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

• MIA vs OKC: A Crisis of Confidence (by Jacob Harmon)
• TRADES #1: Sacramento Gives Up, or: Morey's Margins (by Aaron McGuire)

Read on after the jump.

• • •

__MIA vs OKC: A Crisis of Confidence
___Jacob Harmon_

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to our insistence on taking our own All-Star break, we tabled the publication of this Outlet piece until now. It discusses Oklahoma City's 110-100 home loss to the Miami Heat last Thursday. It's here now, though!]

_ “We’re not as bad as we played tonight.” - Scott Brooks_

Having suffered through yet another match-up between Miami and Oklahoma City, critical examination is tough -- it’s hard to know where to begin. Lots to process, especially as a fan of one of the concerned teams. Going into the Finals this past summer, my confidence in the Thunder’s ability to win was overwhelming, and not for reasons I felt were artificial, or reasons couched in narrative. I was confident in the pick because despite all the hype, OKC vs. Miami has never been about Kevin Durant vs. LeBron James. It's about the supporting casts around the stars. And in evaluating the match-up I've always felt the Thunder had the decided edge. I still do, on paper. Maybe the problem really is coaching, as people often emphasize. I can't argue with most of the questions. Why does Scott Brooks insist on fielding a lineup of two bigs against the Heat when they get continually obliterated by Chris Bosh and LeBron James? Maybe it's all about confidence. Putting the same guys out there and putting them through the fire in the hope they'll put it together. As a fan, I'm not sure about the wisdom of that strategy, but I do think that aspect of the Thunder's cohesion is something worth looking at. Because more than anything, I think Oklahoma City's repeated inability to execute against Miami has less to do with a lack of talent or ability and more to do with an intangible problem.

The real rub of this matchup (as far as I see it) is psychological. If anyone's expecting Miami and Oklahoma City to be the Celtics/Lakers of the new generation, they’ve miscast the roles. To me, this feels more like Pistons/Bulls. Different conferences, different levels of play. But psychologically? That’s what it feels like. It’s the stark disappearance of role-players, the physical play, the inability to confidently exploit advantages, and the dogged futility of the less experienced leading men trying to will the team to glory. It’s the visible mental frustration that manifests in different ways; whether it be Kevin Durant’s furious slapping of the hardwood or Thabo Sefolosha’s blank stare as he watches a loose ball bounce to a slow roll and does nothing. The Thunder have a dogged inability to "play their game" against the Heat, and it always seems to be less a talent disparity than it is the inevitable breakdown of execution that happens when you’re playing a game that only two or three players actually think they’re capable of winning. Watching the Thunder offense, it’s difficult to accuse Westbrook or Durant of hero ball when they’re scanning for an open pass that no one else on the floor looks interested in shooting. Miami's defense fluctuates on a nightly basis, especially with Ray Allen on the floor, and they do an excellent job at guarding the inside pass, so it's little surprise when Kendrick Perkins or Serge Ibaka bobble what would be an open look under the basket. But it's not the Miami defense that prevents Kevin Martin from losing his man on a screen, or Serge Ibaka spotting up at his usual spots, or getting in position to rebound. There's no reason for Durant and Westbrook to settle for long contested jumpers even when provided mismatches to exploit. On defense, there's no reason Shane Battier is continually abandoned on the wing despite being virtually useless anywhere else on offense. These are all issues that the Thunder don't really have on a nightly basis, or against teams that are the Heat's peer in execution (like the Spurs or the Clippers).

Of course, in modern NBA analysis we don't make much of the psychology of a match-up. It's all a little too "the look"-y. But once you've gone beyond evaluating the tangible how and why of a loss, there remain questions of the how and the why those issues cropped up, and continue to crop up. It's the same reason a talented kid can struggle mightily to beat his Dad or older brother at the object of his talents. The Thunder strike me as both convinced they should win, and frustrated mightily by their inability to meet that expectation. They find it impossible to play their rival like they're any other team, and that inevitably sinks them. Much like the Bulls and Pistons rivalry all those years ago, there will come a time when this changes. Miami has an old roster, Oklahoma City a young one. The passage of time and the inevitability of the NBA’s salary restrictions favor the Thunder in the long term. But there are no certainties in this league. The threat of injury, competition, and other unknowables looms large and threatening over any assumptions one can make. There’s only the now, and in the wake of an ugly game and another loss to a bitter rival, the Thunder seem to need confidence above anything else.

• • •

TRADES: Trade Talk, Trades Today, & Trade Tectonics (with Aaron McGuire)

Hey, folks! Today's a very special trade deadline Outlet. Here's why. As the day goes on, I'll be updating this post to react to today's various trades with short reaction pieces and other such accoutrements! Isn't that fun? Isn't that just the dickens? (It isn't, but pretend with me.) To start us off, I've got a few reactions to the hilariously minor trades conducted yesterday evening. Amazing! (EDITOR'S NOTE: Why are you so excited? [EDITOR'S NOTE #2: Wait, you're also the editor. Why are you talking to yourself in the third person?]) ... Let's go!

• • •

MOREY'S MARGINS (Or, Sacramento Gives Up)

SACRAMENTO GETS:

Patrick Patterson (2-yr/$2.5 mil per), Cole Aldrich (1-yr/$2.5 mil per), Toney Douglas (1-yr/$2.1 mil per), $1 Million.

HOUSTON GETS:

Thomas Robinson (4-yr/$3.5 mil per), Francisco Garcia (1-yr/$6.1 mil per), Tyler Honeycutt (3-yr/$0.8 mil per).

I'm not Daryl Morey's biggest fan. As a statistician, most assume that I'm all over his work -- not quite. I've always respected his focus on process, and I think he generally wins trades in the aggregate. But I've also always had a general feeling that Morey focuses a bit too much on the margins. His drafting has regularly been shaky, and with the single exception of the Harden trade (among his greatest accomplishments, in my book), the vast majority of Morey's moves have seemed lateral in nature rather than fundamental course-changes. This is a bit of a problem when his team has only once been a particularly legitimate title contender, and it seemed like Morey's moves consistently got the Rockets ensconced the NBA's most hopeless state: stark mediocrity. When Morey was criticized this summer as having thought his way into a box with his marginal trades and his work was panned as a blow to the NBA's statistical "movement" (insofar as one exists at all), I was a bit irritated.

See, statistical thinking and applying analytic rigor to one's decisionmaking certainly doesn't necessitate Morey's overarching strategy. There are plenty of counterexamples to that, like Rich Cho, R.C. Buford, and Sam Presti. In fact, I'd argue that Morey's focus on the margins while ensconced in mediocrity is decidedly non-statistical, but that's a discussion for another day. There's a broader debate here that's way too complicated and multifaceted for a few paragraphs of exposition. The point here is simply to point out the obvious. These small moves, these little nudges? That's Morey's calling. Isn't quite the be-all and end-all of the job, but it's a very important part of it. And it's a role that Morey plays extremely well, as yesterday's trade demonstrated. Just look at this move from the Rockets' perspective. Their outbound value is extremely low. Patrick Patterson is a decent player, and a lot better than I thought he was going into this season. Seriously. He's been awesome. But he's somewhat low upside on the whole, and he's making only maginally less than Thomas Robinson is -- and he's only got one more year left on his deal, while Robinson has four! Cole Aldrich has disappointed over a compressed career, and Toney Douglas is... well... Toney Douglas.

Then you look at their haul. It's a no-brainer. Thomas Robinson isn't an excellent player, yet -- he's also a rookie. Robinson has played fewer than 1000 NBA minutes and he's spent his career-to-date at one of the worst player development teams in the NBA. The man has talent, even if it hasn't been exceedingly obvious in his NBA burn so far. Garcia is an expiring contract who happens to be an excellent locker room guy (and who should provide a fine substitute in the Marcus Morris role for the rest of the season), and Honeycutt is an extraordinarily cheap prospect whose contract is only partially guaranteed for $100,000 next year if the Rockets decide they don't want him. All things considered? It's a lateral move -- they don't move the needle much on this season's potential (a fun first round series, possibly challenge for a 2nd round bloodbath) while opening up the prospect that Robinson develops into a solid big man and helps address their long-term gap next to Asik in their front line. It's a trade made on the margins from which Morey makes his mark. It's possible Robinson never develops and the trade ends up being a loss for the Rockets, but as it stands, it's hard for the trade to make them that much worse or that much better. Some beautifully lateral movement on a promising young team.

Which is all well and good, but there are always two vantage points by which to analyze a trade. In that respect, Houston's success at getting the better of Sacramento must be juxtaposed with Sacramento's complete inability to develop their players, as well as their complete inability flip them for good value. Just about every year in recent memory, the Kings have flipped a promising asset or two for virtually nothing. The players tend to go on to be decent-to-good on other teams, blossoming into legitimate NBA players they may have never indicated in the dysfunction and miasma of their Kings tenure. This trade is no exception. Robinson is no scrub, even if he's playing like it -- he's the reigning 5th pick in the draft, and with some good player development, it isn't hard to see him becoming a minor force in the league. But trading him for value would've involved less financial savings, you know. The Maloofs sent out $10.3 million in salary to receive $6.6 million in salary -- a savings of $3.7 million, without even mentioning the $1 million they pocket that the Rockets threw in for fun. Morey won another trade on the margins, but by god -- it was a trade with the Maloofs. You know the old trope about how one man's playing chess and the other's playing checkers? It's worse than that for Joe and Gavin. In a league of men playing three dimensional Star Trek chess, the Maloofs aren't just playing checkers -- they're damn near playing Parcheesi. I'm so sorry, Kings fans.

• • •

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE (or, Exception Handling)

MEMPHIS GETS:

Dexter Pittman (1-yr/$0.8 mil per), MIA's 2013 2nd Round Pick.

MIAMI GETS:

$850,000 trade exception, the rights to Ricky Sanchez.

