According to A Season on the Brink by John Feinstein, legendary Indiana coach Bob Knight once had a sign in his locker room reading "Victory favors the team making the fewest mistakes." Knight loved it. I do too. If you think about it, in a situation of uncertainty, that's all we can do. Try to get better, and try to make fewer mistakes than your opponent, if there are opponents involved. More broadly, coaches seem to understand at all times something that fans, commentators, and bloggers all at times seem to forget: you're in a game to compete with the other team, not to look competent, even if that's only a few letters off. Whether or not that's always possible with political and organizational realities is another matter altogether, but that's the job description, right after acting as leader and manager and putting the best sporting product on the floor. You have to compete. And competing means looking carefully at the levers by which wins are raised, and attempting to aggregate as much leverage for your team in a given match-up as possible, and denying the same to your opponents. That's -- in a nutshell -- what it means to compete.

Let's talk about mistakes.

• • •

While there are players that are simply mistake-prone by nature or inexperience, there's generally some sort of consistent schema or a mechanism in the sport by which players and teams make their various types of mistakes. For instance, "you don't know how to pass out of a post-up when they bring a certain type of pressure" or "you don't have the ability to score or shoot so they can play off you and pack the paint every single time." These schemas and mechanisms form much of the strategic calculus underlying competition. Simply stating "that's a mistake" may be accurate but it says very little. How something is a mistake, is far more important. It's not that the mistake occurred, it's how a team tilts the odds in its favor, how teams force mistakes, and how teams get themselves out of the situations that demand mistakes. There are little mistakes that can be corrected on their own terms, but to go further, to fix the mistakes that plague your team day by day, you have to solve the mechanisms by which the mistakes come about: the misconceptions about spacing, the troubles your team has against a press, the trouble you as a player have against back-door cutters. And so on and so forth. And the trouble your team has with turnovers.

As the title of this piece probably suggested, this is really about turnovers. Turnovers aren't just mistakes, and even to the extent they are, they need to be examined as part of the strategic fabric; after all, the absence of turnovers happens only in a simplified strategic situation. A turnover is not some nebulous failure of execution that happens when a certain neuron doesn't fire in the non-idiot section of the brain. Oh, sure, a turnover can be like that, or a young player that just whiffs on a pass. But most of the time we have to delve deeper, just the same way we wouldn't automatically dismiss bad shooting on a given night as either bad luck or horrible players or horrible shooters. Good players miss good shots, and a turnover, like a missed shot, can simply be the negative residue of a good decision made by players in a position of uncertainty.

We're no fools, generally speaking, in basketball. We get that there are "good and bad shots" that happen to miss because of random chance, even if the NBA is a "make-or-miss league". What's more... and this is key, there are shots that both the offensive and defensive team will live with in the competitive fabric, essentially saying "Good if it goes. Bad if it doesn't." or, more precisely, "Serge Ibaka taking that shot? Well, gee, we could both do better, but we could both do worse. At this point there's no point for the defense to contest it, and no point for the offense to go for a better shot. Serge Ibaka, this is your lucky day. Take that shot, Serge, so we can all stop standing around like idiots while essentially nothing unfolds but the slow march of seconds." (Much of the variance in a game comes from the outcomes of such shots that both teams decide to live with; in some sense this is the largest source of variance in the strategic calculus of a game, though I'm not sure yet how to phrase that constructively.)

Like good shots, we observers tend to be attuned to good plays and good decisions that simply don't work out, too: LeBron passing to an open Udonis Haslem instead of trying to drive on a lane-packing zone, for example. And turnovers can be part of those good decisions and good plays. This isn't universally the case, but I often see turnovers as just an unfortunate residue of a creative team and creative players that pass and create before they have perfect control of a situation (against defenses whose goal is to deny them this control). And if you accept all of this, then we as a group of observers need to have the discipline to live with those turnovers as fans if they're part of a decent plan, just like we live with missed open 3s by shooters from the wing and corner. I'm saying this because I'm a Spurs fan that watched San Antonio come up a bit short in Memphis last Friday night and dominate the Grizz in San Antonio Wednesday night.

In both games, turnovers were right at the center of things, present in one and absent in the other.

• • •

Fortunately for me, I actually wrote this piece about the Memphis game and turnovers last Friday, and had the opportunity to sort of soak up what I'd written and reconcile it with the rematch in San Antonio, and the ensuing adjustments. So let's start with Friday. The first item of note is that the overtime Memphis win had a nice ebb and flow to it. Great execution from beginning to end. Ultimately, Friday saw a very close game that the Grizzlies won on some close calls, and a phenomenal performance by Darrell Arthur late. The important thing to remember is that the Spurs (and Duncan specifically) had a lot of harmful turnovers, and with Memphis' personnel, those turnovers led (rather predictably) to:

1. A lot of friggin' points. As well as...
2. An understandable "all these turnovers make me sick!" reaction by Spurs fans.

I wanted to address that. Speaking personally as a Spurs fan, it's viscerally infuriating to see Tim Duncan lose the ball again and again against the Grizzlies, looking old and tired and mistake-prone. But the fact remains that on Friday, Duncan wasn't just making idiotic plays: Memphis was swarming him with their lengthy, athletic wings and guards. Since 2011, this has been one of the themes: Memphis has ably recognized Duncan's individual offensive skill, including his ability to make and receive passes, and to score good baskets from the mid-range despite advancing age. And Memphis, recognizing all of this, decided to cut that lever for their destruction off. If anyone gets the Spurs and Duncan and Popovich, it's the two teams that have co-opted them the most: the Grizzlies and Thunder (not coincidentally their two most recent playoff defeats).

The Grizzlies simply have a better understanding of Duncan's "old man game" than any other team in the league, and they aren't going to give Tim Duncan simple single-coverage where one of the smartest players in the league is given unlimited time to think and the best off-ball offense in the league has unlimited time to operate. So they denied Duncan the entry passes and the dribble on Friday. They didn't let Duncan dribble ("not even once") and they helped on him. They threw looks at him and forced him to react, and sometimes made even reaction impossible, because as soon as he dribbled they were on him. Despite that the whole of a good defense had been calculated to stop him, Duncan simply was not making glaring mistakes and the Spurs team as a whole weren't poorly executing (with perhaps the single exception of Gary Neal). The Spurs had decided to give Duncan the ball at the high post and the Grizzlies had decided to counter by helping off shooters.

This strategic equilibrium, perhaps not ideal for the Spurs (but plausible as an ideal) happened to lead to Spurs turnovers by the bunches. These teams have been stuck in this game since 2011 (and teams in general have been doing this to Duncan since he went to Wake). And ultimately, it wasn't a horrible strategy for either team. The Spurs still managed to score, and Duncan's interior passing (as well as Splitter/Diaw's) anchored the Spurs to a offensive game against a solid defensive team. Also, yes, there were turnovers. Occasional lapses in execution behind the turnovers explain a few of them, but overall the game was an example of excellent execution. Smart coaching, tenacious players on both teams that knew their roles, and the kind of control you get with good teams that don't leave their feet without purpose. That's where I'm coming from. But a lot of the reactions understandably fixated on turnovers as a great plague facing the Spurs. My response is: Okay, but do these turnover woes really justify radical changes? Are turnovers really hugely avoidable against Memphis? If so, does the solution have anything to do with the buzzword "execution"? I doubt it.

• • •

This is a line of questioning we now have a solid answer to. See, everything up to now I wrote on Friday, more or less, including that line of questioning. What was interesting to me about Wednesday's San Antonio blowout is that with Manu out and Parker not having an exceptional game, the key adjustment that the Spurs made offensively was (indeed) simply to limit the turnovers. And let's be clear here. Above I wasn't saying turnovers weren't bad or that they weren't the thing that cost the Spurs in that game. They were bad, and they did cost the Spurs, perhaps the entire game. I was saying that, even if that's true, Tim Duncan is a generational talent and, in a crucial way, still an efficient offensive player, even if his skill is now less of the "get buckets" variety, and more of the "navigate the complex strategic sub-games of an offense to reach win conditions effectively" type.

So, on Friday, it wasn't a horrible strategy by the Spurs to give Tim Duncan the ball on the low block or the elbow to initiate offense against the Grizzlies, a team that can defend all guards effectively and run out in transition off turnovers. The low block, after all, is close to the rim and ideal for hitting cutters and the corner three. And the elbow matches Duncan's midrange game perfectly, and he can also hit cutters and three point shooters from a central location. Guards like Chris Paul and Steve Nash relish the center of the paint at the free throw line on dribble-drives, but for a stationary big like Duncan, the edge of the paint is where he loves to operate. But, as Wednesday proved, the Spurs could certainly do better against a team like Memphis with their respective personnel. Their answer was to deliberately bring Duncan slightly back out of the offense. When he got the ball, Duncan seemed to operate from the space between the top of the key and the wing. Call it the elbow, but maybe take a few steps back. Which is to say that Tim Duncan was operating 20-22 feet from the basket. So not ideal by any stretch of the imagination. But by doing so, the Spurs' calculated adjustment thereby altered the geometry of the situation, in order to deny Memphis the chance to double and trap Duncan.

The adjustment worked; the Spurs ended up with just 13 turnovers, and Memphis apparently got zero fast break points the entire game, one of the many things that left their offense in shambles in the 2nd half. No easy buckets whatsoever. Why did it work? First of all, Memphis couldn't sensibly commit a trapping Tony Allen or Mike Conley to take Duncan off his dribble. In fact, on a semi-related note, when Tony Allen tried to over-help off a shooter at one point, Duncan punished Allen severely with a sharp pass to the open man. Duncan isn't a serious dribble-drive threat from 22 feet, but that simply meant Duncan had an unmolested look at the basket. Second, placing Duncan at 22 feet gave Memphis a much trickier decision even for the single defender (Marc Gasol): while Duncan is only an above-average mid-range shooter this season (Tim shoots about 4 per game from 16-23 hitting 43.5% according to Basketball-Reference), he flirts with the elite in that category regularly enough to make a consistently open shot a dangerous concession. What's more, the Spurs offense is predicated to an extent on avoiding mistakes. So many of their easy looks come from good teams turning their heads for a second while Danny Green or Kawhi Leonard cuts to the rim. Marc Gasol is an excellent rim protector, but he certainly isn't if he's 20 feet from the basket guarding Tim Duncan at the elbow. And so Marc stayed back.

On a related note: the Spurs offense is great partially because even if you deny cutters by staying home in the paint, their open shooters kill you. Memphis being unable to trap Tim Duncan without overhelping off open shooters, then, turns out to be quite a huge deal in the structure of the game. And on Wednesday they couldn't trap or steal from Duncan, and for the Grizzlies' sake, their offense was stuck in half-court mode the whole game, which is where their poor spacing bit them in the 2nd half. The Spurs didn't significantly cut down on turnovers from Friday to Wednesday (18 to 13), but they did cut down on the types of turnovers that the Grizzlies got low-risk, high-reward situations from. And I suppose that's part of what I'm getting at: If your team is coughing up the ball, it's worth it to see if they're genuinely coughing up spots of blood or if they're just getting a good, high-percentage idea out of their system that didn't turn out so well.

