He knew his blooper reel on Youtube was more popular than his highlights. He knew his name lived in infamy in the press. It was why he'd been traded to the Denver Nuggets in the first place and why the national reaction to the trade consisted of exactly two responses: respect for what he could do (begrudging, rare) and mockery for what he couldn't (ubiquitous, universal).

But he hadn't tripped and fallen down yet since landing in Denver, for whatever reason. Maybe it was the light oxygen in the atmosphere, the knowledge that all would be forgiven if he could start anew. Maybe it was the fact that he had a supportive mother and teammates he could now compete with in a straightforward way on a team that truly competed. Maybe there was no reason, or God was saving some epic choke in a bank for every time he didn't fall. Whatever the case, JaVale didn't know, and -- like all athletes on their first good streak -- didn't particularly want to know. After all, as all athletes know intuitively, thinking about the luck is the first mistake of superstition and a guarantee that the luck will go away.

But whatever he did - for the rest of his life, at least in Denver - JaVale McGee could never shake that luck.

• • •

On the other side of the gravel pond, Nene felt a bit disgraced at being traded, at least when he was really honest with himself. Sure, there shouldn't be a lick of shame in being ousted from one of the deepest rosters in the league, especially since he'd been battling injury. But there was always a disgrace in being rejected by any team. The air felt heavy in the capital of the United States. And to the Washington Wizards? There were quite a few dysfunctional franchises out there, but only one aspired to comedy. To be traded for JaVale McGee, a man who had to beg for a triple-double, who had the mentality of a 12-year-old that could dunk? It was a disgrace, and a player of Nene's caliber was not having an easy time justifying the inexplicable trade.

But, he supposed, there was no sense asking why or how, or trying to change the past. After all, Nene knew how to play the game of basketball, and that knowledge - combined with effort and statistics - had always buoyed him through any temporary lapse in confidence. Nene had the gift of consistency - maybe not in a given minute, a given quarter, a given game, a given season - but he would always come back to that old brand, the brand of Nene. Denver would have to go wanting for that brand for the rest of its existence as a city and a franchise. He walked with firm conviction - note the broad shoulders framing the proud mane - past the Reflecting Pool, not even noticing it all that much. In fact, he noticed it just sparingly enough that he managed to trip and fall into the pool. He was unhurt, but shocked. He wouldn't be shocked by such occurrences in a few weeks, as he became sadly accustomed to the many causes and manifestations of the clumsiness that would haunt his frame forevermore.

• FIN •

At the deadline on Thursday, the Spurs made a trade for Stephen Jackson that also ended the Richard Jefferson era. I started writing and seriously covering what the Spurs were doing right around the original RJ-to-San-Antonio trade in the summer of 2009. After an seemingly endless series of varying horrible and decent pieces, I finally "broke through" with some quality pieces that winter. The following piece - written in January 2010, to an audience consisting solely of Aaron and myself - is probably my favorite. It tells of the story of Richard Jefferson's off-season courting by Mike Brown (who was coaching LeBron's Cavs at the time) and his doppelganger coach of the Hawks, Mike Woodson.

I was reading SLAM tonight, and I came across the following passage, in which Hawks coach Mike Woodson addresses his team before an important Mavs road game:

“...I don’t give a shit about the offense; you guys can score more than enough points to win games. The offense isn’t the problem. But you have to get stops on defense, and if you’ll listen to what we’re telling you, I promise you’ll get stops. The shit works, okay? The shit works, but you guys just have to have the pride and the heart to buy into it and do what we’re asking you to do every time down the court.”

Reading this reminded me of a little-known incident a few years back. Almost immediately after the 2009 Finals, Milwaukee small forward Richard Jefferson was being scouted for a possible trade to either the Cavs or the Hawks. Jefferson therefore had to make two private appointments with the head coaches of those teams, Mike Brown and Mike Woodson.

• • •

Concerns for the complex and heavy schedules of all three men led Jefferson to suggest instead that he meet with both coaches simultaneously. Jefferson supposed that they could meet up in a practice facility for his demonstration, after which they would all get some dinner and discuss where he could fit into their respective teams. This suggestion was well-received by both Woodson and Brown, and so the only remaining unknown was the location. Jefferson said it would be a little questionable to meet up in a Bucks' facility for a demonstration that could very well send him packing, so he suggested they all meet instead in San Antonio at the Spurs' practice facility. After all, Brown had served under Spurs coach Gregg Popovich there, and Woodson had served under the legendary Larry Brown, Popovich's mentor. This seemed reasonable enough for all parties, and it was settled. The plane tickets were bought.