I'll be quick with this one -- this was a decent deal for both teams. Really! Many would balk at the Heat's inability to get anything better than a trade exception for a second round pick, but in this particular case, it's not a useless exception -- the Heat look to be capped out for the forseeable LeBron-featured future, and the trade exception lets them be buyers the next time a team like Golden State puts a low-salary second rounder like Charles Jenkins or Jeremy Tyler on the market (as I'll discuss later). Or, alternatively, when a team like the Knicks puts Ronnie Brewer on the market! These aren't moves that are going to rock the world, but freeing dead weight space to take on salary becomes exceedingly important when you're as capped out and lacking options as next year's Miami team. (As does freeing up roster spots.) Keeping LeBron James in Florida is going to take a few low-price assets. Trading away an obvious clunker in Dexter Pittman for the possibility of a future low-priced trade steal is always decent deal, even if it costs them a nearly worthless second round pick. As for Memphis? Pittman's a relatively terrible player that can nevertheless play a few minutes a game to give their real stars a bit of rest. That should help them out a bit. The second round pick is nearly worthless, but given their increased budget on scouting and analytics, they'll probably be able to squeeze a bit of value out of it.

No, it's not a blockbuster. But it's a decent trade for both sides. Good stuff.

• • •

WHAT IN THE WASHINGTON (or, The Celtics Get Lucky)

BOSTON GETS:

Jordan Crawford (2-yr/$1.7 mil per).

WASHINGTON GETS:

Leandro Barbosa (1-yr/$1.2 mil per), Jason Collins (1-yr/$1.3 mil per).

Alright, I understand that Jordan Crawford hasn't been an exceedingly good player in Washington. But he hasn't been an unmitigated failure, either -- giving him up for naught more than an ACL-torn Barbosa and a balky (and generally useless) Jason Collins reeks of making a move simply to make a move. It doesn't help matters that the move saves Washington no money this season and just $2.1 million dollars next season -- hardly a sum worthy of a trade to free up, even if it nominally puts them "under the cap." I realize, again, that Crawford isn't a phenomenal player. But you can do __a lot __worse for a salary that low, and trading for absolutely no benefit has never made much sense to me. In Boston's case, I'm not sure this trade helps them that much, but it certainly doesn't hurt. Crawford can be a stopgap point guard for 5-10 minutes a game, and he'll help the Celtics put shots up when they get into one of their classic Boston ruts. As things stand, he's essentially a copy of Jason Terry. But at least Crawford's a young piece with a bit of upside, and the potential to get better. It's a lucky deal for Boston that should help them solidify their playoff push. And it's a confusing deal for Washington that doesn't help much, either now OR later.

• • •

BASSY BIG MOUTH GOES NORTH (or, The Raptors Sign Sebastian Ellis)

TORONTO GETS:

Sebastian Telfair (1-yr/$1.6 mil per).

PHOENIX GETS:

Hamed Haddadi (1-yr/$1.3 mil per), Toronto ??? 2nd Round Draft Pick.

In this case, it's a matter of both sides filling a need. Phoenix needs to free up playing time for Kendall Marshall, Toronto needs a backup for Kyle Lowry that isn't John Lucas III. Telfair isn't having a terrible season, and as a time-share backup, Toronto could do worse. As for Haddadi... he hasn't played a minute for the Raptors since the Rudy Gay trade, and it's highly unlikely he plays any in Phoenix. Barring a magical recovery from his shortness of breath and generally poor fitness, he's never going to be able to play more than 5-10 minutes a game of comfortable play, no matter how efficiently he acquits himself in those minutes. There's a place in the league for guys like that, but it's a short and fleeting place. And one that I'd reckon Haddadi's already spent up.

• • •

ERIC MAYNOR: FREE MAN (or, Portland Please Don't Kill His ACL)

PORTLAND GETS:

Eric Maynor (1-yr/$2.3 mil per).

OKLAHOMA CITY GETS:

Trade exception of $2.3 million, the rights to Georgios Printezis.

In Eric Maynor's player capsule, I discussed how I thought his addition to Oklahoma City would portend an improvement in the Thunder's chances of winning the finals. A good backup point guard like Maynor would, theoretically, take some of the onus off of Westbrook and Harden to dominate the ball and allow the Thunder to work on their off-ball movement. When healthy, Maynor was one of the better "true" backup point guards the league had to offer. He passed well, shot decently, and had decent-if-not-spectacular ball control. His defense didn't disappoint TOO much and his overall game was aesthetically pleasing. That's all been absent this season, where his play has been one of Oklahoma city's few disappointments in what's been an overall excellent season. Maynor's been bad enough that this move -- a trade where they're giving Maynor away for what amounts to nothing more than a player that'll never wear a Thunder jersey and a trade exception that a cost-cutting front office is unlikely to ever get use out of. In this case, the Thunder don't seem to be trading Maynor away for an asset. They're trading him to give him a better shot at his next contract with more minutes and a bigger role, given that Reggie Jackson has entirely supplanted the role Maynor was slated to fill in the first place. A stand-up move from a stand-up franchise, even if it didn't really result in any value-added to their team picture.

As a final note: Portland? Please don't let his knees explode. Much obliged.

• • •

DECK CHAIRS ON THE TITANIC (or, Interchangeable Parts)

DALLAS GETS:

Anthony Morrow (1-yr/$4.0 mil per).

ATLANTA GETS:

Dahntay Jones (1-yr/$2.9 mil per)

Anthony Morrow, despite being one of the greatest three point shooters in the history of the league (I'm not kidding! Go look!), hasn't gotten a whole hell of a lot of burn in Atlanta to date. This isn't for no reason. Despite being a phenomenal three point talent, Morrow is among the worst defenders in the league and does virtually nothing else on the court -- he has nothing remotely approaching a passable close-to-the-basket move, he doesn't have a handle to speak of, and he has an annoying tendency to foul more than a wing safely should. Still, he's among the best three point shooters to ever play the game, and that's worth a few million to most teams out there. As for Dahntay Jones? He's a decent defender who's having one of the worst seasons in his entire career -- he's shooting 35% from the field and 21% from three, and doing little of note otherwise. That's remarkably bad no matter how good you are defensively, and with his defense having a relative off-year, he's a rough player to watch. Still, his acquisition saves Danny Ferry a few hundred thousand in the transaction by chopping off their late-season payments to Morrow for the lesser Jones, and with Morrow unable to crack their rotation, it probably won't be a big problem if Jones plays poorly and doesn't make the cut himself. The Mavericks have to improve quite a lot just to get to the Western playoffs -- Morrow doesn't necessarily help them do that, but it has a shot of helping them further amplify their strength behind the three point line. And in any event, rolling the dice on a Jones replacement probably makes sense. Not exactly a game changing move, but that's not a surprise -- none of the moves ANYONE made today changed the game.

Continue reading

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

• PHX vs OKC: There Goes the Sun[s] (by Adam Koscielak)
• LAL vs PHX: The Collective Richard Jefferson of Suns/Lakers (by Alex Dewey)
• CLE vs SAS: Redemption in a Familiar Place (by Aaron McGuire)

Read on after the jump.

• • •

__PHX vs OKC: There Goes the Sun[s]
___Adam Koscielak_

Swish. Kevin Durant nails another one. There isn't anything any Suns player can do about it. After all, it's Kevin Durant, destroyer of worlds, killer of dreams, basket-bot 3000. Nobody's going to ever stop most of these shots. Lindsay Hunter, meanwhile, furiously calls a timeout, proceeding to eviscerate PJ Tucker, a journeyman who's basically an NBA rookie-via-Europe at this point. Hunter still expected perfection, Hunter, as an imperfect a head coach you could ever imagine, with his inconsistent rotations and his propensity to bench good players for streaky ones. And on the other end, there's Marcin Gortat. Last year's leading scorer, missing yet another bunny. Or maybe it wasn't a bunny, just something he'd make last year. Maybe it's the paralyzing fear of Serge Ibaka looming, or anger at the referees for missing another subtle nudge. These are not excuses, these are circumstances. They're circumstances he used to fight through, and circumstances that do not exonerate him from the crime of lazy basketball. Ditto for every other Suns player, every other disillusioned athlete that goes through the motion. And herein lies the problem.

I've been a Suns fan ever since I first heard of Steve Nash playing there. As I wrote before, this wasn't an easy quest in Poland, but I have embraced them. The arrival of Marcin Gortat cemented my fandom. Two years later, with a quick poof, Steve Nash left for the Lakers, and Gortat found himself as the 5th wheel on a team dominated by terrible ballhogs. Sunday night, even team captain Jared Dudley found himself benched for most of the game for no apparent reason. This is probably what drove me over the cliff. Yes, I'll admit it: I'm a crazy optimist. I expected the Suns to be fighting for a playoff spot right now, nowhere near a high lottery pick. Yes, it was irrational, but I believed that the same spirit that lead them to barely miss out on the playoffs the last two seasons was more than just Steve Nash. I thought it was fight. As it turned out, that it was all Nash's and Grant Hill's leadership. And so, disappointed by the rough fall that came as my expectations turned into high hopes, and high hopes turned into insane dreams, I write this little statement.

I will not watch another Suns game this season.

I will not make another comment about them outside of trade rumours, I will not write about Marcin Gortat's stat lines. I'm done. I have a choice between frustrating myself with awful basketball and embracing another team. I'll go elsewhere. And I chose the easy way out. Honestly? I feel liberated. Being a fan is hard, and believe me, I know all about bad teams. The Polish National Team in soccer hasn't had a major success in my lifetime, instead failing miserably whenever they seemed poised to make the next step. But that didn't happen. The Edmonton Oilers, outside of a single Stanley Cup Finals appearance, have been pretty bad in my lifetime. And yet I stuck with them. Why? Because I was bound to them. Rooting for someone else than Poland would be like you guys rooting for someone else than America. I'm not a big patriot, but when it comes to sport, I might just be a nationalist. The Oilers? The Oilers have always been the one thing I could talk about with my dad. They were his team, and so, they automatically became mine. The Suns? The Suns were a choice. An expression of appreciation for the beauty of the game they brought on. Now, they're jerseys filled by people who don't play beautiful basketball, far from it. Alvin Gentry, an offensive mastermind, and an architect of sorts, is now gone, dismissed for the sins of a terrible front office and replaced by Lindsay Hunter, who hadn't even been a coach before this happened.