That metaphor went somewhere, didn't it?

• • •

I'm a Spurs fan, obviously. Less obviously, the 2011 series between these two teams marked a change in the way I viewed basketball. The two teams played in a way that you could really suss out with study and experience, in a series that genuinely came down to minor adjustments and how certain players were playing from game to game. Defensively, Duncan looked about 40 years old for stretches in that series, and likely had suffered an ankle injury earlier that season in silence. Manu Ginobili was at 85% (which is still really, really good, it should be noted) and had broken his arm just a week before. And Memphis was able to obliterate Tony Parker. Still, it was a 6-game, well-contested series, and the Spurs and Grizzlies traded often brilliantly-executed, gritty, tough basketball. Although Zach Randolph had the series of his life, anyone that watched that series had to gain a lot of respect for that whole Grizzlies team as competitors, and if nothing else, for the Spurs as competitors.

The Gary Neal shot (and the preceding run of buckets the Spurs got in the final minute) remains one of my favorite basketball memories of all time, and in a fit of curiosity, I vowed to document every possession of the series on my old blog. I didn't complete that particular project. But I did get an entire six minute stretch done and the insights gleaned to this day help me think through this match-up. Moreover, I gained a strong appreciation for two of the most iconic teams in the league today. Sometimes I look at other teams in the league and just notice something missing. Thibodeau's teams that can't get buckets for stretches, Indiana's own inability to score a bucket, the depressingly baroque Mavericks, the Morey Rockets in the pre-Harden era, the hyper-spaced Woodson Knicks, the post-Ubuntu Celtics, the pre-smallball Heat, and so on. And it just seems kind of shady, like they're trying to manufacture wins with almost cynical efficiency. There's a maddening incoherency to teams that can't score for stretches and a maddening blase randomness to teams that don't defend and don't move off the ball on offense.

As for these two teams? Memphis and San Antonio -- while both having diagnosable issues -- aren't holding anything in reserve, and they aren't being anything but on the level with who they are and what they bring to the table. The Grizzlies are missing good shooters, and the Spurs are missing perimeter defense and a fourth big. They're tired, gritty, methodical teams that get up for the games when they need to. They're smart teams with an ethos and usually bring their best to the playoffs, and sometimes, a six-minute stretch can give you a pretty darn good idea of where the two teams are respectively, a stretch that can make you forget all about sample size and withholding judgments. Look, the Grizzlies are still a bad match for the Spurs. In some sense nothing has changed. But something about the essence of the sport, something more eternal than other games, can be found in the simple matchup of 10 players that know where they are and what they're doing. It's in that spirit that I wrote a piece about the night the Spurs -- somewhat unexpectedly -- made the fewest mistakes. Thanks for reading.

Gregg Popovich acted in bad faith in resting his starters the way he did. Pop should have been more discreet and subtle about sitting his four best players. The message here isn't that teams can't rest players. They can, and they will. But be discreet about it. Be smart about it. Communicate it. And show some concern for the sometimes futile, often unfair exercise known as the NBA regular season, without which no championships can be won and no dynasties formed.

This is an attempt at summarizing the general point against Coach Popovich's decision. It's a set of arguments that deserves examination, both on their numerous merits and faults. Ken Berger's piece is an excellent summation -- "keep up appearances" even if it is slightly dishonest. You can tank, but dear god, don't say you're tanking. Don't say you're taking nights off and that the plane has already left for San Antonio. Keep them around, report an injury, keep it hush-hush. When I read the tone of this general argument, I disagreed fundamentally and didn't quite know why. Sure, Berger's tone in certain passages serves to undermine his argument to the casual reader (For instance... "But let's play along for a moment, shall we? Let's play along better than the Spurs did." What? How is that anything other than inflammatory?) But it's an overall solid take on the situation, and one that you can't ignore.

• • •

Little White Lies

I landed in a long Twitter argument with Matt Moore centering on Berger's article, one that I don't wish to call back to in a broader sense. But one example stood out. Moore mentioned that you can claim you're feeling sick to get out of a boring co-worker's party, and that doing so is far preferable to calling them boring to their face. That's a powerful example: "Little white lies" are great for seamlessly getting us out of obligations that may not be good for us or we may not enjoy. Keeping up appearances is important, because you have to see that co-worker again and again, and everyone suffers, just because you decided to be honest to your co-worker. Dave Chappelle had a wonderful set of sketches on his show back in the day about "When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong".

Well, that's what the Spurs did on Thursday.

Yes, rest is important, and for the Spurs not to acknowledge this fact in 2012 would be foolish. Yes, inter-conference games have a low incentive to win relative to conference and divisional games, except (generally speaking) as statement games for Eastern teams and gimmes for Western teams. Sure, the regular season is probably way too long for the idealized season of basketball health, and plenty of coaches less noble and/or less empowered than Popovich (*cough*, Thibodeau, *cough*) wear out their starters to often-horrifying effects, and this is clearly a bad thing. All of this is true.

Sidenote: This is especially true for older players, and the more we learn about medical science, the more we learn how crucial rest is (look at the concussion debate in the NFL; rest is one of the most important points in any sport's concussion policy). And the risk of fluke injuries and overwork is ever-present. Look at Tim Duncan in 2009 and 2010 playoffs, as Spurs beat writer Jeff McDonald reminds us. Or, just as notably, look at Manu's elbow injury in 2011 that quite conceivably cost the Spurs a playoff series against Memphis. The freak injury was suffered during a meaningless game in Phoenix at the end of the season.

But they still goofed. Badly. The Spurs refused to give the league any advance notice of the impending rest-game, despite (in Coach Pop's own words) knowing since they first saw the schedule that the Heat game would be "one of those" rest games. For all the arguments in favor of why they did it, few actually address how they did it. Because, frankly, it's indefensible. Popovich being Popovich, in his usual caustic way. And Berger correctly notes that the manner in which Popovich approached the rest -- if perhaps not pointedly inflammatory -- was so completely tone-deaf it does merit some sort of acknowledgment, punishment, or course adjustment. Decorum and standards aren't everything, but they aren't nothing either. Let's play the co-worker argument out again, as it should've happened and as Popovich should've handled it: you tell your co-worker that you need some rest, they accept it and everyone moves on with their lives, the party a little poorer for your absence, the boring co-worker happy in his boring party with his boring acquaintances, and you're living it up at home, watching the Spurs torch the Miami Heat and lose in the end, but not without giving everyone an entertaining little romp. Everyone wins for this little deception. Right? I think so. Little white lies save the day. The End, everyone's happy.

• • •

Except, wait. Maybe not. Your co-worker announces after the success of his party last night that he's going to have a party every two weeks, and you're always invited over! Even if you're sick sometimes, even if you have a doctor's appointment, he will accommodate you and request your presence another Thursday night! You have no excuse not to go, now! Haha, screw your life! This is the part where you tell him he's boring to his face. I mean, unless you're in the bridge burning business, you probably don't put it quite like that. You probably say "I'm not a big party guy, I'm not very social. We kinda have other interests. Not so big on strobe black lights set to isolated bass tracks from Metallica put on a mind-numbingly loud speaker for six hours straight, as you are." Your co-worker nods grimly, hearing the subtext. You're never going to be his good buddy.

But ultimately, he moves on with his life, and you are feel free to put in the odd occasion at his place or find something mutually agreeable, supposing he's a decent person that you can get along with, at least. That's if you eschew the lies. The little white lies can't address systematic problems, and I don't hope you'll try. Try to address that situation with your co-worker again with little white lies. Say you're busy with a doctor's appointment. Say you are in a bowling league. Say something different every fortnight, whatever you want to get out of your biweekly travesty... and one of two things will happen: 1. He gets the hint, and finds your treatment of the situation extremely disrespectful (as it is). 2. He doesn't get the hint and assumes you're living a life that is totally tightly-scheduled and rarely available -- in short, an interesting or eventful life that you haven't thought him worthy of forming even a small part. I'd find that latter possibility a lot more insulting than just being called boring.

When you apply little white lies to systematic situations, the result is a culture of deception and a pernicious policy of bad faith. And systemic bad faith has a way of sliding into the kind of bad faith that makes Popovich's bad faith in sending four players home look like The Giving Tree. Don't buy it? Well, just look at this laughably sneaky move undertaken by the Warriors. Little white lies to preserve the bottom line that spiral into grand deception. Tanking is fine by me, but not disclosing that you're tanking by hiding valuable information from your loyal-to-a-fault fans for months? THAT'S inexcusable, and unlike the Spurs' "probably should have given more than a couple hours' notice" sneakiness, it probably cost a number of season ticket holders thousands of dollars apiece on the margins. The bottom line is that this scandal that actually cost middle-class fans thousands of dollars got pushed to the back page by a much more innocuous story, and why?

Because lying about major injuries has become so commonplace that it hardly bears mention.

Pressuring injured players to return with deliberately liberal timelines (the old saw "day-to-day" was addressed in The Breaks of the Game) is as old as the injured list itself. So the Spurs should've told a fib, sure, or at least been a bit more discreet. They should've kept up appearances. And for that, it was reasonable and right that they be punished, even if you think they were in the right. And so Berger's point is well-taken. But it's important to delineate a broader point where it falls apart: keeping up appearances can never be a substitute for systematically good incentives and good products. Keeping up appearances can never be a substitute for marketing creativity or recognizing what the product you're bringing to the table is. And keeping up appearances is a short-term solution, a band-aid, in the parlance, to problems that often go much more deeper than appearances can ever address.

• • •

"I know you hate the Heat, bro. But Tiago Splitter, bro. The Spurs are [fornification throwback word] amazing. Boris Diaw is like staring at a lava lamp set on full chill mode. Way better than Richard Jefferson. I shouldn't have tried to sell you on RJ last season, bro needed a pat on the back just to stay in the game against the Heat. No confidence at all. I'm sorry about that, bro, that was embarrassing, and I was wrong. Come on, change the channel to TNT. Bro. Bro."

-- 99% of my conversations with other people, in short.

Which brings me to Nando De Colo. Tiago Splitter. Matt Bonner. Gary Neal. Boris Diaw. Patty Mills. Household names. ... Well, obviously not. That's what this whole thing is about, right? That those players are unmarketable non-entities that probably can't sell the casual fan to tune into on the margin. The Spurs threw the league under the bus on Thursday, even if the outcome was fine. I get this sentiment, but look more broadly: it's a self-deconstructing argument! The league itself threw the league under the bus in its marketing strategy by making that lineup impossible to market.