Now, at this time I was working as a mop-boy at the Spurs' practice facility. After all, I was 16, and I was living in one of the plusher suburbs in San Antonio. It was the perfect summer job. I even met David Robinson once in the gym as he showed his church group how important practice is. The Admiral liked me instantly because virtue and skill stand out like a strobe light to him, and I was really effective and methodical with a mop at that time.

I was also a basketball fanatic and an amateur sportswriter. In the dog-days of 2009, before iPhones and Androids had hit the market, I kept a primitive cassette tape recorder on my person wherever I went. This tape recorder caused both amusement and annoyance in the Spurs players, and I would often try (with very limited success) to invite myself to private player meetings. So when I heard that Woodson and Jefferson and Brown were coming to my gym, and that I was supposed to mop the whole gym before they arrived, I became restless with possibility. I quickly created a mopping schedule that would guarantee me close proximity for the duration of their visit, and even planned to get into their graces well enough that I could eat with one of them afterwards.

It's important to note here that Coach Brown and Coach Woodson are very similar in appearance. They are both the same brand of hefty, of the same height, somewhat muscular, and bald. They have extremely similar tastes in clothing. Mike Woodson's skin has a somewhat lighter shade of brown, and Mike Brown has glasses with very thick rims. Mike Woodson has a black goatee. Mike Brown has a different black goatee. If Mike Brown lost his glasses and they were standing together, I would have legitimate trouble handing the glasses to the right one, even if I'd seen from whom it had dropped.

Anyway, I worked very hard that morning in preparation, and when noon rolled around, Richard Jefferson arrived in the gym corridor in an old Arizona jersey. I went over and gave him a high-five and immediately meshed with him. Jefferson was clearly down-to-earth and humorous. "You're gonna have to tell me which one is which, when they arrive. Tap me on the shoulder once if it's Brown, twice if it's Woodson." he said to me, chuckling. I couldn't tell if he was kidding with that, but he clearly found the humor of the situation in either case. I showed him my tape recorder and told him I was going to tape the whole conversation. He cracked up. "Their voices are really different at least, right?"

"I... don't know, Mr. Jefferson. I can't think of one without the other. I'll probably mix up their voices a couple times." I admitted. "I can't even remember which one has the glasses. It's going to be a hell of a transcription job."

Jefferson was greatly pleased. "Haha, I knew it. Same here, John. I remember that Brown has the glasses, but only because I just finished watching that amazing LeBron buzzer-beater in Game 2 against the Magic. So let's see: I know Mike Brown has the glasses, and I think Mike Woodson has the facial hair, but now I forget if Mike Brown has the facial hair - no, he just has those ridiculous jowls."

"They both have jowls, Mr. Jefferson, and I think they both have goatees. That's one of the many reasons they're so hard to separate."

"Alright, you're definitely invited to dinner," Jefferson smiled. "Get this, the three of us are having dinner together after the demonstration. We're gonna get a booth at a local family restaurant with 4 seats. The two of us are going to sit on one side and Woodson and Brown will have to share one side of the booth, just squeezing together, side-by-side. The image makes me laugh every time I think of it. I'm going to use every wile in my faculties to ensure it happens. Having you along will just help out that much more. We'll sit on the side before they even know what has hit them."

"Wow, thanks!" Jefferson had delivered so much further than I would ever have imagined. "Okay, two things. First, can we get a still photo of them sitting together?"

"No, absolutely not. They are crafty. Both of them are ridiculous, but crafty. Best not even to risk it. You must be a master of discreetness with the tape recorder by now, though, right?"

"I'm good enough."

"Good. But yeah, no photos. I mean they won't want to be seen together, and they definitely wouldn't go for that. Also, it could very well poison the afternoon for me, and I don't want that either. Heh."

"Mr. Jefferson?"

"Yes, John?"

"The facility didn't tell me why you all were coming today, they just told me who the meeting was for. What is the meeting about?"

"This is going to sound odd..."

Jefferson then laid it all out, essentially telling me that this off-season might be his last legitimate chance at being signed by a contender and getting a title that had thus far eluded him with the Nets and Bucks. This was actually a huge interview for him, I considered. Suddenly something crossed my mind.