The worst thing about Hunter is that while he did get the team under control, he made them play an even uglier brand of basketball, one totally opposite to the free flowing offence of Steve Nash. And so, when the Suns barely managed to score 69 points (with only Markieff Morris -- of all people -- in double figures), I gave up. I'd decided that enough was enough, and threw the Suns away to the laundry basket, waiting for the rebuilding machine to clean them up. Perhaps I can give them another chance, one day, when they'll be playing watchable basketball. In the meanwhile, however, I say goodbye to the Valley. It's been a fun ride while it lasted, but I refuse to torture myself any longer. And so, what's next? I'm going to watch a lot more Raptors, that's for sure. Canadian patriotism and all that, I feel like this is one team I can potentially root for. Aside from that, I will just look through the league, again and again, looking for teams and players that I can support.

I am now the liberated fan, one might say. And it's good for me.

• • •

__LAL vs PHX: The Collective Richard Jefferson of Suns/Lakers
___Alex Dewey
_

I'm a big-time advocate of the game of my muse -- that of stately, ambassadorial Warriors small forward Richard Jefferson, formerly of the Nets, Bucks, and Spurs. Some of my amusement at RJ is borne simply of Jefferson's absurdly well-developed self-awareness, his iconic appearance, and so on. But above all else, my amusement derives from his decision-making on the court. Despite major-league athletic ability and generally solid positioning (rarely will Jefferson make unwarranted gambles for steals and blocks), Jefferson is simply not an good decision-maker with the ball in his hands. RJ never looks comfortable passing from the corner to the wing or vice versa, or hitting players on backdoor cuts, at least in game-time offensive situations. On the rare event he does look comfortable, Jefferson seems almost too comfortable, making automatic passes even when he has an open shot, as though he's not really making the decision in the moment and he's not reading the situation effectively. Jefferson has the almost uncanny ability to disappear completely for long stretches of the game, and not because he's taking himself out of the game. Simply because he genuinely thinks the weakside corner is the best utilization of his talents. His cuts are random. Outside of the fast break (in which there are, to some extent, only automatic decisions), Jefferson with or near the ball is comedy. And I feel that Jefferson honestly has enough self-awareness to recognize the humor and enough self-deprecation to laugh about it.

And visually speaking, all of this absolutely cracks me up to watch. Bullet passes without reason, Jefferson posting up on the left block (and getting doubled) like he's Tim Duncan, insensibly solid defense at times, automatic responses with flat jumpers that have Mark Jackson and Gregg Popovich shaking their heads. For some reason I've always pictured Tim Duncan, suddenly becoming surly as though speaking to a pet, after a particularly poor decision: "Just look what you did, Richard. Just look what you did." I have so many all-time favorite Jefferson moments from his relatively short Spurs tenure, like the time he passed up a huge open wing 3 in crunch-time only to get the exact same shot three passes later and buried it. The time he absolutely flubbed an alley-oop from Tony Parker and let the ball go out of bounds. The time he missed a free throw everyone knew he would miss, and of the Spurs on the bench and line, only Popovich applauded him on the sideline encouragingly (he hit the second one). The time (and he'll do this sort of thing from time to time) that RJ blocked a Ty Lawson 3 and dribbled to the other end faster than Lawson could run to get a bucket. Impossible? Yeah, except it's not. It friggin' happened! That's the point: Richard Jefferson is like a low-key, articulate, self-aware, defensively solid, self-deprecating, 6'6'', not-all-that-athletic-anymore version of JaVale McGee, but in this blessedly singular way.

What is this building towards? Okay, so anyway, I actually did not watch Jefferson Tuesday night. So I guess (best Arlo Guthrie impression) "that's not what I came here to talk about." See, Jefferson was playing with the Warriors against Houston at the same time as the Lakers-Suns game. And that Lakers-Suns game, especially in the second half? It was exactly like the experience of watching a collective Richard Jefferson, except with Jefferson as every player's puppetmaster for most of the second half. The Suns looked like a 5-win team overperforming and the Lakers looked like a 20-win team performing to its level. And not like, "Wow, it's so sad that this is a team," but more like "I would go see these teams even if they were 5-win teams if I were nearby." It was a glorious comedy of errors: Players that did not know why they were throwing bullet passes, brilliant sequences of 50-50 balls, Metta World Peace making a brilliant steal and then not even trying to avoid getting called for the offensive foul against little Goran Dragic, Michael Beasley telegraphing his decision to shoot like he was Samuel Morse beating a horse-drawn carriage to the Patent Office, scrums that ended in unpredictable ways and led into scrums on scrums on scrums, Kobe refusing to shoot even when completely open, Earl Clark making cuts that I'm confident have never been made before, and a general sense that both teams were trying to outscore their opponents instead of trying to outplay their opponents.

The net result was that Aaron and I were just shaking our heads and completely cracking up watching the game. The Suns were winning the rebounding battle for reasons completely passing understanding. If the Suns had offered a guarantee of fun for this game (as they did earlier this season), they could have sold this a major network during prime time and gotten not one complaint. Yes, the Suns are often sad to watch and not altogether sadder than the Lakers. And all considering, seeing Luis Scola and Jermaine O'Neal trying to play out the string on their careers is kind of heart-breaking. Regardless! That game was entertainment, novelty, aesthetics, and humor all in one. I watched the Kings-Grizz game right before it, and while technically more competent and filled with brilliant scoring by Tyreke Evans and one of Tony Allen's God-mode games and a good performance by Tayshaun Prince...? Even with generally speaking, more eminent competence all throughout the game... I am going to forget a hundred Kings-Grizz games before I forget that comically awful Lakers-Suns game. It was by far the better game as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure those at Staples would agree.

Also, by this logic, Boris Diaw is far superior to Kevin Love. Just sayin'.

• • •

__CLE vs SAS: Redemption in a Familiar Place_
Aaron McGuire_

I actually watched this game on virtual tape delay, since I spent most of the night at a friend's place watching the Duke/UNC rivalry game. Before I say anything about the Spurs, allow me to spend a moment in muted awe. I generally hate college basketball, but this was something special -- the first half of last night's Duke/UNC game was quite possibly the worst game I've ever seen. No comebacks, no weasel words, no rejoinders. Just disgusting basketball. Both teams were throwing passes with no possible intended target. Both teams were taking hilariously poor shots, exemplified by one particular Amile Jefferson shot in the first half. Jefferson -- I kid you not -- dribbled, turned 270 degrees on his pivot foot, and made to shoot... before dribbling and turning 270 degrees back to exactly where he started, where his defender was still standing. The defender didn't move to cover his turnaround, he just stayed in the same place! So the net result was that Jefferson made a move that got himself free for a jumper before completely erasing the object of the move for absolutely no reason and throwing up a horribly contested shot. He missed badly. It was awful. It was a phenomenal trainwreck and offensive to the concept of execution.

So, given all that, I may have been a tad hypersensitive to good execution. So that said, let's not beat around the bush -- the Spurs played comparably lazy basketball last night over the vast majority of the game. The Cavaliers are playing reasonably well as of late, but in a game where Kyrie Irving scores just six points on 2-15 shooting, the Cavaliers should be down 20-30. That they weren't was a general indictment of San Antonio's effort and energy, and a reflection of how difficult it generally is to bring stars back from injury. It's not that Duncan, Parker, or Ginobili were bad -- they were all fine, in a vacuum. Duncan's defense was excellent all game (as is to be expected) and Manu's crisp two-man game with Blair remains one of the most fun little quirks of the current era of San Antonio basketball. But that didn't do much to combat the two big problems both players faced -- in Duncan's case, he tired almost exponentially quickly after the long layoff, playing quite well in his first 5-10 minutes but increasingly poorly as he lost his legs. The backups and riff-raff that had acquitted themselves so well in Duncan's absence were flagging in concert, as though Duncan's return had sequestered them back into the mindset of being a backup who didn't need to do anything. Danny Green did the same with Manu's return, and everyone over-deferred to Parker instead of seeking out their own generated offense. It was a sloppy, sloppy contest.

But you know what? All that ended up being essentially immaterial. In the final estimation, all that anyone's really going to remember about last night's game was the final eight seconds -- so sublime, so functional, so beautiful. I watched the video at least a dozen times, and I could watch it a dozen more. Duncan sets a high screen, Parker dives into the teeth of the defense with his disorienting, hypnotic dribble. He weaves his way to the rim, where he had an essentially wide-open layup to tie the game. Tim Duncan is right behind him with zero block-out coverage on the part of the Cavaliers, in perfect position to tip the ball in or receive a quick scoop pass for a flush. And there, in the corner? Wouldn't you know it, it's Kawhi Leonard, he of 48% three point shooting from that particular corner! There were three completely open shots that could've been generated in a split second. Being as they are a team that cares more about the win than the margin, the Spurs went for the pop-a-shot three. Leonard canned it. Parker then played brilliant stifling defense on Kyrie Irving to force an errant last shot, and the game was done. After a night of dismal basketball – for the Spurs, for Duke, for UNC – sometimes all you really need is a single stretch of beauty to redeem a terrible night of hoops. Big ups to the Spurs for rising from their slumber to provide us such a gem.

 

Continue reading

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

• PHX vs MEM: Inspector Gadget's Game (by Aaron McGuire)
• MIL vs DEN: Basketbality, in Purest Form (by Alex Dewey)

Read on after the jump.