Consider: thanks partially to these players, since late 2010, the Spurs are in the midst of one of the more dominant regular season stretches in NBA history. They are also all international stars, both in terms of where they've played (all of them played overseas), and in terms of what nations they represent (Brazil, France, Australia, Canada on a technicality, France). Bonner is a self-deprecating, seven-foot tall, utterly unique player with a sandwich blog who parties with Arcade Fire. Patty Mills is one of the fastest, most energetic players in a league of fast-moving athletes and an inspiration to an entire peoples. Diaw is one of the best passing bigs in recent memory, and a hilarious-looking player with a funny shot. This isn't to advocate on these players' behalf, necessarily. Just to show that it can be done. And, considering the number of international players, that this sort of thing should already have been done! There's a finite quantity of beloved players, but the NBA is far from saturated when Australia's star speedster (and someone that absolutely lit up our Team USA Olympian best this summer) is a non-entity.

Stern's league of stars abides no framework for these interesting, entertaining, teamwork-heavy players that don't quite fit onto a cereal box. Instead of encouraging the unfamiliar, the international, and the elite, Stern actively punishes teams that showcase these players because they aren't already established stars, like (ironically) Parker and Ginobili. I say "ironically" because Parker and Ginobili (and Duncan, to a lesser extent) only won begrudging respect from fans by cutting their teeth in three championship runs that made it impossible to marginalize them with "soft" labels. And even after establishing themselves in every way it is possible for a player to do, the NBA has traditionally done Parker and Ginobili no favors in terms of marketing except for existing as a showcase for their now-legendary skills. Consider that both Parker and Ginobili have had to operate at barely-sub-MVP levels at times simply to get All-Star levels of respect (much less MVP talk), even while doing certain things historically well. And yet, these are the players that Stern has designated as being so crucial to the appeal of the Spurs that sitting them was apparently a travesty worthy of censure and sanction.

That's the irony. Stern is saying that he'll do these players no favors in terms of marketing, and yet, when they become established, they are socially obligated to do him the favor of showing "good faith". All the while players that could be getting plenty of marketing their way (the new generation of Spurs' foreign players), the league is found wanting there. If the Spurs are throwing the league under the bus by not giving fans Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, then what precisely has the league done in failing to promote these legends before their primes are soon finished? If the Spurs are throwing the league under the bus by giving them apparently random foreign players (that just happened to, without exception, play splendid ball for their countries' Olympic teams), then what precisely has the league done in allowing the entire bench of a great team to escape the notice of casual fans?

The Seven Seconds or Less era was wonderful and entertaining, but perhaps it was more than anything else the prototype of a new way to market the sport. Bill Simmons once called them a "critically acclaimed" team (a back-handed compliment for their inability to get a ring, to be sure). That's the thing about the Suns: you could market them as an international force. You could market them as an exciting combination of athleticism and vision and cohesion. You could market them (and all their next-generation acolytes like the Triangle Lakers, the Motion Spurs, the Ubuntu Celtics, the Grindhouse Grizzlies, and the Program Thunder), not just as a collection of well-documented and compelling individuals, but a true team. The lights have changed, and you don't have to be a diehard to appreciate it. And I wonder if Stern's noticed. Based on his rigid implied treatment of the Spurs as three marquee stars plus an incidental supporting cast, it's safe to assume until proven otherwise that Stern simply hasn't noticed. While the Spurs will likely make some minor institutional tweaks, I'm guessing they'll be the first to admit that staying ahead of the curve in terms of how a modern, international team ought to be run is worth more than $250,000.

And if the NBA's designated international wizard -- David Stern -- had considered it in that context? He might agree.

• • •

You're reading your favorite basketball blog. Today (finally!) they've got some power rankings up. You scroll down the page with glee, and immediately searching for your favorite team. With horror, though -- 50 wins, ranked 10th? "No, this can't be!" you shout to the heavens. "Why?" The writer (that cad!) has a reasonable response: your best player is, in fact, injured for the opener. That will probably cost your team some games and slow down the development of your team's chemistry. Rough going. "Fair enough," you shrug and acknowledge. After all, this guy knows what he's doing. You move on with your day.

... but not before checking the rest of the list. Huge mistake. Because now you begin to notice that your favorite team's divisional rival is listed at 58 wins, even though their best player is also injured. What's the explanation? Well, this injury may be just as harmful, but at least it will force their uncreative coach into small ball lineups, which are eminently more effective with such a roster. You huff. You puff. And then you get mad. You state strongly to your computer screen a lot of uncomfortably valid objections:

• "But my coach is actually creative with lineups! Why should we expect a bad coach being forced into small ball be more effective than my coach who has been using small ball correctly since the days of Don Nelson in Dallas!"

• "Even if that's true, what happens when their short small ball lineup has to sub out for the 8th-12th spots in the rotation, because those are the only players left? Why is this kind of a forced situation, replete with borderline D-leaguers, remotely preferable to having 7-9 rotation-level players to choose from on any given night? Why is this kind of a forced situation better than my forced situation, considering mine doesn't substantially affect the minutes allocation for anyone beyond the 10th man?"

Most importantly:

• "Why does their team get the benefit of the broken-window fallacy while my team is presumed to take the full chemistry-and-efficiency loss right on the chin? What is up with this writer's pernicious, unstated double-standard?"

So your day went from a happy one to a sad one in about two minutes, and all the unfairness of life has come back to mystify you again. "Who's this human trashcan, and why does he like the __<EXPLETIVE DELETED> Los Angeles _Clippers so much?"_ you ask. You suppose sadly that there will be other articles that you'll read, someday, but never again will these articles be read by one so innocent as you before the reading. Weeks later, you remain an avid visitor to the site. Unfortunately, your visits are now tinged with pure spite and furious disdain instead of unbridled joy and the desire for knowledge and informed opinions. You leave vicious comments. You have officiallybecome a troll. This "Choose Your Own Adventure" story is complete.

How could this situation have been prevented?

• • •

Baroque Standards & the Rank Problems

One thing that surprised me a few years ago is that is that it's totally possible for me to improvise half-decent fugues and canons on my personal piano. Certainly nothing to write home about, in my case, but it was still surprising. I've been playing piano for quite a long time, but I'm no savant -- just a mediocre player. But I'd read and heard about all these elaborate fugues and thought "Wow, how could anyone be that brilliant, just to get started?". Well, it's not as hard as I thought. I sat down and tried it. Used some basic harmonic and rhythmic tricks to keep the piece driving, you know? Focus on the bass, focus on the themes, and put it together. Simple. The composers of the Baroque era had a few themes that they were able to get a handle on, a few short phrases, and then they'd set the metronome working and see what fit. They did it long enough and the structures grew at once more complex and more direct, over a few hundred years. It was a process.

• • •

The Door's Locked -- a New Way In

Power rankings are constructed to be easy to improvise and go down the list in a few sittings. You could design a half-credible flow chart as to how most people compose them. "Here's the top team in the league.", "Now who's worse?", "How much are they worse by?", "Did I miss a team?", etc. The point of power rankings and their structure is to quickly get something written about every team. It's a sports-writing gimmick, not that there's anything wrong with that. That problem with divisional rivals getting the baroque treatment? It's a totally valid concern. But it comes from the fact that no one can keep in their heads 30 teams and the subtle balances of power that something like an injury will affect. And it's a zero-sum season: You think the Spurs will win 55 games this season? Alright, but that also means there are 55 fewer wins up for grabs for the rest of the teams, 5 fewer available than for someone else predicting the Spurs win 50. No one has the entire schedule in their heads. No one knows the minor detail that the Warriors play the Suns first game of the season so an injury probably won't affect their win/loss record... or, if they do, no one can balance that detail with the schedules of the Spurs and Mavs and Lakers and Clippers, etc., and engineer the perfect mental model to explicate the subtle calculus of injuries and limited options and just plain unknowns that are so endemic to sports.

Power rankings offer a quick, elegant, reductive way out. Go team by team, and if you don't like it, change up some numbers. In a roundabout way, it's also the famous problem of stats vs. intuition. Not usually a strict "stats vs. eyes" debate as some would like to believe; instead, it's usually a debate between one person's pet set of statistics and interpretations versus another's pet set. You might be able to project that Eric Gordon is a better player than last season, yes. Valid qualitative observation. But how do you balance that with a lot of other shooting guards also getting better? How do you weigh the statistical effect of rule changes, like the rip-through-foul getting altered before last season? How do you take into account Gordon's changed role on a (vastly) changed team? How do you compare how his improvement affects his team to how other similar shooting guards will effect theirs? What about the risk of uncertainty - did you scout him last season? Did you document him last season? Even if you did -- how do you know it's not your eyes that changed? How do you know the stats he has put up so far mean the same thing they did last season?

This isn't necessarily to advocate for more statistics -- common interpretations of stats suffer similar problems. As soon as you pretend otherwise, as soon as you try to run without shoes in the winter, you start to stub your toes and feel the frostbite. SRS for Miami does not have the same meaning as SRS for Boston, even though the calculation is made the same way, even if you adjust for pace. They play a different way qualitatively, and SRS can't necessarily capture that, especially when you get down to the level of matchups. All SRS does is give you a good and immediate sense of a team's quality. So you make an internal decision. Is Miami better than their SRS? Is Boston better than theirs? Let's look at more stats! But then, infuriatingly, you're back where you started. And you're back to intuition, and looking at secondary and tertiary stats and trying to glean significance. "How bad will the Clippers (or Spurs) be at protecting the rim? Is this an epochal concern, or is it going to amount to 1 point per 100 possessions? Will teams plan to get to the rim more often, making it a much worse flaw than last year's stats suggest? Or are those stats already taking that into account?"

The point here is to recognize that when people (be they writers or fans or soulless statisticians [Ed. Note: Hey, I heard that.]) make these sorts of advanced projections about hundreds of unknown variables, these are the pitfalls. Baroque reasoning must become endemic to how we approach dealing with a lot of data. We need to realize that self-consistent stats tables on the one hand and (totally baroque) presentations like power rankings don't offer a way out. They offer a way in, for writers to check the thermostat while setting it until the room feels comfortable. We all know that setting the thermostat doesn't mean everyone else in the room will be comfortable. It's a complicated problem and instead of admitting that we are cosmically adrift trying to make sense of an unknowable problem, we still want to boldly insist that we know the standings of the West in five months, or that the only unknowns relevant to our prediction are simple, bite-sized factoids like whether Manu will be healthy in March.

You may be totally right about the Clippers being worse than those power rankings suggest. Or you simply may be right that self-consistency is missing from the rankings -- but try doing the power rankings yourself. You'll find them exceedingly easy to begin, and then, if you're already this kind of a daring soul, you'll end up where all of us end up in the land of power rankings: going absolutely nuts trying to get them right and perfectly balanced. Eventually you'll settle on some sort of mind-shattering movie set to Bach as you indifferently hit "Publish," sending the rankings for all the world to see, as though your mouse is the trigger of a gun. You know not how much fury you'll cause to your readers, and then you'll laugh yourself to a restless sleep. You wake up in a cold sweat, wishing to God you'd ranked the Clippers lower. I mean, after all. Your ranking is based on Lamar Odom being healthy and willing to play 20+ mpg, and Ryan Hollins being an asset, and 40 year old players providing serious contributions, and just this huge myriad of --

... I mean, seriously, it's just not happening. Sorry.