"Wait, why the hell is Mike Brown looking for a small forward? That's LeBron's position. You're a bit older, but nowhere near a back-up yet, especially in terms of the salary you'd want."

"Yeah, honestly, I've been watching a lot of Cavs games. I don't know what the hell he's thinking. Woodson either. How familiar are you with the Hawks?"

"Not much, sir."

"They don't really need a small forward either. So why are they both - " and Jefferson trailed off in thought.

For the same thought had crossed both of us simultaneously and we made eye contact to prove it.

"You don't think..." I began, but the thought was abruptly truncated and momentarily forgotten for the appearance of a noise from the gym's corridor.

"I'M READY FOR SOME GOOD SHIT RICHARD."

Well, Mike Woodson was here. He was smiling at Jefferson and Jefferson smiled back. I had been diligent with the mopping, so now I had the luxury of stopping to make myself look somewhat respectable, and the three of us traded introductions. I spoke to the Hawks coach with careful respect. The tape was rolling now.

"Hello, Mr. Woodson. I'm just the mop-boy today."

I then laid out my slightly contrived reason for being there, with conscious emphasis on my insignificance.

"Alright, you can stay. I used to be tough shit at mopping when I was a teenager."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah, I fucked up at the beginning, but then I learned how the shit should be done. Do you want to me to show you?"

"Umm, yes, sure, Mr. Woodson..." I only hoped the bandwidth on my tape recorder could sustain all of this 'shit'. Woodson grabbed the mop and started dousing the floor with dirty water from the mop bucket. I briefly wondered if Woodson was going to try to light the doused region on fire. He furrowed his brows as he tried to remember how to grip the mop, and, in his baldness, gave us an impromptu lesson on how skin can cling to and dance along the skull on demand.

"So first you want to like...pretend the mop is a fuck-horse. Do you know what a fuck-horse is, ...John is your name?"

Before I could try to define a fuck-horse (I didn't know whether or not I hoped "fuck-horse" was actual slang), Mike Brown appeared in the same corridor of the gym that Woodson and Jefferson had entered through. It occurred to me that Jefferson and Woodson had barely spoken in the five minutes so far of this incredibly important interview.

"How are you all, Richard, Mike, ..."

"John, sir. Just an honest mop-boy."

"I was showing John here how not to fuck that shit up with mopping. The shit I know about mopping, on the other hand, works."

"You told him about the fuck-horse technique?"

"I was just getting to that, Mike."

"I just knew you were a fuck-horse adherent, Mike. How dated."

"It's the shit that works!"

Mike Brown considered this, and visibly rejected it with his hand. "No, the fuck-horse is dated. If you aren't riding the shit-train with your mop stroke by now, well, that's sort of like trying to do algebraic geometry in a modern setting without any knowledge of the Zariski topology on algebraic varieties."

"What the hell?" Richard Jefferson said quietly enough to be mostly inaudible but loudly enough to interrupt.

"It's plenty dated is all I'm saying, Richard. How have you been? Let's sit a spell and I'll lay out what I want to see from you today."

Brown began to strike me as the kind of coach that would sometimes listen to all of a player's problems and have intelligent responses, but at the end of the day would not be there for his players or anyone else that interfered with his arbitrary whims.

Woodson, on the other hand, struck me as being almost fatherly in modality. He may have been cross and vulgar in disposition, but he had made a sincere connection with Richard and I, with none of Brown's pettiness or distance. Whatever a fuck-horse might be, Woodson legitimately thought that I, a mere mop-boy in a different city, should know about the mopping technique, and for my own benefit. There was a warmth there that infected Richard as well.

We all walked towards a table outside the gym, I having officially joined the party. Woodson tried to carry the conversation as we walked. "Richard, I undoubtedly have a role for you here in Atlanta."

Brown was not to be out-done and quickly cut him off. "Richard, I have a bigger role for you here in Cleveland."

"Your shit seems deceptive, Mike." Woodson astutely observed. "What are you going to do, Coach, trade LeBron?"

It was something that was going to be said but it was still surprising to hear.

"Maybe I will trade LeBron if I can get my hands on Richard before you. I think losing 10 extra games or so is worth it. No offense," he turned to Richard, "but I already won a championship as an assistant in 2003, in this very city!"