• • •

__PHX vs MEM: The Dirge of Inspector Gadget_
Aaron McGuire_

In the wake of Rudy Gay's departure from the Memphis Grizzlies, there's been a lot of talk about addition by subtraction. The idea that the team is going to get better -- perhaps a lot better -- from the formerly inefficient Rudy Gay's departure alone. Call it semantics if you'd like, but I'm not sure that's quite right. Addition by subtraction is reserved for situations where a player vanishes into the ether entirely -- whether through injury, a salary dump, or a suspension. When a player is replaced by a different agent with an entirely different skillset (as the Grizzlies did by picking up Tayshaun Prince to fill-in for Rudy's production), the trade becomes more a case of addition by tinker. Or more accurately, change by tinker, as it doesn't need to be prescriptively bad or good. It's a team taking a stab at absorbing a new set of skills brought to the table -- quite a different matter than addition by subtraction alone. Properly assessing the moving parts of a complex trade is surprisingly difficult.

Last night provided a good teaching example, when Grizzlies fans and NBA scribes got to watch a tantalizing glimpse of Prince's potential to help this Memphis team. Make no mistake -- Prince was active, impactful, and one of the scant few reasons the Grizzlies were in last night's game at all. His go-go-gadget arms were disrupting passing lanes all night long, and his fit into the offensive flow was surprisingly smooth. While he missed a few at-rim chippies he'd usually hit that made his overall game seem a bit inefficient, he took open shots and forced the Suns to run around like madmen to keep him from popping open for more. He served as the primary ballhandler for a few stretches of the game to a lot of success, something Rudy Gay was never great shakes at, and his command of the boards and passing lanes gave Memphis a lot more than they'd perhaps have the right to expect. Was it the same as Gay's contributions? Certainly not -- it was entirely and completely different. But it was useful, and it gave them a wrinkle they never quite had before.

Of course, despite that, the Grizzlies still lost. And that's where the minutiae and the complexity starts to rear its head. Prince showed versatility and comfort beyond all reasonable expectations, and Zach Randolph showed excellent form in a 21-13 return to his uncontested first-option status. Even Jerryd Bayless had a good game, combining everything he's given Memphis this year with a necessary infusion of three point shooting. (He was lit up on defense, but he was scoring so well it didn't completely matter.) Everyone else, though? A horror story. Marc Gasol's passing was slow and poorly timed, and his offense was completely off (partially because of a few horrible calls that sapped his aggression). Mike Conley has always played better with Gay on the court than with Gay off, and last night continued the trend -- his shots were hasty and poorly considered while his passing was weak and predictable. Darrell Arthur played like a nervous man worried for his minutes, Ed Davis was a complete nonfactor, and Tony Allen's defense was surprisingly tame. It was a lame and lethargic night for the Grizzlies as a whole, in spite of the unexpectedly exceptional performance from Randolph and Prince.

So, what was the end result? Prince played well, Randolph adapted, and everyone else appeared to fold. For one example of a night, the trade was completely inscrutable – it was essentially impossible for a layman to tell if the game was one the Grizzlies would win with Gay in their corner. Conversely, it’s difficult to state for certain that the game was one the Grizzlies would lose – without Prince’s contributions there’s no way to mentally assess how Gay would’ve filled in Tayshaun’s role. It’s hard to figure if Rudy Gay would’ve made the team more or less engaged. There’s no certainty when you assess a trade in-the-moment. A come-to-Jesus moment of realization, a understanding of exactly how good or bad the trade ended up being for your team? That’s rare. Elusive. A questing beast for a new age.

Basketball is a binary sport. You win, you lose -- the game ends, and you move on. The trades and sub-games of basketball are distinctly different. They aren't binary at all -- you don't simply win a trade or lose a trade. You make the trade, then you batten down the hatches and wait through the ebb and flow of the trade’s impact. All the while you watch the signals and the numbers, sift through statistics and figures, and furrow your brow in an effort to find a stark understanding that never comes. There are indications, sure. They’re just buried in mountains of noise, what-if’s, and conditionals. That's a large part of what makes trades so fun, for fans and analysts -- they're a lingering wisp of unparalleled nuance in a sport of stark truths and analysis.

• • •

__MIL vs DEN: Basketbality, in Purest Form
___Alex Dewey
_

"What is jazz?"
"If you gotta ask, you'll never know."

-Louis Armstrong, apocryphal.

Certain performers, composers, and listeners bring something to the table when they perform, compose, and listen to music. That something is called musicality. Musicality connotes acuity for melody, harmony, rhythm... but in its broadest sense, musicality really just means the ability to locate and produce sound in time and space. As a musically-oriented person I can hardly listen to music without much musicality. This isn't elitist; some people can latch on to great lyrics or the generally-well-conveyed emotion of a song much more easily than I can. And it's to their credit. But for me? Musicality is the First Law of my personal musical programming.

To that end, I've been thinking about what makes a basketball game "good." Considering a few games burned to my memory:

The Bobcats-Heat game was quite sloppy at times. It's unfair to paint it as "the Bobcats brought toughness and the Heat brought talent" because that's the obvious narrative when MKG is out and the Heat-Bobcats game is close. No. The Bobcats brought consistent execution, a bunch of above-average slashing/shooting guards (Ben Gordon, Ramon Sessions, Kemba Walker) that had good feel for the game, and the Heat brought LeBron James and Chris Bosh both having exceptional nights (James shot 13-14 from the floor) along with_ nobody else_. The Heat's defense looked a bit porous and the team as a whole looked a step slow. But they were competing and finally got some separation at the end. The Bobcats were staying in the game, bringing a bunch of runs to the table, often scoring at will, kicking it out well despite questionable shooters on the perimeter, and playing good basketball. They lost, but it was respectable.

The Lakers-Nets game was horrifyingly bad in the first half and I didn't want to watch anymore. I have blocked that half out of my memory forever. Some notes from a disoriented amnesia: Reggie Evans kept checking in (okay maybe this only happened twice) and it didn't feel like he was making the Nets any worse on offense. Like, Reggie Evans looked like a relatively average offensive option. Read those sentences again. That should never happen, ever, unless Reggie Evans woke up one day replaced by Kawhi Leonard or David Lee. I mean, Reggie Evans is comically bad and it is deeply comical that someone as physically large as Evans is so offensively limited that he gets about half his contested shots blocked and the other half completely uncontested. And in this game, he looked like an average option. Maybe even above-average. After all, while he may be bad, at least he's not sitting on the perimeter expecting to make shots like Gerald Wallace, Deron Williams, and Joe Johnson. The Nets offense was awful. I love where Brook Lopez is at, and Lopez has exceptional touch and instincts with the ball that are a joy to watch, but oftentimes Brook Lopez is carrying the Nets like he's friggin' Dirk Nowitzki. And it's a dismal watch.

On the other hand? The Bucks-Nuggets game last night was excellent, one of the better games I've seen this season. Part of it was probably the wine and friends I watched it with, but the flow of the game was simply excellent. Yes, part was built on Samuel Dalembert having the game of his life with 17-21 shooting on a brilliant sequence of open looks, offensive rebounds, and just plain "it's my night" kind of shots. But, you know... the Bucks lost. Simple Milwaukee answer: Monta Ellis and Brandon Jennings (combined 11-36, 24 points, 16 assists, 9 turnovers) were impossibly poor, except for a short stretch when Milwaukee was rolling. Also, so many of Milwaukee's deadly turnovers happened right when they were up 7 in the 4th with a chance to end the game. Simple Denver answer: No one on the Nuggets looked exceptional, but all of them weathered the Bucks' early dominance. They made a 19-4 run to end the game built on characteristic Nuggets' steal-to-fast-break machine.

We can explain the game that way, in terms of "what happened, why, when". But I think the real thing that made the game good was just the "basketbality" of the game and constituent players. Analogous to musicality, basketbality (a clumsy term waiting for replacement) is the situational awareness and ability to respond that made the Heat-Bobcats and Bucks-Nuggets so excellent and the Lakers-Nets so poor last night. That is to say, the Bucks and Nuggets were able to locate and produce the right plays in time and space, and the Nuggets just did it a bit more often.

Pressed for time, you'd be much better off listing the players that didn't have great basketbality: Brandon Jennings looked great for a brief stretch filled with dribble-drives, but it was mercurial greatness and Jennings strayed from good plays for bad shots far too often. JaVale McGee had his... own particular feel for the game. And that's about it. Most of the players on both teams were pretty aware, engaged, and active. Larry Sanders was blocking left and right and getting dunks on the other end. The Bucks weren't overfeeding Samuel Dalembert; that was the most impressive part. He started 16-18 and the Bucks weren't going to kill the golden goose by feeding Dalembert for a bunch of inefficient isos. Milwaukee coach Jim Boylan actually had him sit when he had 7-7 or 8-8 in the first half, because it was Sanders' time to return and that was the gameplan.

I think basketbality -- so far as it's defined -- is one of the key things I enjoy about basketball. A combination of kinesthetic intelligence, situational awareness, vision, and feel. Feel for the game, for time and space, and for what just one can contribute with one's resources. Also, all the dunks and blocks at the rim were pretty cool. Kenneth Faried, folks. Larry Sanders. JaVale McGee. They can jump out of the building and still have enough kinetic energy in them to power an arena's backup generator. That was neat too, fancy or not.

Continue reading

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

• LAL vs NOH: The Battle of Bad Decisions (by Aaron McGuire)

• • •

__LAL vs NOH: A Battle of Bad Decisions
___Aaron McGuire_

We like to talk about the games-within-the-games -- the rebounding battle, the free throw battle, the turnover battle. So on and so forth. You know the type. A score of minor games within the broader game of basketball that compose the game's competitive fabric. Among the meta-games, there's one that gets understandably scant press. Not very fun to watch, nor is it something the individual agents like to highlight, even if they win it! It's often the elephant in the room, or something that gets analyzed in a vacuum by individual team blogs or analysts as an isolated incident or a silly individual problem rather than two agents locked in a cold war as they trudge forward into mutual destruction. I refer to the most curious of games-within-the-game, this time discussing the coaches at hand: the battle of bad decisions.