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.

This was an idea we had a few weeks back, when I posted the "Last 21 Game" efficiency rating posts both here and at 48 Minutes of Hell. An understated aspect of those posts that I was experimenting with was that I, for the day it was posted, attempted to respond to every twitter question regarding the stats used (or any statistical trend readers wanted to hear about). Probably should've advertised it more.

In a combined sense, I got a lot of great questions from the 48MoH commenters and my twitter followers -- so many, in fact, that I'd like to codify it and make it a feature. As it's memorial day, I have the day off and have a chance to actually spend most of the day sifting through data, and it's a good opportunity to kick this off. To start the discussion, here's a table of team playoff efficiency stats vs regular season efficiency stats.

• • •

A few notes, perhaps to help the questions arise:

• Somewhat impressively, Memphis and Denver finished their first round series with positive efficiency differentials. Given that the Lakers and the Clippers got curbstomped in the second round, it leads one to an interesting question: would Memphis and Denver have been stronger second round foes for the Spurs and the Thunder?

• While everyone waxes poetic about the Spurs offense, and asked how the Spurs would respond to a stout Thunder defense, it's worth noting that the Spurs are also the best defense the Thunder have faced so far as well. In last night's game, I thought the most interesting fact wasn't just the fact that the Spurs offense found itself challenged by the OKC defense -- it was also the OKC offense finding itself shiftless against the best defense that it's faced so far, as well. The only one "better" were the Mavericks, whose defensive rating is a bit misleading -- they haven't been a top 10 defensive team in the last half of the season and their playoff performance matched their second half stats far more than their first half stats.

• The much-ballyhooed slowing of pace that comes with the playoffs has occurred in force, with the playoff-average pace of 91.1 falling all the way to 88.9. The biggest offenders? The Knicks fell from 93.2 possessions per game in the regular season to 86.9 in the playoffs, a difference of 6.3 possessions per game. Also notable were the Nuggets (who fell 3.9 possessions per game) and the Thunder (who have fallen 3.3 possessions per game). The Clippers, Jazz and Spurs have scarcely fallen at all, though -- an indication that the Spurs have in large part succeeded in forcing the tempo. In last night's game, they succeeded in kind, as the game was played at a blistering pace of 95.9.

• • •

QUESTION #1: Do you think the San Antonio adjusts more to the length and athleticism of Oklahoma City in game two? Or do you think they'll have the same struggles they had in the first three quarters? from @NoSwaggT

A little of both. I thought the Spurs offense struggled a bit too much, in game 1. Some of that is very replicable for the Thunder -- they're a better defense than either the Clippers or the Jazz, after all. And they seemed to have done an excellent job scouting the Spurs offense. One of the biggest things Memphis did to drive last year's upset was disrupt the Spurs' passing lanes -- the Thunder were following the Grizzlies' playbook to a T in terms of passing disruption, and it showed in their ability to get the Spurs to revert to an isolation-heavy offense for many stretches of last night's game. So in that sense, the struggles won't be entirely abated.

But there are reasons to think that the Spurs' fourth quarter explosion wasn't a fluke, either. First, the Spurs reverted to the same ball movement that they had success with during the regular season -- by percentage, there were more PnR/cutting plays in the fourth than in the first few quarters. Second, the Spurs absolutely missed a bevy of open shots in the first half that very nearly cost them the game, as well as a remarkably poor transition attack. In the fourth, they hit their open shots and stopped doing the things that weren't working (like transition offense).

Which probably deserves its own notation. While the Thunder's transition defense was about as good as you get, it's hard to imagine the Spurs scoring 0.4 points per transition possession as the series goes on, especially since they averaged an NBA-best 1.24 points per possession in transition during the regular season. Over a full series, the Spurs will shoot a bit better on open threes and won't be so lost in transition. But the Thunder's advantage in the passing lanes and their well-scouted defensive attack won't go away -- the question now is how well Pop adjusts to it. In last year's Memphis series, he didn't do a particularly good job -- this year, though, the personell is better and the Spurs' current defensive attack is much, much better than last. I think they can adjust, but the Thunder aren't going to miss all their open shots on a regular basis either.

• • •

QUESTION #2: How often does Tiago score on pick and rolls? from @_chrisblack

Quite a lot. In 168 possessions as the roll man on the pick and roll, Tiago averages 1.32 points per possession -- he scores 66.7% of the time in those situations, and finishes baskets at a 71% conversion rate on 121 shots. Twelve of Tiago's 28 and -1 baskets came on the pick and roll this year. It's one of the most deadly offensive tools in the Spurs' arsenal, and the chemistry between Manu and Tiago is something to keep an eye on every time they share the court.

• • •

QUESTION #3: Has the east been worse offensively in the playoffs? Or has pace just slowed down and the lower scores happened because of it? from @sstewart1617

Good question. It's not just the pace, nope. In the regular season, the East's 8 playoff teams averaged an offensive rating of 105. Not incredible, but well above average. In the playoffs? Try 98. A decrease of 7 points per 100 possessions, pace-adjusted. If you feel like the East wasn't this unwatchable in the regular season, you'd be right -- it wasn't. The offense we've seen in the east so far has been a special kind of awful.

• • •

QUESTION #4: Does the high mpg that guys like Kobe and LeBron play actually make a difference in their play in the 4th? Or late in a series? from @sstewart1617

I don't have a ton of stats on this, but the eye test would tend to say yes, at least for me. For an example, I'd look at the last two years of titles -- while Kobe played very well for most of the finals, he broke down late in the fourth in several key games of the 2010 finals, with an emphasis on his clunker in game 7 that most people remember but never properly contextualize -- Kobe had played an insane number of minutes the entire playoffs, and was coming off two games of virtuoso performances. He looked exhausted, and by all accounts, he was. Last year's finals have gotten a lot of press, but not necessarily for the reasons they should. LeBron was absolutely worn down by the end of games once he got to the finals -- part of that was the excellent Dallas defense (and their effective "force LeBron to run around" scheme), but part of that was the fact that Spolestra had played him 44 minutes per game in the playoffs up to the finals, then increased his minutes load when they got there. The same was actually true in 2007, when LeBron had the first awful series of his life against the champion 2007 Spurs. Part of it was obviously Bowen, but people rarely understand just how awful Bruce was at guarding LeBron during the regular season. He used to be terrible at it. If LeBron hadn't been completely exhausted by the finals, having played 45 minutes per game in the run-up, it's likely that the 2007 finals would have been at least slightly more competitive than the annihilation they became.

Long story short? If you have good defenders, it's a lot easier to guard a player when they're exhausted and can't get their legs under their shot.

• • •

QUESTION #5: What's OKC's best crunch time lineup? Are they making a mistake by not playing Sefalosha in the 4th? from @steven_lebron

I don't have stats on how OKC's lineups performed at specific times of the game, but it looks unlikely Thabo is part of those lineups. According to Basketball-Value, the only lineup Thabo played in that got more than 20 minutes of burn in the regular season with a +/- better than their season average was a Westbrook-Thabo-Durant-Ibaka-Collison lineup that registered a +11.9 in 21.99 minutes of play -- other than that, he had just two lineups that fit that criterion; one with a negative differential and one representing his time with the starting unit, where the team produced slightly under their season average production. This is backed up by Thabo's stats on 82Games.com, where his clutch stats indicate that the team was markedly worse in the clutch when Thabo was on the floor.

• • •

QUESTION #6: Kawhi Leonard had the worst +/- at -16. This may mean nothing, but what did KL do poorly in game 1? How can he improve? from @TBJ_soldier

He actually didn't do that bad a job defending Durant -- while Jackson did a better job cutting off Durant's shots, he also fouled him on every other possession and gave the Thunder free points at the line. Consider the stats from the game, here. With Kawhi on the floor, Durant shot 47% from the field, to 25% when Kawhi was off the floor. However, he also averaged only 6 FTA per 36 minutes and 6 rebounds per 36 minutes. With Jackson on the floor, Durant averaged 16 FTA per 36 and 12 rebounds -- both of these are obviously well above his season averages. Jackson also held him to 25% shooting, which is incredible. Anyway. Kawhi did a very good job keeping Durant under his usual free throw attempts and provided a very different defensive look on KD. As for what he did poorly? Primarily offense. He averaged 1.05 points per possession in the regular season, with 1.39 off the cut and 1.31 in transition. In game 1, he shot 33% from three, 2-6 from two point range, and turned the ball over twice for an abysmal 0.64 PPP, the 2nd worst total on the team. In game two, he needs to actually make the open shots he missed during the opening salvo and continue playing Durant tough. Also, continue rebounding -- Kawhi was a major part of the Spurs' huge advantage in rebounding percentage during the game, and that may have been the factor that decided the game in the first place.

• • •

QUESTION #7: how many charlotte bobcats from @CardboardGerald

There were 16 players who suited up for the Charlotte Bobcats this season. The number 16 is notable because it is the number that Hall of Fame Power Forward Matt Bonner wore in his first two years with the Charlotte Bobcats. This is the only reason such a number is notable.

• • •

QUESTION #8: Who's played better defense on star guards/forwards, Danny Green or Kahwi Leaonard? from @sstewart1617

Clearly, Danny Green. Kahwi Leaonard is not a person who exists, Sam. ... Okay, for real though. Green's defense has been overall worse than Kawhi's this year, at least in the overall synergy numbers and through +/-. It's arguable that Kawhi has played far more minutes on better players, too, given that Pop has tended to give Kawhi the Bowen-esque assignments without remorse. I'm not sure of the best way to quickly get you an answer on this, so I'd go with my intuition and say that Kawhi probably got harder matchups and played more minutes on star players, meaning that the large gap between him and Danny in the overall numbers would therefore extend to star players as well.

• • •

QUESTION #9: Is Tiago Splitter's cuteness to effectiveness ratio the best in the NBA? from @sstewart1617's wife

Probably not. The "cuteness to effectiveness" ratio is probably a stat that would underrate Tiago. He's simply too effective -- even if you give him 5 or 6 on a 10 point cuteness scale, he's _certainly_got a high number on the effectiveness scale. Compare that to, say, someone like Nick Young (who my friend Monique has a decisive crush on) or someone like Gordon Hayward or George Hill who have high reported cuteness but markedly lower effectiveness. Probably not a very favorable stat for Tiago, all things considered. Sorry.

• • •

QUESTION #10: It wasn't his shooting hand, but is there any statistical correlation between Tiago's hand injury and his sudden drop in FT%? from @calebjsaenz

That's a really good observation. The injury Caleb is referring to occurred in game 2 of the NBA playoffs, where Tiago suffered a sprained left wrist on a freak fall in the first quarter. Splitting Tiago's free throws by pre-injury and post-injury, you get the following split:

• Pre-Injury, Tiago made 125 out of 183 free throws this season -- or, 68.3%.
• Post-Injury, Tiago made 9 out of 28 free throws this season -- or, 32.1%.