Richard quickly responded, "I was on the Nets then, Coach." Having briefly misremembered the Spurs' Finals opponent in 2003, Brown actually looked a bit apologetic, and trailed off on a "Well..." as he turned back to Woodson. We all sat down at a table outside the gym.

After we'd sat down, Brown continued his tirade, "...All I'm saying is that 2003 will be plenty enough for me if it means defeating you to get Richard Jefferson, Woodson."

Just a moment more and it was obvious that the husk wars had begun. Woodson shot the first blow. He pursed his lips as if for an angry kiss, and furrowed his eyebrows as before. "You fuck-horse," Woodson spoke with incomprehension, "How could you? You unfathomable fuck-horse."

Still wondering what a fuck-horse could be, I nevertheless held my tongue. Brown would trade LeBron, his franchise player, in order to win this petty battle? Was this what real adulthood would be like? I felt afraid, I must admit.

Brown, upon being called a fuck-horse, didn't react with scorn at all, but his face almost turned inside out as he tightened up in concentration, as if trying to look at his own eyes without a mirror. The skin around his mostly-shaved eyebrows stretched taut towards the top of his cheeks, almost wholly covering his eyes beneath his glasses. As this happened his hand stroked his chin, as if stroking a goatee that didn't exist anymore, as if his clean-shaven chin was evidence of a great difference between himself and Woodson. He nodded up and down very quickly. Infinite husk, I supposed. Standing up, his glasses suddenly became very bright, like reflecting the sun. Brown took his hand off his chin and stared at his counterpart.

"Coach Woodson."

"...Yes, Coach Brown?"

"I am a bit of a fuck-horse, aren't I? Threatening to trade away my franchise to win this meaningless personal tiff. Reminiscent of a fuck-horse, eh?" Had he read my mind? No...we had all thought that.

"I'm... so sorry I said that, Mike." Woodson made a very humble gesture of apology.

"No. Don't take it back. I'm a true fuck-horse and I'm happy to admit it. I want all three of you to admit it." We all reluctantly said so to him. "But let's have some perspective here. The only reason either of us coaches showed up at all is because we knew the other would. Don't lie to me, Mike, you have just as little use for Richard as I do. It was a petty gambit on your part and you should at least admit it like I do."

But Woodson refused to comply. "Richard, come on, let's go to the gym. I want to see the way you'll..."

Brown interrupted and Woodson ignored him. "...drive in the lane." Astonishingly, the coaches had both finished Woodson's sentence.

"See, I knew it. If there's any more of a bull story, if there's any more of an arbitrary question to ask Richard Jefferson, I'd love to hear it. We've all seen Richard driving a hundred times, even young John over here," I nodded, "This interview was a ruse from the get go. I may be a fuck-horse, but at least I'm not naive, Coach."

We all just sat in silence for awhile. Woodson could not deny what was clear: Mike Brown had seen right through him.

"I guess that makes you a shit-train, Coach." Mike Brown gloated, "Not even a proper fuck-horse."

"Alright," I asked, "What the fuck do those words mean?"

Brown ignored me, but I caught Richard Jefferson spitting with laughter for a moment, "Now that all of this is settled, how about we get some dinner at the Applebee's. Do they have Applebee's in San Antonio, I forget?"

At this point Tim Duncan appeared outside the gym, obviously dying to start his first practice of the off-season. He noticed us sitting there and came a bit closer. As soon as he recognized Coach Brown, he smiled and prepared to greet us. Duncan's smile was increased when he recognized both Richard Jefferson and the virtuous mop-boy that always had the tape recorder. We were all about to say hi to Duncan. But just then, Duncan saw Coach Woodson and a change came over his face; he immediately made an about-face and walked the other direction, with an unmistakable disappointment. He knew instinctively what all of us, except Woodson, had derived from the conversation: that Mike Woodson is Dark Mike Brown, a Mike Brown that lacked even the awareness of his status as the Dark Mike Brown.

The interview was over and I went to Applebee's where Brown and Woodson told me that they both needed mop-boys in their respective cities and Richard, with fraternal obligation, shielded my eyes from their vulgar mopping demonstrations.

After Aaron's four observations yesterday, we got a collection of our other writers together to talk shop about some of the other trades. Join Adam, Alex, and Alex the Second as they discuss the Rockets, the Spurs, and the Wizards. Along with a bonus discussion about the Nets. Which technically makes this a 3-on-4, but we won't tell anyone if you don't!