"Not every coach makes bad decisions," some would say. And I'd disagree. All coaches make a few clunkers every time and again, especially on bleak nights at the halfway mark of a slog of a season. Even the best coaches in the world aren't exempt from head scratching moves at inconvenient times. Take last night’s fourth quarter. As strange as the New Orleans closing salvo was to watch in real time, it was stranger still when the run dried up with about 2:00 left in the game and Monty Williams chose to ride Robin Lopez over bringing in Anthony Davis. It would be one thing if Davis had played poorly, but he'd played excellent basketball all night long. A dominant run by Davis in the third was one of the only reasons the Hornets weren't looking at a 20-30 point deficit, and he’d kept the paint on lock when he was in the game. For Williams to stick with Lopez -- playing well, but not overwhelmingly so -- over Davis was a bit of a curious ploy, and one that bit back in the final few plays when he gave up a Steve Nash layup with 4:20 to go. Impossible to tell in-the-moment, but it turned into the beginning of the end -- the layup (combined with Clark’s a few minutes later) caused the Hornets to adjust their defense to stick closer to the rim, which in turn caused Nash's defender to float a few feet off him in what would become the game-deciding dagger with 1:21 to go. It was a curious choice, especially given how well Davis had played the Los Angeles offense in the third quarter that got the Hornets back in it.

Funny enough, though, this was arguably not the worst coaching decision made last night. That one probably belongs to Mike D'Antoni's completely indefensible riding of Antawn Jamison throughout the final quarter. At least Robin Lopez was having a decent night on both ends -- Jamison shot 1-5 from three point range and made 5-9 of his twos, with a few lucky rolls to pad the numbers. The real problem was the defensive end, where Jamison served as little more than a lazy Susan in the lane, dishing up prime opportunities for the Hornets to stick him on a screen and rotate easily to the rack. It was fine at the start of the fourth quarter, when the Hornets were playing a lineup featuring Lance Thomas, Brian Roberts, and Jason Smith. His defense doesn’t hurt as much when the other team doesn’t have players who can make plays. But when Monty put in Gordon and Vasquez, and their offense started running actual plays? The layup line was a buffet of baskets. Seven baskets in the paint in the fourth quarter for the upstart Hornets, and virtually all of them came at Jamison's expense. It was a phenomenally stupid move, and when the Hornets started playing off LA's reactive paint-covering doubles to drain some open threes, D'Antoni probably should've realized it was essential that he get Jamison out of there. He didn't, but his bad decision ended up being irrelevant. It's a battle, you see, and a battle the Lakers won.

That's the thing, though -- it's a battle precisely because bad decisions always happen. They're a part of the game, and they aren't avoidable whatsoever. The key is getting a coach who makes poor decisions a bit less often than the other guy. Although D'Antoni hasn't been a success in Los Angeles yet, I think he stands a good shot at putting things together and – as they say – making fewer mistakes than the other guy, someday. Monty Williams? The young man's a coaching dynamo, but nights like last night underline the general point. You can be a phenomenal coach, but you're never perfect -- not Popovich, not Jackson, not Sloan. No matter how good you are, you'll make a few decisions on gut instinct and guile that simply don't pan out. Breaks of the game. Last night, Monty's favoring Robin Lopez ended up biting back a bit. D'Antoni's favoring of Jamison almost let another win slip away. But the Lakers gutted it out and got the victory.

Sometimes basketball's complexity gets the better of us, as one finds oneself trapped under the weight of expectation and analytical rigor. But sometimes it isn't really all that complicated. Two middling teams meet, and on a muggy Los Angeles night, the team that made the fewest egregious errors won. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't fun, and it epitomized the lazy mistake-ridden center of late January basketball. I even got into the bad-decision mix, realizing quickly I'd made an immensely poor choice to staying up late while sick only to watch a crummy basketball game and write an uninspired short the next day. But you know what? A win's a win, and a piece is a piece.

"I am become Lakers, consumer of pageviews."

• • •

Continue reading

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

• CLE vs BOS: Kyrie Irving -- the Demon Barber of Q Street (by Aaron McGuire)
• OKC vs LAC: Kevin Durant is the Living Future (by Alex Dewey)
• EAST vs WEST: Marginalizing the Five Percenters (by Alex Dewey)

• • •

__CLE vs BOS: Kyrie Irving -- the Demon Barber of Q Street
___Aaron McGuire_

"Easy shaving for a penny / As good as you will find any."

There's something breathtaking about the pint-size dominance of a player like Kyrie Irving. No, I'm not being racist against Australians, thank you very much. (Leigh Ellis, you're the bomb.) I just mean to highlight "small" players -- not Boykins small, mind you, but any player who could be described as relativistically small. Tiny in compare. Of course Irving isn't small relative to the world at large -- the one time I met him I was barely taller than he was, and most people I know think I'm oddly tall. But on the silver screen, surrounded by seven foot trees and rippling athletic freaks of nature like Westbrook and Wall? There's a certain smallness of form, and it lends to an allure. That whole sense of rooting for the little guy, both figuratively and literally. It doesn't always make sense that a player that size is obliterating all that stands in his path. But it's almost always fun to watch.

Part of Sweeney Todd's allure as a cultural emblem lies in the very same oddity. It's fun watching small basketball players knife into the lane and make mincemeat of a team's defensive scheme. Conversely, it's fun watching a downtrodden man exact his revenge from a fundamentally ignored profession. It's unexpected, odd, unsettling. Nobody goes to the barber and suspects them to harbor murderous tendencies. Before you see Sweeney Todd, you never think to yourself... "oh, wow, I'm baring my neck to a man with a large razor and giving him full sight of my jugular veins." Nobody thinks that! In a person's pre-"Sweeney Todd" youth, barbers are simply ignored figures who perform a service and that's that.

In reality, there's nothing particularly off-kilter about the mere idea of a demon barber. After all, blade-wielding or not, they're human beings just like the rest of us. There's nothing especially disturbing about a murderer just because their profession gives them a bit more access to the human neck. There's nothing especially interesting about a forty point scoring night just because the bedazzling guard is a bit on the short side. Neither are especially exemplary by themselves. But it's the expectation that counts. We live with the unstated truth that we're constantly trusting our barbers with our lives. Sweeney Todd challenges that. So too do we live with the unstated truth that a shorter player is "worse" than a larger player, less fitting, more foreign. Untrue, of course, but it's a matter of expectations. We can't account for what we don't expect. So we watch Sweeney Todd, we read of his exploits. We consider all the times a barber was a flick away from ending our lives. And what happens? Our skin crawls. Discomfort, shivers, and horror abounds.

And then, as with last night, we glance upon a demon barber of a different sort. We watch Kyrie Irving scrub his hands and dive into the teeth of a wheezing, storied defense. We watch a helpless Celtics squad triple team the diminutive Irving to no avail. He drew his straight razor and sliced the lane in twain, putting the game away and making a title-aspirant defense look like a set of deck chairs. And it really isn't all that unexpected at this point. Kyrie Irving is as bloodthirsty a competitor as any Sweeney Todd look-alike -- the Cavaliers aren't a good team, and the Celtics aren't anywhere near what they once were. But they've got a future. And they've a dazzling waterbug guard who, at his best, plays in such a way that you simply can't look away.

Slice away, young man.

• • •

OKC vs LAC: Kevin Durant is the Living Future
Alex Dewey

Kevin Durant was the future last night. I don't know where basketball will be in 40 years, but one of my pet ideas is that we'll make the court about 45 feet shorter. That is to say, the court would be about half as long. You could get the entire field of play in a single camera shot, more or less. I'm guessing the court also gets a few feet wider on each side to make Thibodeau-style defense more difficult and corner threes a mite less efficient. Why do I like this idea?

Because you're always in transition. You're always in motion!

You're always defending your basket and, at the same time, near a quick score at your opponent's basket at any given time, potentially only a short outlet pass away. Those of you familiar with tennis? Well, there would be a game-within-the-game similar to tennis' shot construction, where balancing offensive and defensive commitments of players becomes a defining strategic consideration. Keep a point guard at the top of the key to run the offense? Okay, but if they lose the ball on a pass they're going to have trouble covering a rangy defender! Dominant rim-protector? Sure, but the closer you bring him to your own rim, the further away he is from scoring.

The reduced size of the court almost eliminates defenses getting set habitually except out of timeouts, inbounds plays, and special defensive strategies. Would smart teams like the current Spurs benefit from a faster-paced assault? Sure. Would it help transition speed-demons like the Thunder and Heat? Sure. Would it help the talented Lakers? Trick question. Nothing can help the Lakers. But yeah, probably. Who knows? I think it's worth finding out. Kevin Durant and LeBron James would be the ideal players for this model. They're always in transition defensively and always ready and able to chase down players that get ahead of the break. This version of basketball would actualize the two of them in both the individual and team senses, even moreso than the game does now.

That's the key reason it's a pet idea of mine. Basketball as it is seems more primed to actualize players like Tim Duncan, Derrick Rose, or Chris Paul -- players that don't want to run back between every play or be a constant two-way threat. Players that want to switch their attention every play. Granted, Duncan would pull off some amazing outlet passes. Derrick Rose would force the "defensive" team to sacrifice transition-time resources just to stuff him at the rim. Chris Paul is an all-time great in terms of his intelligence and feel for the game. Physically, though, they'd suddenly be at a serious disadvantage to the relentless athleticism of LeBron or Durant.

Kevin Durant gets buckets at an amazing rate and has improved in all facets of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if the main limiting factor to his and LeBron's improvement is to be found in the nature of the game rather than in the nature of their transcendent talent. That's what Kevin Durant showed me last night. Not just that he can get buckets at a legendary clip (although, still, just look at this dunk again). He showed me that through athleticism and talent forces us to reconsider the entire nature of the game.

• • •

EAST vs WEST: Marginalizing the Five Percenters
Alex Dewey

If you have some pieces, you're almost there, and if you're almost there, you go for it — even if the chances of toppling a superpower are slim. "If you've got even a 5 percent chance to win the title — and that group includes a very small number of teams every year — you've gotta be focused all on winning the title," says Rockets GM Daryl Morey. Mark Cuban, the Mavs' owner, agrees: "One sprained toe or two, and the competitive landscape changes," he says. "You don't want to miss that opportunity. You should always put the best team you can on the floor within the parameters you have set for yourself."