• • •

QUESTION #11: Who gains the most from playing small in the WCF, the Spurs or the Thunder? And how did Boston fare against lineups with LeBron playing PF? from Jared Dubin of Hardwood Paroxysm

Jared always asks the tough questions!

Over the whole season, the Spurs had limited-to-none success with true smallball. No lineup with Duncan at C and a non-big at PF that played over 19 minutes in the regular season registered an above-0.500 winning percentage. The same was true for Tiago Splitter, the next most commonly played center on San Antonio's roster. Thunder lineups with Durant at the 4 played significantly better, putting up a net rating of +15.3 in serious minutes and showing themselves to be one of the best possible configurations of the Thunder's roster. Personally, I'm not convinced that this lineup is going to be nearly as effective against San Antonio. The biggest problem the Thunder face against the Spurs -- beyond the obvious defensive problem of keeping San Antonio's league-best offense in check -- is rebounding. I covered extensively in my Thunder/Spurs preview the problems facing the Thunder on the boards, and while Durant is a great rebounder at the four, I'm not sure he can hack it on the boards against the front lines the Spurs will be putting out there in this series. So I think it's a general push, personally.

As for the second question, I've put together a spreadsheet that details every instance of LeBron at the four during the regular season. In about 70 regular season minutes across 4 games against Boston, lineups with LeBron at the four ended up with a net rating of +0.0. Yes, exactly zero. They gave up as many points as they scored (161 both ways). This might sound strange, but it's actually a pretty good result for the Heat -- the Celtics beat the Heat 3/4 times this season, with an average differential of +7.8. For a lineup to have +0.0 when the overall picture is that bleak, that's a reasonably good result. And a good sign that even with Bosh out, the Heat aren't exactly chopped liver if they play the LeBron at the 4 lineup. Especially considering the Celtics are missing Avery Bradley, and may as well be missing Ray Allen at this point.

• • •

QUESTION #12: I'm interested in the Spurs' success relative to possessions per game. Is there a number of possessions per game that seem to treat them unfavorably? That is, say, less than 90 or some such. Is there actually a pace at which they play better or worse, or is that just something we make up? from Timothy Varner of 48 Minutes of Hell

Interesting query. There does seem to be a slight correlation. Per Hoopdata calculations, when the Spurs use over 95 possessions in a game, they're virtually unbeatable -- they're 29-3, with one of the three losses the loss to Portland where Pop sat every starter but Kawhi and didn't give a crap about anything. However, their record is relatively indistinguishable in the super-low ranges to the mid-tier ranges of possessions per game -- to wit, the Spurs are 5-4 at under 91 possessions and 17-9 in games where they use 91-95 possessions. So it appears that slower is better, for Spurs opponents. But it's extremely rare that the Spurs actually allow their opponents to dictate the tempo and force a game to be as slow as that. Still. The relationship is there.

• • •

QUESTION #13: What have the Celtics' most effective defensive lineups been over the course of the postseason, and who has led the Heat's offensive resurgence? from @NickFlynt

Essentially, any lineup starring Kevin Garnett. Lineups with Garnett in them have had a combined defensive rating of 86.9, which is nothing if not bananaphones. No other player on the team is close, with Avery Bradley the only other rotation player with an on-court DRtg under 90. As for the Heat, you might be surprised to hear it, but it's the bench. Ignoring the players who have played less than 100 minutes in the postseason (sorry, Juwan Howard), check out the Heat's rotation players ranked by the Heat's offensive rating with that player on/off the court in the playoffs:

1. Mike Miller; 235 minutes, 113 ORtg on the court, 105 ORtg off the court.
2. Joel Anthony; 257 minutes, 111 ORtg on the court, 106 ORtg off the court.
3. Udonis Haslem; 179 minutes, 110 ORtg on the court, 108 ORtg off the court.
4. LeBron James; 442 minutes, 109 ORtg on the court, 105 ORtg off the court.
5. Chris Bosh; 182 minutes, 109 ORtg on the court, 108 ORtg off the court.
6. Shane Battier; 314 minutes, 109 ORtg on the court, 108 ORtg off the court.
7. Dwyane Wade; 407 minutes, 108 ORtg on the court, 109 ORtg off the court.
8. Mario Chalmers; 369 minutes, 105 ORtg on the court, 116 ORtg off the court.

• • •

QUESTION #14: Are Kevin Garnett's obscene +/- numbers in the playoffs due to his offense, his defense, or both? from @SixerSense

Both. The Celtics have a DRtg (points allowed per 100 possessions) of 87 with him on the floor and 117 with him off the floor. On the other hand, the Celtics have an ORtg (points scored per 100 possessions) of 102 with him on the court and 85 with him off the court. So, basically, they've been a shady-but-decent offensive team with him on the court and a lights out defensive team, as opposed to the worst offense/defense combination in human history with him off the court. Yep.

• • •

QUESTION #15: Do the Spurs want to face Boston or Miami in a theoretical finals matchup? from @TBJ_Soldier

I don't like answering hypotheticals like this, especially given how hard of a series OKC is going to put up to possibly prevent the Spurs from even getting there. However, it has to be Boston. The Celtics are one of the worst offenses to get to a conference finals in the history of the league. Amazing defense or not, they're a one-man team that's relying on a 36 year old Kevin Garnett to do literally everything on the court, game-in and game-out. It would be one of the most mismatched finals ever, possibly even moreso than 2007. In other words: yes, the Spurs would rather have Boston than the team with the reigning MVP and a still-in-his-prime finals MVP from a previous title team.

• • •

QUESTION #16: What box score stats predict winning the best? from @PGPostUp

I'm not a huge fan of the Wages of Wins network, for reasons which are extensively outlined here. But if you want to look at simple regressions of which box score statistics correlate to winning, they've got a relatively detailed body of work on the subject, which can be found in their "about" section. In particular, Arturo Galletti has a nice post on the matter here. I'm more a fan of Dean Oliver's work on the four factors of basketball, which is his attempt at finding the most predictive box score statistics. Another INCREDIBLE resource (and the one I'm most fond of pointing people to) comes from friend of the site Evan Z., whose Advanced Stats Primer is by far the best in class and explains virtually every derivation of the box score statistics that you can use to predict wins. I'd start with Wages, move on to Four Factor stats, and then go through Evan's Primer if you want a step by step journey of increasing complexity into the seedy world of basketball statistics.

• • •

A few notes on the questions, now. I'll answer anything I can, so long as the question involves basketball numbers of some form. Questions about playoff teams are preferred, but not required. I'd prefer if you left the questions in one of the following forms: the comments of this post, sent on twitter (@docrostov), or emailed to our staff email (staff@gothicginobili.com). That way, I don't have to go looking into my Quora account seven weeks into the future only to find I missed a question. (None of you would do that, right?) I hope to do these Q&A sessions a few times a month, as I feel I get a lot of questions on twitter regarding numbers behind basketball and I think this is a great forum to start addressing those. I'll be answering questions until a few hours after MIA-BOS game 1. So ask away, folks.

Nate Jones (@JonesOnTheNBA) recently made an argument against Tim Duncan's private, quiet approach to life in the NBA. It's one he's been making for a long time. The argument goes like this: basketball - regardless of the product's essence - is an entertainment business. Tim Duncan is an interesting person and an important basketball player. In the hands of the right writers and interviewers, Tim Duncan could be marketed as a fascinating public figure. Therefore, opening up to the media should increase Tim's brand recognition and that of his team. In Duncan's case, it would also be good for basketball in general (and the NBA in particular) if Tim did so, because he embodies rarefied, virtuous qualities on and off the court. There are templates for Duncan to follow such as Steve Nash, but regardless of how he does it, Tim Duncan should become a more public person, at the very least showing his interesting personality to the national media. In fact, one could argue (as Jones does), Tim Duncan's salary is paid precisely because more athletes don't follow his quiet path. Duncan may not like it, but morality appears to demand that he seek an active public profile for the benefit of the league.

• • •

First off, let me stop and note something: There's a piece I wrote recently that I absolutely will not publish in its current form. (EDITOR'S NOTE: And it's not just because I won't let him. -- Aaron.) The piece starts with a petty complaint about writers complaining about the Spurs and then goes on to posit alternatives. Yeah, not a great pitch to begin with. But there was a moment of realization that illustrated a greater concern, and made the piece fall apart in the end: Spurs fans have insanely little to complain about, right now. Voicing these complaints amid a sea of light, fat-free criticism (that never failed to acknowledge the Spurs' greatness on some level) would therefore be not only tonedeaf but ungrateful. The Spurs are blessed to be the rock of the NBA and I'm blessed to be one of their fans through this stretch of basketball. So I'm not really going to complain about anything today. As Browning said, "God's in his heaven/All's right with the world." And Duncan's at the four. (Or five, if we're being honest.)

But Jones' argument needs to be addressed I think, not as a Spurs fan and not as a Duncan fan. No, Jones' argument needs to be addressed for the sake of keeping perspective in our demands of public figures. Consider this. In Chris Ballard's piece (four words we will repeat in aeternum) about Duncan, Tim is in a hotel elevator with Ballard when suddenly a family of three enters:

_ Here's what the husband does not do. He does not do a double take, betray any recognition of Duncan or make a comment about the previous night's game or this year's postseason or that one time Tim Duncan did that amazing thing. The wife does not bat her eyes or squirm. The daughter does not think OMG! OMG! OMG! and start texting furiously. This is not LeBron or Kobe. Or even Melo._

The door opens, the family leaves without looking back. Duncan looks relieved.

It's a very simple and poignant take - in a moment, Ballard has perfectly illustrated the price of fame to someone like Duncan. The price of fame is not just the simple cost to an athlete in time and pretentious, insipid discussions of brand (doubly so for an introvert). It's also the constant cost a famous person endures whenever he walks out the door. It's not just the people that rave over him that he meets in elevators. It's also the people he doesn't meet but that always threaten to address him and his family in public with a bit too much familiarity. It's not just the "shaking hands and kissing babies" part, to put it in presidential terms. It's the Secret Service part.

The consequences of increased fame aren't just present in an interview or two with the incredible Chris Ballard: they're in the hordes of tabloid writers. They're not just in the long-term recognition of his image, but also in the long-term commodification of his image and the lessening of his control over that image. Not just the extraordinary people he'd meet, but also the ordinary people the earthbound Duncan would have trouble dealing with on an equal and uncomplicated footing. Not just about his own privacy, but also about his wife and daughters' privacy. Not just about the privileges he's not taking advantage of on behalf of the league, but also about the corrupting influence of such privileges on him and those around him. And so on and so forth. Try to say you're humble when you've got a billboard in the center of town promoting your book. Try to say it's not about you but about the team, then, when you're being paid to wax rhetorical about what taking the last shot feels like. Try to say that journalists are worth your time when feckless hacks like Dan Shaughnessy are twisting everything you say -- even your small, humble quips -- to make you appear a confidence-lacking lesser star. Please. Go try it.