• • •

1. How did the Rockets get Marcus Camby and a late-first rounder for Jordan Hill and a late-second rounder? How in God's name did the Blazers still end up doing pretty well?

Alex Arnon: It’s easy – Daryl Morey. Sure, you have to account for the fact that the Rockets also gave up Hasheem Thabeet and Jonny Flynn but this isn’t 2009 any more – as a sidenote, my favorite part of this trade is that during the 2008/2009 NCAA basketball season I lived in Eugene, Oregon surrounded by Blazers fans and if I was to see the Blazers’ 2012 roster of Oden, Flynn, and Thabeet I’d have instantly declared a Rip City dynasty. Instantly. In the end, Houston gave up nothing (and as a Knicks fan, in the case of Jordan Hill, less than nothing) to acquire the ghost of Marcus Camby and move up from their mid-2^nd round pick to the Lakers’ late-1^st round pick in a supposedly loaded draft. I don’t really see what Marcus Camby can do for the Rockets outside of giving them a veteran presence and an expiring contract, but you certainly can’t complain about moving up in the draft and knowing Morey, there’s someone he definitely has his eye on.

As for the Blazers, I’ll keep it simple – they did well because they’re officially now in full-blown tank mode. In this league it’s impossible to succeed as a perennial middling .500 team and they know this. They need more talent to replace the all-NBA training room squad of Brandon Roy and Greg Oden and they’re hoping to do it with their lottery pick this year alongside the pick they acquired from the Nets in the Gerald Wallace trade.

Adam Koscielak: Well, there was more to that, I mean, Hasheem Thabeet and Jonny Flynn, man. But seriously, Daryl Morey is a wizard. And not in the bad, Andray Blatche way. Hill was underachieving and lost in a depth chart, Thabeet and Flynn are less useful than most undrafted players at their position at this point (Zabian Dowdell will always be in my heart). Morey worked the phones, found what he wanted and got it. Unfortunately for him, he also pissed Kobe off by prying Derek Fisher away. Beware of the Mamba, Houston, he's going to be hunting for ya now. As for the Blazers, this was NBA 2k12-esque. I have a suspicion that the mythical Blazers GM is actually the NBA 2k12 trade finder. The flip side however is this; the Blazers were essentially rewarded for choosing to turn their team around into a shitty one. This happened on a night that the Suns sans Steve Nash and Grant Hill beat the Clippers. Makes you wonder why the league is discouraging hard work. Either way, Rip City just turned into RIP City. Now you can fully expect LaMarcus Aldridge to go down with a mild case of the tank flu.

Alex Dewey: The Marcus Camby trade was a rental, as he's a UFA after this season, so this trade made more sense than I'd initially given it credit for from the Blazers' end. Still, even though getting anything for a future UFA is better than getting nothing in FA (as we saw play out with Dwight), you'd think the price for a rental would be more than pennies on the dollar. Same with Ramon Sessions, but in that case, even the Cavs got a 2012 first-rounder and a potential leap for the 2013 draft. The Blazers got a second-rounder and two 2009 sub-prospects. In exchange, they sent a supremely talented, experienced rebound-and-block center to a Rockets team that now has a vague, nontrivial chance of contention. It's just one season, but the price seems rather low to go from, say, 4.5 to 7.5 expected playoff games in one stroke.

• • •

2. Who won the Warriors-Spurs trade? Warriors, Spurs, both or neither?

Note: Richard Jefferson, TJ Ford (retired), and a protected first-round draft pick to Warriors
__Stephen Jackson to Spurs.

Alex Arnon: The Spurs, easily. If you took a look at each of their 2010/2011 season stats, Stack Jack put up a PER of 14.64 while RJ put up a 12.42. Taking a look at their contracts, they’re receiving nearly the same exact amount of money through this season and 2012/2013. But while Jackson’s contract expires that year, Jefferson has a player option for 2013/2014 that you know he’s going to take. So it’s 2-0 in the Spurs’ favor thus far with the knockout blow coming in the form of Tim Duncan calling him “the ultimate teammate.” They’ve gotten back one of the pieces of their dynasty and a player they all love. While they are certainly questions about Stephen Jackson’s mental stability, I’ll just leave you with this Tony Parker quote: “He was crazy, but it was a good crazy with us.”