-- Zach Lowe, The ("Low End") Five Percent Theory

I think the NBA should switch to a 16-team seeded bracket for the playoffs. My reason for this is simple. It's mathematics, even. Using the above 5% number as a baseline, let's assess some hypothetical probabilities. Let's say that the team with the highest likelihood to come out of the East is, say, Miami. The Heatles sport a tidy 64% chance in this set of hypotheticals, with the Pacers, Knicks, and Bulls each featuring 10% chances. The other 6% goes to the field. Let's say the West is more like... Thunder at 34%, Spurs at 17%, Clippers at 17%, Grizz at 10%, Warriors at 8%, Nuggets at 6%, rest of the field at 8%. In a position of uncertainty (uncertainty including everything from injury, unforeseen breakout players, and sheer random chance) I think those are fair as a starting point. I might actually have these team lower and the Nets, Celts, and Hawks a little higher myself, but I'm illustrating something.

Now, a forward perspective -- let's just say that the Finals is a 50-50 flip, each time. No matter how good a team's chances are coming in, after the crucible of three rounds they've made a statement that they belong. That means we can get the odds of a title by dividing each team's conference-winning chances by 2. In that case, Miami's the only >5% contender in the East, and the West features the Thunder, Spurs, Clippers.

Here's the funny thing... despite the fact that the Warriors and Nuggets are excluded from contention by this calculation by a hair (4% and 3%)? If we take this model at face value, the non-contender Warriors and Nuggets are far better than the 5% Pacers, Knicks, and Bulls! Winning 3 rounds against a grab-bag of the Thunder, Grizz, Spurs, and Clippers? That's absolute madness, and it's the main reason the Warriors and Nuggets should expect to have such trouble winning a title. If they only have to play one round against a truly elite team, they could pull something crazy off against that team and hang with the other very-good teams in their conference. Both the Warriors and Nuggets are actively deep in a way that the Pacers of this and last season are not. That is to say, the Warriors and Nuggets could pull some high-variance games, JaVale McGee could find himself in a groove like he did against the Lakers, and the Heat or Thunder could find themselves suddenly out of luck.

It's not likely, don't get me wrong. But remember that the uncertainty that we're basing our model on includes not only Draymond Green breaking out to shut down LeBron or KD, but also the probability of a serious injury or string of injuries to the contenders. If Marc Gasol goes down, the Warriors still have to go through the remains of that decent Memphis team, and then two of the Thunder/Clippers/Spurs, likely with both at full strength. The point here isn't to make some deep statement about the contenders as they are, the point is that -- with a reasonable model of probability -- we can say that the East-West bracket combined with West-dominated depth of the league ends up crowding out plenty of Western teams from realistic contention, putting teams that could theoretically compete with the best in the league into rebuilding mode.

On the other hand, eastern pseudo-contenders without a realistic shot can point to "that ECF appearance two years ago" or "that 36-46 playoff season where we took them to 6" as an example of how close they are with the right pieces. (Hello, Philadelphia!) Eastern teams and players can accumulate fans and acclaim just for being in the right conference! Meanwhile, solid Western teams can lose them for the same reason. Them's the breaks, and I'm sure I'll live with the consolation prize of great basketball every night in the West and not having to pay attention to the Pistons except that one guy (you know who), even if it hurts the Spurs chances a few percent.

But I also think it's self-perpetuating, in the sense that an Eastern team doesn't have to field quite as good a team to be mediocre, playoff-bound, or in contention. Ergo? It doesn't. This is a collective problem, and collective problems in the specific cooperative/competitive sense are hard to solve without action by the ruling body. And along those lines? Perhaps it's time to solve it.

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

• HOU vs LAC: Grant Hill's Tenth Centennial (by Aaron McGuire)
• LAL vs MIL: Lurking Demons & Shot Clock Follies (by Alex Dewey)
• PHX vs OKC: Dribbling the Night Away (by Adam Koscielak)

• • •

__HOU vs LAC: Grant Hill's Tenth Centennial
___Aaron McGuire_

A lot of numbers seem strangely meaningful, even if they're meaningless outside of the way we address them. Come, foreign nations: give us your even, your prime, your divisible-by-five! It's an odd and fascinating cultural tic we all seem to share. Inordinate appreciation for the attractive digits, that is. There's no real difference between Grant Hill's 999th game and his 1001st -- arbitrary difference, at best, and if you measure by minutes it becomes even more absurd. Consider: Hill had played 34,363 minutes before last night, and finished the night at 34,379. What an accomplishment, that! We'll be writing about Hill's 34,379th minute for years. I will someday tell my grandchildren, indeed, minute 34,379 was a sight to see. ... No, these are the ramblings of a crusty statistician. The child in my soul doesn't need milestones to mean things to be interesting, and by god, quadruple digits? A thousand contests? Meaningless significance or not, sometimes an arbitrary milestone sticks in your craw. This one stuck in mine. Good work, Grant.

Oh, a story. On this, Grant Hill's tenth centennial, he entered the game to a fun introduction. On a night where James Harden had decided from possession #2 that he'd be running face-first into every player on the court, Grant Hill planted his feet and took a solid charge at the age of 40. It was a good call -- he was set, outside the restricted area, and the offensive player got into him with their shoulder. But the Houston announcers responded to the charge by chuckling, calling it a blown blocking call, and -- 1,000 games into his NBA career -- mention that Duke players like Hill and Battier get a lot of "fake" charge calls. I just sat there a bit bemused. Really, Bullard? You're calling a team that stars James Harden, Jeremy Lin, Carlos Delfino, and Chandler Parsons... and you're going to complain about fake charge calls? I realize Houston doesn't have the best broadcasting crew, but it amused me a bit.

To put it one way: we're 1,000 games into Grant Hill's NBA career and bad announcers still can't get past where he went to college. He's posted the most triple doubles in Pistons franchise history, become a cautionary tale for the young and injured stars, and reinvented himself in a late career renaissance as a perimeter defending 3-and-D roleplayer. He's lost a step or 50 and still remained an active ambassador to the game and the sport. He's got a shot at being a hall of fame player, if on potential primarily, and he's one of the nicest guys in the league. He has a body of work the size of the Grizzlies' franchise history, for Christ's sake! And the first thing you say about him when he takes a good charge is that Duke guys get fake charge calls? Sometimes in analyzing sports we have memories shorter than a goldfish. Other times, though, we can't seem to lose the nagging image of the college title contender, 20 years prior, dishing passes to Laettner and taking Krzyzewski's pet charges. It's comforting, I suppose -- we'll never forget everything, right?

As for the game itself, it was a good game. For a half. The passing dazzled, the offense hummed, and both sides played a rousing match that made the victor's identity borderline irrelevant. Then the Clippers remembered that they're a clockwork contender and the Rockets are running high on Cinderella fairy-dust and bone-grinding hustle, and the contender roundly blew the young guns out of the building in the second half. Jamal Crawford did his running-on-Portland-tears thing. DeAndre Jordan continued his renaissance. Blake Griffin controlled, insofar as he's able, and Grant Hill hit 1000. It was a good night for a team that's becoming accustomed to them. And Coach Paul the Third gesticulated on the sidelines, urging his troops onward. The Clippers are a factor. Don't call it a comeback -- lord knows they've never been here, ever.

• • •

LAL vs MIL: Lurking Demons & Shot Clock Follies
Alex Dewey

Surreally poor clock management, especially by great offensive players, is really mystifying to me.

We always talk about defense as a big deal - generally speaking in the context of effort for older players and execution for younger players. But you only have to play defense if you let the other team have the ball, and two-for-ones/running out the clock are great examples where you simply don't have to let the other team have the ball an extra time, or where you can get the ball for yourself an extra time. It's not a totally value-free choice. The smart teams guard against two-for-ones -- they commit defensive resources and acuity to the early offense sets. And as for running out the clock? Well, it's often possible to get a GREAT shot with 9 seconds instead of a tightly-contested buzzer-beater, and in those situations, you obviously shouldn't. Danny Green's game-winner against the Lakers early this season comes to mind. That's all part of the competitive calculus, the give and take that characterizes a well-structured game. But something tells me Monta Ellis was quite far from thinking about denying the Lakers a final possession.

In a sequence at the end of the half, the Bucks totally ignored clock management as an element of strategy. There's just no other way to put it. Look: Metta World Peace hit a shot with 38 seconds left in the half. The Bucks waited for the prime seconds (32... 31... 30...) to drip off harmlessly before attempting a bad shot at 17 seconds. Then Luc Richard Mbah a Moute got an offensive rebound at 15 seconds and immediately went up for another bad shot instead of resetting. LRMAM's shot was sent out of bounds by Metta World Peace, and the Bucks rushed to get a shot on the inbounds. Monta, to his credit, got to the line. But he was struggling at the line and missed both. Off the Bucks' second free throw, Milwaukee actually got another offensive rebound. They didn't get anything close to a good shot, though. Now, I get that certain elements of strategy may be inaccessible to me when I'm watching at home, and I also get that the best player to lead a game might not be the best player to receive basketball "wisdom" from an Internet writer (and I'm the first in line to dismiss lines of reasoning like "JUST HIT YOUR FREE THROWS"). But I wasn't seeing the strategy from either team: The Lakers weren't feverishly attacking the two-for-one or addressing LRMAM's potential kick-out or trapping Ellis' dribble with :32. No, instead, I was seeing the Bucks trap themselves with bad management, and do it much more effectively.