• • •

Yes, Duncan is a smart guy and could probably figure out how to make fame as controlled, pleasant, and altogether about his message as anyone else. But when you demand that the more private public figures be more vocal and start holding their salaries over them, well, realize something. You're not only asking for them to share their lives with the world more: you're also asking them to bring the world into their lives more. The athletes that welcome some measure of this intrusion should be respected as a necessary part of the ecosystem of this entertainment business. But let's not ask someone like Duncan to make such sacrifices unless we're damn sure we're clear on the costs. At some point Jones posted a tweet that really bugged me.

Nate Jones @JonesOnTheNBA: Duncan should care, @Rags8, because the league has enabled him to become a very rich man. There are obligations that come with that. 2:06 PM - 16 May 12

Can you see why I think this all needed to be said? Take it all together: Duncan gets paid a whole lot, but for that compensation already has plenty of obligations endemic to being a public figure, even if you ignore his 82+ appearances in front of thousands of fans to perform at a world-class, historical level. (Let's not even touch the looming fact that salary caps and max deals are effective price ceilings below market clearing price for a franchise-cornerstone star like Duncan.) Oh, and Duncan also has to go on the road away from his family for 41+ games a season. Oh, and he constantly makes physical sacrifices to maintain his declining, ever more precarious athleticism. Oh, and even if he isn't necessarily seeking out appearances, he addresses the media (and often appears at press conferences) after virtually every game of the season. Jones may be respectful of players like Duncan as players and human beings, but when it comes to the public realm Jones is dipping dangerously into the well-worn "ungrateful to be paid millions to play a children's game" trope.

Isn't it far more plausible that the intelligent and conscientious Duncan does care, and does recognize (as he says over and over again in interviews) that the league is an entertainment business... but still wants to strike a compromise for his public image that's further on the spectrum towards privacy than a Steve Nash? (And by the way, don't these more public athletes like Nash get further compensated for such public appearances? Just saying.) Why is any of this wrong in the slightest? Duncan has done everything with his basketball skills with remarkable class. Perhaps I'm biased, but I'd say that Tim has given us more than enough. In his long career, he has produced his personality for the league more than enough. He has produced financially for his team and league far in excess of his salary. He has produced spiritually for fans far in excess of what he has been given. Asking Duncan to do more -- to sacrifice more -- may be effective as a conversation-starter and indeed, Jones articulated plenty of great points.

But with the disengagement of an observer, Jones has given us precious little in the way of empathy or insight for Duncan's real options and priorities. Duncan made a choice. And while I would defend til death Jones' right to critique Duncan's choice, a fair assessment of the personal implications of what Duncan's choice entailed is critical to the argument here. You can call foul on Duncan's introversion and decry his quiet nature. You can say he should've brought the media into his life. That's your right. But understand the hidden costs, and at least acknowledge them -- it's a choice he made, with tangible benefits and drawbacks. It was not a moral obligation. The argument should be framed accordingly.

I've been itching to respond to Steve Kerr's recent Grantland piece arguing for raising the age limit because I find so much to disagree with. However, trawling the Internet for counterarguments, I found this podcast by Henry Abbott and Michael McCann, laying out almost every imaginable critique of Kerr's piece two months in advance of it being written. I find it more succinct, organized, and authoritative than anything I could put to text. Still, at the end of the podcast I felt like something crucial went unsaid. Kerr's piece ultimately had less to do with the age limit itself than with the larger problems Kerr uses the age limit to simultaneously attack: player maturity, development, and marketing. These are clearly critical problems to be solved, and in this two-part response, we're going to work on them.

But in the framework of these larger problems, Kerr's proposal to change the age limit by one year seems at best absurdly limited and unsuitable for these problems. Kerr's argument, to me, reads somewhat like that of a high school student who writes an essay arguing something trivial like that a first-time drug possession fine should change by $50, in order to ameliorate crime, increase revenue for the state, or advance political liberty by a few ticks at the end of the fiscal year, using a bunch of ad hoc, heterodox arguments. "It will ameliorate crime because... it will increase revenue because... it will advance political liberty because..." Perhaps, Steve, perhaps. Crime, fiscal policy, and liberty are enormous problems, though, requiring a broader vision than a rhetorical, cherry-picked take whose prime directive appears to be "stay on message."

• • •

There's a qualitative difference between ages 18 and 19 and 20 in our culture. But changing any such age restrictions by one year in either direction isn't going to solve a whole lot for the few high school seniors and college freshmen good enough to enter the NBA. Changing the age limit to 18 didn't work, changing it to 19 didn't work, and changing it to 20 won't work, because these aren't problems of age but problems of pattern. And solving a systematic problem of pattern with a marginal tweak of quantity is foolish.

There is a problematic undertone to Kerr's approach to decision making. Kerr refers to his proposal of simultaneously offloading player maturity, development, and marketing to the NCAA and Europe as "smart business" almost completely for reasons of cost. This is the absurdity I want to address today: Kerr may be right that raising the age limit is smart business. I don't agree, but I could at least buy that premise. But if I'm an executive with any business sense as I'm listening to Kerr make this pitch, I'm not going to sign off on this proposal in a million years, unless Kerr takes the additional step of recognizing (and at least estimating for me) the gigantic hidden costs the NBA is also taking on in outsourcing huge portions of its business to organizations the league has no direct control over.

What do these hidden costs look like? Well, consider. The NBA has absolutely no control over...

• ... What kind of maturity the NCAA or Europe is going to teach these players. In the case of the NCAA, "Maturity" sometimes requires first making stupid mistakes like getting injured without adequate school-sponsored insurance. "Maturity" sometimes means first becoming cynical over being lost in an unjustified bureaucracy. "Maturity" sometimes means being part of a program that doesn't care about you and undermines your confidence. These lessons of so-called maturity may in fact arise from conditions endemic to the NCAA that make the lessons completely unnecessary for a life in the NBA, or a life in professional basketball in general.

• ... What kinds of skills the NCAA program develops in the NBA's best prospects. "That big man is the next great NBA prospect! Just imagine what a coaching legend like Mike Krzyzewski can do for him in two years! I just can't wait until he comes to the NBA with ever-present knowledge of how to stealthily foul for 30 seconds of a 35 second possession, this will truly augment his ongoing development nicely."

• ... What kind of a training staff is handling the NBA's top prospects. Not every school is like Duke, with a massive on-campus hospital -- some schools are dreadfully behind in sports medicine, just like some NBA teams. It's true, we get one more year of data if we force players to stay in the NCAA for another year. But the NBA as a whole also takes a massive, unnecessary organizational risk when we allow them to stay that extra season. (Such as, say, De'Sean Butler.) Just saying.

• ... What kinds of situations the NCAA puts the best prospects into to get that valuable second sample year of scouting data. If so much decision-making truly hinges on those four extra months, then isn't at a minimum inconvenient that half the games for, say, Duke, may be against cream-puff non-conference opponents like Elon and UNC-Albuquerque? What about the fact that the central event of the NCAA is a single-elimination tourney, which is basically the opposite of an effective statistical sample? Isn't it at least a substantive cost that the NBA has no control over this process so crucial to its own scouting?

• ... What kinds of marketing efforts the NCAA will make to single out their greatest players. Marketing a player is the process of crafting a story and a message for that player, and the NCAA is hardly helping them out in this respect. For the most part the NCAA errs on the side of marginal players from high-powered programs, pasty-white volume scorers like Jimmer Fredette, or "prospects" like Austin Rivers of Duke or Harrison Barnes of UNC. Rivers is never going to be a stud in the NBA, he's just not that great. And yet the fact that he goes to Duke (and is related to Doc) is always going to trump his true talent. Barnes has disappointed his backers again and again, and yet he was and is still referred to as a top prospect from that class. He'll probably go top-7. The hype machine doesn't care much whether the player ever gets close to the hype, and as far as the NBA is concerned, college hype for players that don't pan out in its league is indistinguishable from static on the airwaves, crowding out its prospects, competing with the NBA's young players for the nation's attention. College marketing is built on the best stories, not necessarily the best players, and yet the NBA is built on selecting for the best players from college and overseas. College does write better stories for college players plenty of times, it's true, but by and large the NBA gets the residual, leftover hype (that it has to establish again anyway when the player gets to the league) while the NCAA reaps the spoils of that process.

I hope I've demystified some of the hidden costs of the proposal that are three-card-monte'd by Kerr's presentation. Solving these problems not only takes us far from "common sense," but also takes us into the sticky realm of addressing our priorities and our vision for the league, and making choices and compromises accordingly. It's suddenly not just a smart business, common sense, open-and-shut case whose only rejoinder comes from straw men like "Who are we to deny a 19-year-old kid a chance to make a living when he can vote, drive, and fight in a war?"

Kerr's proposal to raise the age limit is also a proposal for the NBA to let the NCAA and European basketball dictate the maturity, marketing, development, and maintenance of its talent pool for an extra year. What his proposal reduces in cost to the league it reduces in equal measure the control that can be exerted by the league. "What age rules will maximize revenue and limit cost the most?" is a perfectly valid business question. But Kerr isn't presenting the costs fairly, and the proposed benefits of outsourcing these functions to the NCAA and Europe are fraught with compensatory costs of their own, all of which deserve strong mention.

• • •

"Closeout games are actually kind of easy. Teams tend to fold if you come out and play hard in the beginning."

-- Andrew Bynum, prior to Game 5 vs. the 2012 Denver Nuggets

Matchups, matchups, matchups. Like it or not, they're the name of the game in the NBA. If the best team in the sport has an elite wing, you stock up on elite wing defenders. If the best player is a freight train, you break the bank on a conductor. And if the team that's got your goat has the most dominant post presence in the league? You pick up Shaq and pretend he can still guard anyone, of course! It's not a foreign concept to most fans: You make a number of adjustments to your team over the course of the season, and while they're ostensibly made solely for the good of the team, everyone really knows why the adjustments are made. The dirty little secret is that - for teams blessed to be in the sphere of five or six contending teams per conference - the personnel adjustments tend to be little more than an ill-concealed arms race. A juggling of human capital in a usually futile attempt to adjust your team to fit perceived weaknesses in the better teams. Neutralize the strengths of the best team, and perhaps you'll luck your way into the finals! Or so they'd say. I'm going to tell you a story about the biggest arms race in the NBA over the last five years. As most things tend to be when you boil them to their essentials, it's about the Lakers_._

• • •

Andrew Bynum is not a natural player, in my estimation. He's naturally talented, certainly, and his ceiling is incomparable. But he's not a natural at the art of being a player. Bynum is more attuned to more nerdy, systemic things. Cars, computers, engineering. The greatest misunderstanding you could have about Bynum is to assume his talent and natural skill presupposes a love for the game. It doesn't. I've never seen a goofball statement or an interview indicating that Andrew Bynum looks at basketball as anything more than it really is to him -- a job, and a means to make the sort of big money he needs so that he can spend his free time doing the things he actually loves to do. There is nothing wrong with it. And there's no reason an NBA player has to love the game. Nevertheless, for whatever reason, Andrew Bynum doesn't really seem to.