Adam Koscielak: Win-Win. The Warriors apparently content with getting Bogut decided that they can take a little extra salary for a first rounder, while the Spurs managed to get Captain Jack relatively cheap. There are question marks here (Can Pop coach Jack?), but if Jack decides he's all in, San Antonio just acquired a very dangerous scorer. If he doesn't, hey, that just means more Kawhi Leonard for you and me.

Alex Dewey: At Pounding the Rock there's a great discussion that summarizes where many of us Spurs fans find ourselves: we have relentless trust in the Spurs' braintrust, endless acknowledgement that RJ was never going to be "that guy," acknowledgement that S-Jax is the ultimate teammate and someone that steps up to the plate when necessary. But we also have fear that this is the Richard Jefferson situation all over again, where another kind of middling, mediocre statistical player gets an in with the front office purely because of character and attitude and Popovich has to figure out how to reconcile S-Jax's limitations with a borderline-contending team, only to lose a season trying to find a role for S-Jax, and again the well-meaning faith in the front office turns out misplaced. Still, it's hard to argue that S-Jax isn't exactly what the Spurs need in terms of attitude, and it's a laudable attempt by the Spurs to keep the window open.

• • •

Adam Koscielak: You could make a sitcom scene out of Prokhorov's day, really. Imagine Deron Williams as his girlfriend on her anniversary, Dwight Howard's skills as an expensive gift, and Dwight himself as a salesman. Just imagine Dwight calling Prokhorov and telling him that his gift won't be there, only to flip flop a few times in the next few scenes, until finally, pressed for time before the anniversary, the rich Russian buys a crappy bouquet called Gerald. The disappointed girlfriend then decides to leave to her equally rich, but a bit more caring high school sweetheart. End episode.

Alex Arnon: The Nets’ situation somehow reminds me of the 1996 Tickle Me Elmo frenzy. Billie King is the parent who promised their child that they’d get them a brand new Tickle Me Elmo toy for Christmas that they could name Dwight without knowing that it was sold out. Having gone to every store trying to find one after hearing mixed messages on whether or not it was in stock and coming out empty-handed on the night of Christmas Eve, Billie King finally decided to compromise and bought his kid a small Oscar the Grouch plush that he had named Gerald.

Alex Dewey: Great metapho- Wait, that was 1996? What the hell? Tickle-Me-Elmo was 16 years ago? Wow. I don't even know what to say.

All of which, I think, is as it should be. Why should we ask Kobe to change? It seems manifestly clear to me that he’s not nearly as interested in winning as he is being perceived as somebody who is only interested in winning; he understand that immortality is really about perception. To which I say: Good. Bravo. Encore. Because there’s room in the league for this. Jackson Pollock produced very few accurate bowls of fruit. There’s room in the league for somebody whose ultimate goal is to use basketball, because it makes the basketball more compelling.

--Danny Nowell, Kobe Doesn’t Care About Winning, and That’s Okay

Interesting, Mr. Nowell. Please consider with me the grand triumvirate of the Western Conference, retired in 2022:

• In 2022, Steve Nash heads up Canadian basketball and several charity groups. The archetypal representative of Canadian Basketball, Nash may not have gotten a ring, but he'd had a long, illustrious career worthy of the Hall of Fame. Today, he teaches children how to run a pick and roll at a basketball camp. His characteristic high cheekbones are now set in middle age by grayer hair and slower knees, such that he looks like a latter-day D'Antoni. The familiar squeak of his sneakers across the gym makes a bird's rising staccato - a sound somewhere in the center of the triangle whose points are laughter, support, and affirmation - a wordless, worldly half-chuckle punctuated by dribbles and education.

• In 2022, Tim Duncan is tubing and waterskiing with his family. It's a bit ridiculous to see a seven-footer ride a jet-ski designed for a child, but it's relatively safe and Duncan demonstrates that it is quite possible. Steering with his feet, Duncan's standing navigation on the tiny jet-ski is not only possible but also amusingly precarious. Craftily avoiding the inevitable tumble before a small wave, Duncan sits down and signals his family's boat to stop for a bit to wait for him to catch his breath. He switches jet-skis, this time drinking the can of soda he'd won from the endlessly amusing bet. Absolutely nobody knows that he does this with his time.