I think players like Monta and Jennings might be "competitive" in the sense that they want to win games, but something about giving possessions away to the Lakers (with absolutely no apparent benefit) makes me pause in my assessment of them: We tend to think of these players as having feel for the shot and the game that can excuse their occasionally poor decision-making. Let Westbrook be Westbrook. And I buy that. But it was only by chance (and his offensive rebounders) that the Lakers didn't get a great possession or let the Bucks outright waste theirs. I'm giving Mbah a Moute the benefit of the doubt on the putback because he's not primarily an offensive player, but for such a smart defender of elite players, he must know: the best way to win on defense is not to play. It's just that simple. In the end, over 38 seconds of basketball, neither team scored. That sounds about fair, considering that, neither team competed for those 38 seconds.

The game itself was sort of microcosmic of that. Neither team showed up with especial gamesmanship to steal the game or get past the win condition pole. The Bucks dominated the offensive glass and used this to get back into the game several times when they were down. Milwaukee also hit a lot of random shots, but you can only take so many horrible shots before Sample Size starts to weigh heavy. The Lakers made a likable effort on defense (at least in the halfcourt, stifling a few possessions) and Dwight (with vim-and-vigor) looked like a monster offensively (and at times defensively, though 2 foolish goaltends sort of wipe out the impact of his 4 blocks). I thought the Lakers got better looks from deep than their 10-29 mark might indicate, and so all told it's hard for me to say they didn't dominate, even if it took a run in the fourth to seal the deal. Still, as dominating as the victory really was, it just strikes me as a game that they likely don't win against the Spurs, Nuggets, Rockets, or Thunder. The Lakers let the Bucks hang around. Against a coherent, good, playoff team, they would get punished severely.

Which is another way of saying the obvious: the problems are still there.

• • •

PHX vs OKC: Dribbling the Night Away
Adam Koscielak

Monday night, during a Suns game, a random tweet caught my eye. "Shannon Brown leads the NBA in dribbles per touch."

I wish I'd used the "favourite" button, but I didn't. I'm not sure whether this is a legitimate stat, or something conjured up by a frustrated mind as it watched his abomination of a basketball handle. Whatever it was, I'm pretty sure it's not that far away from the truth. Make no mistake, Shannon Brown made some strides since being Kobe's annoying backup. He learned some of the team game, he learned how to shoot better, and sometimes, just sometimes, he has that moment of brilliance where he slices the defence baseline and uses his trampoline-like legs to get a reverse layup.

But those are fleeting moments. The moments might come more often from Brown than the great moments from Jared Dudley or Wesley Matthews. The problem is, much like teammate Michael Beasley, Shannon Brown has a frustrating tendency to trade five disgustingly horrible moments for a single brilliant one. And nothing is more annoying than the ball going up and down in a fated isolation as time slowly trickles down, a staple of Shannon Brown's game, followed by a horrible pull-up jump shot.

My question: why does it happen? Even the folks at the weekly pickup game I wrote about last week have more awareness than that, and there's no shot-clock to respect, nothing to stop them from doing them but the purity of the game. They seem to embrace it. In a way, it's impressive that Brown -- despite all the pro experience, despite his two championship rings -- still manages to dribble the shot-clock out like that. It's impressive that his teammates and coaches still trust him enough to give him the ball. But the most magical fact of all is watching what exactly Shannon Brown does with that ball. Puts it between his legs, plays around with it, throws it behind his back, dazzles with it -- ... and ends up going absolutely nowhere. He rarely gets layups. If anything, he'll hit a lucky pull-up jumper that he'll follow with a brick or five.

But if he gets an opportunity somewhere other than isolation -- if he goes into the pick and roll, the pick and pop, charges the rim -- he can be a very dangerous, efficient player. He can finish at the rim, and sometimes he can make a brilliant pass. By that, I don't mean simple flashy passes. Steve Nash-style passes, straight out of nowhere. That's where he belongs, this is how he should be used, but he's not. Perhaps the coaches don't notice it. Perhaps they just want an ISO threat.

Or maybe Brown is simply content with dribbling the night away, bounce after bounce after bounce.

Continue reading

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

• MIA vs IND: Dwyane Wade and the Smoking Lung (by Aaron McGuire)
• PHX vs MIL: Defenceless, starring the Phoenix Suns (by Adam Koscielak)

• • •

MIA vs IND: Dwyane Wade and the Smoking Lung
Aaron McGuire

For about 3 months of college, I attempted to keep my schedule without a caffeine or sugary beverages -- no soda, no tea, no juice. I had homework and essays and problem sets to worry my head, as well as the slog of my writing on the side and my actual job. Lots of factors, lots of problems. Without caffeine, I quickly discovered the late nights were even harder than they were before, and the depth of stupidity inherent in my overburdened schedule became clear. One particularly dismal night, I was up at about 3:00 AM, working. A friend calls me up. We talk. I mention my exhaustion.

"Want a pack of smokes? They'll keep you up..."

I didn't take it, but I'll admit the whole thought was alluring. It's stuck in my mind since. Smoking and nicotine are oddly ever-present temptations for me. It's not that I love the idea of killing my lungs. It's the other stuff. The short-lived burst of energy, as my friend described it. The caffeinated feeling of the smoke in your lungs and the inadvertently wakeful effects of a terrible wheezing cough. Others take a tantalizing drag, a secondhand fable, and dole out the wheeze of a lung on the verge of collapse. And it beckons, if you can believe it! An open invitation to this inexplicable rush of energy and this stupid rebellion against the self that lies within each little cancer stick. I've never had a cigarette, but every time I walk through a crowd of smokers, every time I inhale the secondhand smoke, I wonder how I've avoided becoming a chain smoker. And the desire itself is a terrible sign -- a red-letter warning. If I give in, I'll get addicted. It's obvious. So, I take my substitutes. One particular substitute showed exactly why he's such last night.

Dwyane Wade's play is like a Jackson Pollock painting, at times. An aggressive splattering of paint and frenetic energy. That's how you'd describe the best possessions and the memorable moments. But when you look at his current state, and examine his game as a whole? Put away the paints -- Wade's a smoker. There's the burst, of course. You still get a few possessions of classic Wade offense, night in and night out. That alluring energy, the one that smokers describe with zest. Catching a whiff of secondhand smoke -- sickening though it may be -- is oddly satisfying. So too is watching Wade trick the greenest rookie to the seasoned vets into biting on his jumper-less pump fake and going to the line. I hate free throws, and I've never been a fan of tricks like that. But there's something oddly satisfying about Wade's smug assurance as he fools his latest victim. The dunks, the hero-ball, the devil-may-care drives. The lack of regard for his opponents. For someone who's never loved Wade, it's all very tantalizing. Cool and smooth. Just take a drag, man.

But then you look at the other side of the court -- you see him a step slow on defense, wheezing to catch up with his more nimble counterparts. Then you notice the empty possessions, those protracted coughs where Wade refuses to give up the ball as LeBron or Bosh languish, open as a man could be. And then the lead begins to collapse. The Heat were up 51-44 last night, with Wade having a monstrous night and a reminder of how good he can be. And then it all collapsed -- the Pacers finished the game on a 39-26 stretch, with Wade unable to get free and the Pacers defense swallowing the Heat whole. The Pacers kept driving at Wade and slipping him on screens -- they kept challenging him to catch outside of his comfort zone, and he just kept missing the boat. He looked tired. Wheezy. Old. All actions have an equal and opposite reactions -- all risers like Wade have an equal and opposite come-down.

And that's the problem, with a cigarette. It's all fun and games until the energy fades and you're left with a wheezing shell. Tantalizing, sure, but only to a point -- the burst of energy is never going to be worth the come-down. The wakefulness is never going to be worth the cough. Lungs are a valuable thing. They say you never quite know what you have until it's gone -- I feel that, with Wade, a lot of people (myself included) have missed the boat. He's always been great. Wonderful, even. One of the best. And now that he's begun to crack and chip, and show his age, there's an internal desire among this particular fan to see him stave off the inevitable as long as he possibly can. But a reminder, as well -- don't taunt death, don't taunt age, don't mock convention just to mock it.

And don't smoke, either. I don't need a cigarette.

After all, I've still got Dwyane Wade.

• • •

PHX vs MIL: Defenceless, starring Adam Koscielak and the Phoenix Suns
Adam Koscielak

On Monday, I found myself at my weekly university-mandated basketball “class.” In actuality, it's just an hour and a half pickup game. We play 4-on-4 on a small court, which means a lot of the game is a track meet. But there were slow possessions too, where defence would actually be required. When that happened, one of two things would occur. Everyone would rotate, do their job and get beaten by a miracle shot... or, alternatively, someone would end up completely wide open under the bucket. At the beginning, everyone tried. They tried hard. Put in a good fight. But as time went by the effort became more and more lacking, until it dissipated into lazily going through the motions. Nobody lost their man, but nobody tried to stop him from getting to the bucket either. Nobody missed a box out, but nobody hustled down loose balls either. Et cetera, et cetera.

On Tuesday, I had the 'pleasure' of watching a similar defensive effort. This time it was far more remote -- I was watching the Phoenix Suns, from my computer in Poland. They didn't do this for the first time, nor did they do it for the last time. As I planned to write this, I wrote out what was wrong with the defence. Slowly but surely, note by note, I came to my own realization: fundamentally, the system is in place, and the implementation of it was mostly correct. Traps were set, rotations were made. Somehow? The Milwuakee Bucks just kept scoring. That was the first quarter, back when the offence flowed and the Suns were leading. And then, just like in my pickup game, as time went on the effort just got worse. At first it was just the bench. That made sense. It was a squad that (outside of Jermaine O’Neal) never had any defensive potential either way. But as time passed, the problems infected the starters. Jared Dudley lost Mike Dunleavy on screens, Marcin Gortat and Luis Scola missed rotations, Goran Dragic let Brandon Jennings rain threes. They weren’t lost, and they were doing what they were told.