The same goes for Pau Gasol, in a sense. Pau is another naturally sublime talent. His passing is as deft as it could be, his defensive potential (were he to ever put it together) is vast, and his natural rebounding is excellent for a player that couldn't properly box out to save a life. Pau isn't an engineering type, like Bynum -- he's a medical type, and a man who has seriously considered going back to med school after he retires from the sport. Lamar Odom's multiple off-court pursuits require no introduction, and Phil Jackson's interest in the game post-Shaq was always a tad underwhelming. The drive for ten rings, for... gratification? Justification? Jeanie Buss? Probably more point three than anything else. Phil's most visceral love for the game was lost, in my view, with the Kobe-Shaq feud and his break from the Lakers in the mid 2000s.

And then you have Kobe Bean Bryant. The man whose veins run thick with the burnt rubber of melted game-winning shots. The man whose heart was replaced at a young age by a throbbing bright-red-white-and-blue ABA regulation ball. The man who'd stay in the gym forever, if his body would let him. Or so some would say. That's one take on Kobe, and it's perfectly reasonable -- my take is considerably different. I don't think Kobe chose basketball because he necessarily loves the sport for its own sake, or has any intrinsic connection to it that he hasn't developed from familiarity alone. He chose the sport because Kobe needed a means to dominate. He chose basketball because his father played basketball, and the happened to be very good at it. Kobe could just as easily have been a ruthless take-no-prisoners general in the Iraq War. He could have been a remarkably successful corporate litigation lawyer. He could have been a brutishly effective politician, if he'd put his mind to it. Kobe's love of basketball is a love rooted in a self assured semi-narcissistic love of his own image and a love of his own exaltation. He loves basketball because it's the area where he is the best. This isn't a criticism as much, for Kobe -- it's simply an observation that even Kobe, the player on the Lakers who loves the game more than all others, has a different passion for the game than someone like Ricky Rubio or Kenneth Faried. He's different. No value judgment, just... different.

Put it all together, and you come to a perhaps surprising conclusion. The Lakers are a wonderful, talented team; at times, they can be one of the most dominant squads in recent memory, and the 2009 Lakers is one of the best title teams of all time. The run of glory the Lakers have had since the Pau Gasol trade speaks to how excellent they are as a whole unit, and as a team. But if you examine the individual cogs and sprockets that make up that team unit, you realize that as a team, the Lakers really don't like basketball that much. They make a good show of it, of course. Kobe tells the media how fired up they are, and how eager he is to destroy the latest victim. Pau says all the right things. Bynum doesn't, but at least sounds like he cares, generally. But this isn't a matter of caring about a game in a singular sense, as Bynum tends to make it. It's a matter of caring about the game. It's loving the broader structural mores of the game and the tics and idiosyncrasies that make the game so curious.

It's about NOT doing the types of things that these Lakers are prone to do -- the lazy on-court demeanor, simply out-talenting whatever opponent gets thrown their way, the constant "we can flip the switch any time" mentality that Laker fans are so aggravatingly used to. This Laker team has allowed the Nuggets to turn a 1-3 deficit into a 3-3 series with a winner-take-all game 7. They allowed a Yao-less Rockets team to return from the brink and force 7 games of hell. The 2006 Laker collapse against the Suns, the inconceivable folding of the 2011 Lakers to the should-have-been-outclassed Mavericks, the legendary Laker shutdown in the deciding game of the 2008 finals -- the Lakers of recent memory can be more apathetic, lazy, and flat than any truly great team in the history of the sport. They can, more than any other team, simply shut themselves down by not caring. They can lose a game and spend the entire game wishing they'd never stepped on the court, with not a moment of legitimate effort in the contest, and not a single bone to their worried fans.

The thing that it really boils down to is the idea of playing basketball for fun. It's about being able to go out with a few friends, get the pants beaten off you, and still find some enjoyment in the activity just because you got to play basketball. It's about appreciating the game as more than just a means to a paycheck, about loving the game as more than just a way to show off your personal talents. The Lakers are talented, incredible, and scary. But there's no denying the odd truth of the matter: the recent dynasty Lakers are a collective contrapositive to a team that truly adores the game above all else (more or less collectively exhausting all other passions over basketball). The recent dynasty Lakers are perhaps the first great team that truly and honestly didn't care for the game of basketball. The talent is there. The passion? Terribly, horribly lacking.

• • •

I submit to you a theory: the fatal flaw of the Los Angeles Lakers has been considered in this way before, and even if it was an unconscious consideration, their western rivals acted upon it accordingly. For the last five years, Western contenders have been stocking up on players that act counter the Lakers' grandest weakness -- they're bridging a matchup that's eluded them all for years. Their aim? To counter the Lakers' infuriating lack of focus and lack of true passion for the game with players that live and breathe the game. After all, why do you think Sam Presti stockpiled a super-talented recess prep squad in Oklahoma City? Why do you think San Antonio picked up Stephen Jackson, and Patty Mills, and DeJuan Blair? Why do you think that teams like the Nuggets, the Rockets, and the Mavericks have spent years acquiring player after player and coach upon coach who really couldn't be doing anything else with their lives? These teams have been developing more and more players who, all things considered, are as inseparable from the love of basketball as this Laker team is inseparable from frustrating contempt for the game.

The Lakers have spent the last five years owning the Western Conference. General Managers like Presti took note, and realized that if the Thunder -- and the Spurs, and the Nuggets, and the Suns, et cetera -- simply kept stockpiling more and more players that love the game as more than a simple paycheck, they'd eventually have a gigantic advantage over the Lakers. Sure, it'd take a while. Sure, the Lakers would still out-talent the universe for 3 to 4 years while the young kids grew up and the team cultures changed. But one day, perhaps in the middle of a series, the Lakers would wake up and find themselves with less of a talent gap between them and their rivals than ever before, and they'd find the heart of their foe beating with a passion for the game the Lakers neither understand nor care to embody. That day is today. The Lakers may still beat the Nuggets, but they'll enter their second round date with the Thunder having had to expend an extra three games of energy solely because they couldn't prevent the inevitable meltdown in game 5 and met the brick wall of a team that refused to go quietly in game 6.

I began this post with Bynum's now-infamous observation on teams that simply fold. The primary issue with it is that the statement reflected how the Lakers approach games where they're to be closed out, not a developed understanding of the heart of their opposition. With the exception of games 6 and 7 of the 2010 finals, the dynastic Lakers have never been a particularly inspiring closeout team, and a team with grit and hustle is never quite out of the series if they'll push and push at the Laker empire. Bynum observed that his opponent would fold if he'd just show the requisite effort -- he was right, but only if he's facing a man made of mirrors. If Kenneth Faried (the electric rookie whose style of play bleeds basketball in a way few ever have) was to do what Bynum thought he would and simply lie down and take the loss, he wouldn't be Kenneth Faried. He'd be Andrew Bynum, or Pau Gasol. He'd be a member of the team that felt a season slip from their grasp the year before, and spent the capper of the sweep wishing they were anywhere but the court. It seems the Nuggets, to a man, love basketball more than anything -- the Laker collective, on the other hand, loves everything more than basketball.

When it comes right down to it, Kenneth Faried does not fold. Kevin Durant does not fold. Stephen Jackson does not fold. All around the western conference, team after team after team have begun to base their attack on transforming their squads into the starkest opposite of the Lakers' lacking effort. The seed is planted. Perhaps the Lakers embarrass the Nuggets in Game 7 with the dismal march of unconquerable advantage we envisioned during game 1. Perhaps they'll out-talent them, and perhaps Bynum overwhelms the west for a 4th try at the Larry O'Brien. No matter. This series, this playoffs, this year has announced that the clock is ticking. The Laker foes out west have birthed flourishing temples of basketball that grow ever stronger opposite the Laker empire. Through cracks in the purple and gold ceiling of a once-impenetrable fortress begin to drip dollops of hot oil, scalding the flesh that cannot feel, and promising an inevitable and impending resolution to the strange contrapositive history of the indifferent Los Angeles Lakers.

A "footnote title" respects the champion while also acknowledging that, "Look, SOMETHING funky happened and you can't discuss that postseason in detail without mentioning that one funky thing."

-- Bill Simmons, The Footnote Title

The other day, when Derrick Rose was injured, Bill Simmons tweeted a curious tweet. He said that the 2012 title was officially an "asterisk" title. I was a bit confused by this. I'm of the opinion that if you squint hard enough, you'll fail to find a single NBA champion who didn't play in a season where something funky disqualified a strong contender. We love to delve its pores for meaning, but sports is primarily a game of ephemera and luck. When your team wins the title, they deserved it essentially as much as any other, and relied on luck essentially as much as any other. According to Bill, quite literally every Spurs title deserves a footnote, as he stated outright the reasons that each and every championship they've ever won was fishy. This was a pretty big come-to-Jesus moment for me -- if my team's titles aren't really titles, well, damn, what does anything mean anymore? I feel like I've come out of the experience a better, more nihilistic person, fast approaching @NickFlynt levels. Given that this was helpful to me in my personal development, I figured I'd do our readers a solid and help fans of every team that's ever won the title learn why their titles can't be discussed without important, team-degrading footnotes.

• • •

One footnote I was actually shocked that Simmons didn't mention was the pall hanging over his beloved Celtics during the Auerbach tenure. One of the most underreported and understated stories from the Red-and-Russ era was the pernicious facilities tampering that Red engaged in for virtually his entire tenure as coach. I'm not talking about small-scale stuff, either -- Auerbach openly admitted after he'd retired that while he was a coach and General Manager, he did a number of things to make sure the Celtics had the absolute most home court advantage they possibly could. This includes (but is in no way limited to):

• Redirecting the Garden's sewage system into the visiting team's water fountain. (Really. I realize this is so disgusting we don't like talking about it, but it's been confirmed by multiple sources and even made his obituary. Absolutely insane.)

• Bugging the visitor's locker room, leading to most teams talking in code when discussing strategy knowing that if they said what they were doing outright Red would listen in on them. J. Edgar Auerbach?

• Cutting the heater in the visiting locker room, leading to a freezing mess in the winter. In Boston. He also turned the heat all the way up during hot summer days, ensuring that the players would be sweating like stuck pigs and desperately need water, which in turn was connected to... oh yeah. The sewage. Whoopsies.