• In 2022, Dirk Nowitzki demonstrates his encyclopedic knowledge of jazz and Kraftwerk to his stunned mentor Holger Geschwinder as they re-invent the musical phrase the same way they - in past years - had reinvented the basketball shot. Mad scientists on the shores of the Elbe, their songs are as much about the calculus of variation and the pressure of their hands upon the keyboards as about the workings of the soul, but - with the Teutonic eventuality of the verb completing a sentence - the soul does enter into the equation at last. As night draws forth, allowing for rest, they go their separate ways in the reflected moonlight on the Elbe at Dresden, absconding silently with keyboards and keytars in hand, laughing through peaceful paths that wind through adjacent forests, sounds of perfect music rattling through their ears.

The gist of Nowell's fine piece is that Kobe's re-appropriation of basketball for his own ends - whether or not those ends are conducive to winning - is inherently compelling in the mythology of the NBA. I agree that Kobe is quite compelling - the winner who set his own terms. But the constant attempts to fuse perception and reality - the staged rituals, the laughably predictable media bickering, etc. - have always fallen flat with me.

• • •

More than any of that, after all, I want to think of where Kobe will be in ten years. Because if Nowell is right, then he is inextricably tied up with his own hyped-up narrative. Yes, Kobe is the "Black Mamba" - an offensive genius hell-bent on touches and individual dominance - and all that entails, but Kobe is also the Black Mamba Media Narrative and the Black Mamba Media Narrative Media Narrative, etc. Kobe is what you think of Kobe, because Kobe places so much import on public perception and legacy (to blaspheme a little bit in Nowell's way, even more than he cares about winning). Kobe is so tied up with his brand and his own legacy and his own narrative that we get shivers of cultural decay when Chris Paul and LeBron go into the shallow end of that same pool. What Kobe does with his own branding is as ruthless and high-volume and irrational as his late game and as efficient as his overall game.

So what does Kobe do when that's all over, in 2022? Does he make Commissioner Silver an offer to buy the Toronto Raptors for the soon-to-be-obvious purpose of slowing down their pace so that they average less for a season than his fabled 81-point masterstroke? Does he linger in the league with two broken ankles and no feeling in his hands, just to play an ancient 15 mpg, gunning for 40,000 points and an ultimate respect for his game by a public with its still-unyielding, sentimental respect for Jordan? Does he even like basketball anymore? Does he show humility to the rookies less than half his age, or does he show a legendary fire - now with the qualifier "cranky" - that inspires them to work harder? Does he even care about the rookies, anymore, or does he tell them - with the rueful pessimism of the too-experienced - their exact ceiling and maximum career duration, just to get them thinking about their own impending demise? Does he try in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to end history with himself, making random dirty hits on semi-stars, knowing that his targets probably wouldn't retailiate, but who might provoke a season-cancelling brawl that spirals out into the end of the league and of basketball? Does he act as a sincere, role-playing mentor? I doubt that one most of all, even as I find his continued presence in the league plausible. But above all, I don't know, in the best possible way.

No, I don't know what Kobe in 2022 looks like, but it's a hell of a lot more interesting to think about than to focus on a Kobe that - like so many dismal dictators and demagogues - wants to use his talents for irritatingly selfish, megalomaniacal purposes. While that's part of the equation, it's just one variable in the input and output of Kobe's personality, a variable you could lose and still get most of the details right. Kobe is not Kobe without wounds and slights and the self-serving narratives that must run in his head and that must perpetually spill over into the collective minds of this league and his fans, with the media happening to catch a few strategically-placed drops.

Nowell has a great point that Kobe belongs precisely because he is different from (and morally challenging and compelling in his difference from) the rest of the league (and the rest of us) in his sheer irrationality and his unwavering confidence. I couldn't agree more, and yet it's not just efficiency and winning that mark the difference: Unlike fictional characters like Don Draper that are as limited and as well-conceived and as conflicted as his writers and actor Jon Hamm can provide, Kobe's limits and expressions are precisely those of life, and one day he will have to face death and retirement and sorrow and irrelevance and the shell of a legendary body, without the promise of another day to recast his legacy. I look at the glistening, masked, and gauzy mortality that may endure as the immortal memory of Kobe Bryant and wonder where he'll be in 2022, when perhaps for the crude statistical logic of media attention he is finally left alone with his legacy as his only comfort.