It shows, too -- consider the Celtics' home and away records during the Auerbach era. Not only did they never lose a game 7 at home (something that has never happened before or since), their regular season records were often comically disparate. As a teaching example, look at the 1958 Celtics. That team ended up 11-17 on the road over the season, but went a sparkling 24-4 at home. Including a double-overtime game 7 against the Bob Pettit-led, defending champion St. Louis Hawks (at home, of course!) to win the title. The invented Auerbach-based enhancement of their home court advantage generally tended to -- ever so slightly -- inflate the win totals of the 60s Celtics. From 59 to 69, not a single Celtics team had a higher expected record than their actual record. For those not in the know; expected wins and losses are calculated based on a team's point differential.

It's extremely rare for a team to over a long period (anything more than 4 or 5 years) consistently overperform or underperform their expected wins, as all things equal, the things that cause expected wins to vary over a several season period would be things left to chance -- a team's record in close games, years where they do unexpectedly poorly at home, the number of times your team gets blown out of the building, et cetera. Given the inherently better home court advantage that Auerbach made sure his Celtics had (as well as the predictive power of wins on point differential) the effect of the inflated win totals were felt two-fold. They helped the Celtics outperform the record a team of their caliber would have gotten in the regular season, all things equal. They also ensured that out of the ten 7-game series the Celtics played in 12 years (in the shortened playoffs), only two involved having to win a game seven on the road to advance -- more tellingly, perhaps, neither occurred with Red at the helm. Again, absolutely shocked that Bill didn't mention this. It's not like he's a Celtics fan or anything -- after all, he's the head editor of Grantland. Completely unbiased. It was a homer-free list. He said it himself!

• • •

If we're really talking about titles from this era, isn't it also worth noting that you had a shorter season, an incredibly small league (eight teams, for much of the 60s -- fourteen teams entering the 70s), and only 3 rounds in the playoffs to win to get a title? It was a different game. In fact, back in the 50s, the playoffs were compressed to an absurd two rounds. The team that won the finals was essentially the equivalent of a western team that got to the WCF in two tough series. A bit insane. So let's ignore those titles. We followed with the 70s, when basketball started to look like basketball. We've invalidated every pre-ABA title, but we can't forget the ABA, either, as a factor that provides a "funky" problem with the team's title. Due to the existence of the NBA, the ABA's titles mean less than nothing -- that's a dead league! It died! Of course ABA titles don't matter! But alack. The ABA's existence also invalidates the champions of the NBA, as the ABA had "all of the talent" according to hyperbolic journalists like Simmons. This takes all titles from 1967-1976 off the table, if we're looking for a champion that really meant something. Simmons started the column in an effort to find the champions that can't be mentioned without their own funktastic footnotes -- and truly, what could be funkier than having two quality professional basketball leagues running at the same time?

Post-ABA merger, you have the cop-out that the three point line didn't exist, which would have naturally made rangey burst scorers like Pistol Pete and George Gervin quite a bit more valuable and the process of getting a title easier for them. After all, if you take 4 or 5 shots a game from three point range (as I believe those two did in their primes, from the game tape I've seen), that's an extra 3-4 points per game that these already-prolific scorers would be scoring. Adding that to a solid team's point differential can take a team from decent to dominant -- imagining what players like that would've done with the three point line is legitimately insane. In the 80s, you have the Simmons-fueled cocaine meme to fall back on if you want to simply ignore those champions -- the NBA's overall atmosphere led itself badly to cocaine abuse among stars and a gross number of players that simply never touched their ultimate potential due to the tragedy of excessive hedonism and drug abuse. You also have the Stepien era in Cleveland, where Ted Stepien would (yearly) give one or two teams a far better shot at a title by completely ruining his own team and running a fire sale on any good piece (or draft pick) he happened to have. Like James Worthy, who he traded away in one of the rare trades that was both insane when it happened and worse as time went on -- the Cavs traded the #1 pick in the draft (James Worthy) for -- of all people -- Don Ford and the #22 pick. Don't know who Don Ford is? Ted Stepien apparently didn't either -- he averaged 3 points per game in 11 minutes for the Los Angeles Lakers before the midseason trade. Great trade, Teddy.

Then, the 90s! Truth be told, I was having a lot of trouble figuring out how to invalidate Jordan's titles. I'd thought that I'd finally found a set of titles that I couldn't erase. Luckily, the master himself helped me out here. To quote Simmons directly: "And by the way, Worthy missed the 1983 playoffs, but Lenny Bias missed the playoffs from 1987 through 2004. So there's that." What this really means isn't that he's an absurd homer, but that all titles won in this period are by their very nature invalidated. After all, this period may have encapsulated the Jordan dynasty, the Hakeem domination of the mid 90s, two Spurs titles, and the threepeat Lakers... but who really cares? Len Bias wasn't playing. And don't you forget the truth. Bias was all set to average a miraculous 50-20-10 (truly a legendary leap, to average such totals straight off his rather pedestrian senior year averages of 23-7 in a down ACC) on the way to 17 straight titles, before he was eliminated from the game by Stern for a gambling addiction (thus retroactively footnoting the 5 years after he stopped playing, because he would've kept playing if it wasn't for the evil eye of Stern.) Thanks, Bill. I owe you one here. As for the rest? The Len Bias problem takes us to 2004 -- Simmons has applied personal footnotes to 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2012. So I don't need to deal with those guys. Thus, the only champion in NBA history now with no footnote: the 2011 Dallas Mavericks.

... except, you know, that Miami team's 4th and 5th best players played the entire series coming off of brutal injuries that had ruined their seasons. So if 2010 is ACTUALLY a footnote-type series in the Simmons view, don't really see how you get away with not mentioning that key fact in any mention of the Dallas title. After all. Four is greater than five. (I know this because I am a statistician.) You could also mention any of the injuries that knocked out contenders (or weakened teams that played the Mavericks tight); pick any Blazer injury (the team took the Mavs to 6 in the first round -- with a healthier team, is it really that impossible to consider them winning it?), the Manu/Duncan injuries that crippled a Spurs team that matched up very well with that Mavs team, the Rose wear and tear that he played through that sapped his strength and allowed the Heat to get past them. Or perhaps the incredible, unprecedented collapse of Dwight Howard's supporting cast. Or maybe the fact that LeBron had the most inexplicable finals no-show ever. Hm. You know what, I guess they do have a footnote, dang. Sorry, Dallas fans. Tough luck.

• • •

I don't really want to lose the point of this post, so I'll drop the sarcasm. No, I don't think the things I've mentioned here really should invalidate any of these titles, or even that they are necessarily things worth mentioning. In most occasions, they really aren't. But that's just me -- I also don't think the idea of a title involving shenanigans that require some kind of footnote is at all reasonable. The entire heft behind the Simmons piece is one key conceit -- the idea that it's possible to separate the idea of a footnote or a caveat-to-the-crown from the annals of vicious homerism. Is it really, though? And would we want to?

I've mentioned this to several in regards to that post -- I'm absolutely irked that Simmons neglected to mention the 2000 Lakers. In 2000, the Spurs (then the defending champion, less than a year removed from going a sizzling 15-2 in the playoffs and sweeping both the Lakers and Blazers) were a reasonably good team. They had 58 wins, the 2nd best defense, and the 11th best offense -- the usual marks of a contending San Antonio team. Duncan was playing out of his mind that season, with to that point the best PER of his career and a marginally more dominant defensive presence with his body more conditioned to the league and his scouting of player tendencies better than ever. He was co-MVP of the all-star game, and after a slow start, the Spurs were preparing for a strong title run. But alas; Duncan fell on the 77th game of the season. He'd torn his meniscus. The Spurs bowed out in 4 to a vastly inferior Phoenix Suns team in the first round, as the Lakers crushed the Suns in the 2nd and went on to take the title. The problem? That Spurs team had gone 7-1 in their last 8 games against the Shaq-Kobe Lakers. Duncan resoundingly won the matchup with Shaq every game that season, and David Robinson was getting into a good rhythm going into the playoffs. The 1999 Spurs -- no matter what you want to say about the lockout season -- had one of the absolute most dominant playoff runs of all time. Duncan is one of the 10 best players of all time, and he was entering his absolute prime. And you're telling me that the reigning finals MVP going down in the 5th-to-last game of the season -- robbing the Spurs of a rematch with a team they'd swept the year before -- is somehow less of a "funky note" than Kendrick Perkins missing a single game of the 2010 playoffs?

Now. I just wrote a long paragraph that was -- if nothing else -- extremely homer-ish. Other than a Spurs fan, virtually no NBA analyst would immediately think of that paragraph's content when they think of the 2000 title. A Spurs fan would. And even if it isn't the guiding view on that year's title, it's also a pretty damn good point. As all of Simmons' footnotes are, in theory. But the guiding idea behind the Simmons piece isn't rooted in the individual merit of the footnotes (which they almost all have in spades). It's rooted in the idea that you can create a fair and honest cardinal ranking of champions by an unbiased ranking of "footnotes" you have to discuss when you discuss those champions. But you can't do that. You simply can't separate the homerism from examining the "footnotes" to apply to every NBA title precisely because it's the absurd logical leaps of being an unabashed homer that leads fans to ones that are actually worth talking about. Assessing which footnotes you think matter and which footnotes you think are absurd will depend on what you value in an NBA season, and what team you're paying the closest attention to -- there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all set of values, and there's no font of all NBA knowledge that's paying close attention to every team and every contender (except for Kelly Dwyer). There's really no way to properly assess a homer-free list of the nature Simmons proposes he's created.

And in the end, we're left with a list that reflects Simmons' values and the way Simmons views the game. It's a valid opinion. It's a reasonable list. But it's also -- above all else -- the absolute essence of subjectivity. And that's not a bad thing. What IS a bad thing is pretending that a subjective view is anywhere close to unbiased, and that gets at the heart of what makes many recent Simmons columns so frustrating. This is bar-room chatter. It's "smoking with a few friends and drinking a beer" discussion. Fun, but really. It's impossible to come up with an unbiased view on a subject so inherently tied to your fandom, no matter how hard you may have tried and researched. AND THAT'S OKAY. It's perfectly fine for this sort of an exercise to be dominated by sore losers and the half-credible whining of a fan who mourns a title lost. But if you claim to be assessing the 20 teams that most deserve footnotes in history, and ESPN plasters your story on the front page saying you've got the all-inclusive list of "champs that had the most help"? No.

Just because you got famous as "the Sports Guy" and got a nice job doesn't really make your bar-room chatter any more credible than a well traveled old Schmo at the bar. For most of his career, he's understood that. But with Grantland, post-novel, post-developing NBA connections? He's lost the thread of honest humility that made him engaging. He's lost the ability to say "here's a list, and god damnit, I am going to make it incredibly biased because I am a Celtics fan and this list is inherently biased" and be straight with his readers. THAT'S why Simmons has aggravated me over the last few months. And -- as John Lennon might say -- I'm not the only one.

In the end, bias is fine -- just admit it, own up to it, and stop pretending you're an unassailable font of all sport knowledge. That's all. I'm done.

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.