But that's the thing -- they were doing it in slow motion! It was as if they were making Matrix impressions while the other team ran on normal speed. Every contest was there, but it was always two seconds late. Every rotation was there, but the rotating player always ended up on the off arm of a player now established in the low-post. Normally, a team has one player with a horrible defensive effort. The Suns played 9 of them Tuesday night. I could try to analyze the game, or I could watch synergy for missed rotations and point out the real culprits, the traditionally "bad" defensive players. But as I watch this happen, game after game, night after night, I don't really know if there's any specific culprit. Any particular man at fault. I watch a team that can be good-to-average defensively, if they simply were a little faster. But every single player on the team seems to dig the broader unit into a hole. They just don't try after they get tired, once their shots stop falling. And just like me, in a pickup game, they end up going through the motions as shots swish through the net. And it would seem that in the end, my search for a recipe for the Suns woes yields a surprisingly simple resolution problems.

Sometimes, all you need to do is try harder.

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Fans' emotions are vacillating between unreasonable optimism and abject panic on a nightly basis, so you know what that means: The 2012-2013 NBA Season has officially begun! And with the return of the season, comes the return of The Outlet! You might even say we're back in the swing of things. Usually we preface these posts by reminding you not to call it a comeback, but go ahead. Call it a comeback. The Outlet is officially back, whenever we see fit to publish one, and recently that seems to be more often than ever! It's truly a bright new age of semi-regular Dadaistic sports interpretation. Get ready, fansketball.

• OKC vs ATL: A Brief Examination of the Perkins Play (by Jacob Harmon)
• LAL vs DET: Mike Brown Minutes and the Essence of Comedy (by Alex Dewey)

• • •

A BRIEF EXAMINATION OF THE PERKINS PLAY
Written by Jacob Harmon

Pre-game, Chesapeake Energy Arena.

Outside of those tense moments of crunch time, these were the moments Kevin Durant relished most. The little routines, the excitement of the fans, the anticipation of what’s to come, giving his mom a kiss on the cheek for good luck. The Thunder’s pre-game ritual, one chiefly designed years prior by he and Russell, was well known. They’d had to speed it up a little bit, what with the league’s new rules regarding game delays prior to tip-off, but they’d made it work. The handshakes, the bumps, the hand to God, they could fit it in. But there was one part of the pre-game ritual that was less publicized; an unspoken part. In fact, Kevin wondered whether anyone was aware of it besides him. And though he smiled and regarded it with his usual friendly demeanor, the truth was that it was this part of the ritual that was most uncomfortable for Kevin.

This was the part where he had to have “the talk” with Kendrick Perkins.

As he arced another perfect jumper through the bottom of the net and adjusted his warm-ups, Perkins approached. Just like he always did, he spoke. “Hey Kevin, I’ve got an idea for the first quarter,” Perk chirped cheerfully. Though he had a reputation as something of a tough guy, anyone who came to know Kendrick soon found he was a softy, cheerful and friendly, almost childlike in his obsequious demeanor towards those he considered friends. Kevin considered Perkins words, nodding thoughtfully,

“Oh yeah? What do you got my man?” This was his usual response. No matter how many times they had this discussion (and they had this discussion before the tip-off of nearly every game), it played out the same way. Kevin wondered whether Perkins was in on the routine, or whether it was only he who noticed. No one else had ever asked him about it, and he wasn’t the type to talk behind his friends’ back. Perkins idly clanked a jumpshot, then turned back to his friend.

“I was thinking, you know, the offense doesn’t really use me much. It’s mostly you, Russell, and now we got K-Mart right?” Perkins paused, expectantly. Durant nodded.

“Yeah, yeah. So what’re you thinking?” He already knew what Kendrick was thinking, but such was the dance.

Perkins continued. “So like, we’re playing Horford this game, and you know that guy’s soft. I figure we set up a post-up, you feed me the ball down low, I’ll go to work on that dude. Show him the old-school moves. What do you think?” Kevin let Perkins’ words hang in the air for a moment as he looked into space, affecting a thoughtful expression, as though considering something new and intriguing. He stroked his goatee several times, for effect.

This was the routine, the ritual. Perk would always approach him, so friendly and expectant and eager to please, armed with his exciting new offensive strategy for whatever the team of the night might be. It had never mattered the opposing center, not once. There was always a reasoning, and it was always unique. And it never worked. Of the times KD had fed Perkins the ball in the low post, he could remember offhand maybe once or twice that it had actually ended with a basket rather than the defender pulling the chair, or a clanked hook shot. Assuming, of course, that Kendrick even successfully caught the ball. Kevin had never seen someone quite so poor at catching a ball from a stationary position, then so dismal at holding onto it. Many of the passes were simply bobbled out of bounds. Kevin estimated that his assist to turnover ratio, the one major statistical hole in his game (or so the pencil pushers told him), could primarily be traced to his devotion to this ritual. Finding himself lost in actual thought, he suddenly realized Perkins was still awaiting a response.

“Alright my man, that sounds good. We’ll give it a try, might catch em off guard.” Kevin smiled as he spoke, patting his buddy on the shoulder. Perk’s mouth spread into a broad grin at the scoring champ’s faith in his abilities, and he bounded off towards the locker room. Kevin smiled, and shook his head ruefully. The ratios would have to stand, because no matter how much he refined his passing game, he could be certain of one thing. He would feed the ball into the post to begin yet another game. After all, who could say no? You score points, grab boards, collect assists, win games, and fight for titles, but at the end of the day, wasn’t the real gold in the friends you make along the way? As he swished another jumper, he looked up to see his mom smiling warmly at him from the first row.

He knew that it was worth it.

Final Score: ATL 104, OKC 95. Kevin Durant put up 22 PTS/12 RB/8 AST/3 STL/6 TO.

• • •

MIKE BROWN MINUTES AND THE ESSENCE OF COMEDY
Written by Alex Dewey

First of all, let's briefly cover the game. Andre Drummond looked alright at times but mostly like an incredibly unpolished rookie, and Greg Monroe actually played some decent defense on Dwight Howard. [Ed. Note: Dwight Howard made 12 of 14 shots. --Aaron] Monroe has seemed to have made some strides defensively, which is nice, because defense is the only thing between Greg Monroe and that vaunted "franchise" label. Kyle Singler and Jonas Jerebko had some weird chemistry and occasionally the Pistons even passed the ball very quickly. And then we all collectively closed our eyes, shook our heads from side to side for a couple of seconds, and opened our eyes. They were now bloodshot and glaring, for we had remembered that the Lakers have somehow put together Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, and Dwight Howard. And... yeah, that was pretty much game. Complete laugher, only saved from lasting notoriety by the sheer fact that the Pistons apparently have 10 NBA players and the Lakers only have 5.

Anyway, let's get to my favorite story of the night: Mike Brown's substitution patterns. Get this -- the Lakers were up 21 after one quarter, up 28 at the half, up 31 when the fourth quarter started, and up 29 when the game ended. Read that sentence a few times. Now remember how minutes work: There are 48 minutes in a basketball game, and 12 in each quarter. 24 in each half, and it takes 36 minutes to get to the end of the third quarter. Alright, we have all of this down? Good.

None of that was meant to be condescending. I wrote that arithmetic primer for myself... because I keep reading the above paragraph over and over, and glancing over at the box score on my other monitor, because there must be some sort of mistake... I mean, maybe there's an error with the box score, but... no, I saw it with my own eyes. So it must be an arithmetic error on my part. I must have had a minor stroke while watching this game or I must have some sort of weird tic that prevents me from comparing specific pairs of numbers correctly, because I don't think I have fundamental problems literally reading the box score and I'm not totally misremembering what I saw. And I'm pretty sure a regulation basketball game has 48 minutes, still, which -- ...

Okay, Alex. You're not insane. Calm down. Start over. Get back to the facts. The Lakers were up 21 after one quarter, up 28 at the half, up 31 when the fourth quarter started, and up 29 when the game ended. Now, there are 48 minutes in a basketball game, and 12 in each quarter. 24 in each half, and it takes 36 minutes to get to the end of the third quarter. Okay, I'm doing good. All facts so far. Now, Kobe Bryant literally played 32 minutes in this game. Pau Gasol literally played 33 minutes in this game. Dwight Howard literally played 33 minutes in this game. These are three of the most valuable people in the Los Angeles Lakers' organization, and (one supposes) the propensity for fluke injuries which would flip them from assets to liabilities in one second is more or less directly proportional to the number of minutes that these players play. Three quarters of the game is 36 minutes, and these players had already played an unreasonably large proportion of the game (at halftime their minutes were: Dwight 22, Kobe 19, and Pau at 17).

But in the fourth quarter, Coach Mike Brown actually put the starters back in and kept them in, finally taking them out at the last possible moment (about 4 minutes remaining) with no apparent principle other than the mathematical exhaustion of possible combinations and Kobe putting pressure on his coach to leave him in. Besides stunned confusion and doubting my own senses more than Descartes, ultimately I found myself laughing uncontrollably at the situation. I would look away and look back at the game, and suddenly Dwight Howard was back in the game, or (this has been the running gag of Brown's tenure) Pau Gasol was still in the game, for absolutely no reason. Or Kobe was refusing to come out of the game, and because of that, Mike Brown also left Dwight and Gasol in the game. Then he would take Kobe out, but leave Gasol out there, and... I just was cracking up. Mike Brown played his starters the entire first quarter, more or less (only the older two, actually; he subbed Dwight out with about 2 minutes left in the quarter and then played him the entire second quarter).

As a Spurs fan, this was beyond anything I could possibly imagine. There are tics in substitution that coaches have - Why isn't he playing Faried more?, Why is he literally playing Roger Mason Jr.? etc. - but rarely are those tics quite on the level of classical thought experiments and Uncle Vanya-_style character humor and _Airplane-level sight gags (e.g. every shot of Mike Brown standing or saying anything), all simultaneously. The only way this could be funnier if this turns out to be the team that literally wins an NBA championship in seven months. Somehow I suspect the Lakers only have a chance because the studio producing this high comedy demanded a happy ending, instead of the gritty satirical ending in which the aging geniuses of our sport are overworked or injured by the end of the season, and useless as more than fodder for a healthy team.

Whatever the case, Steve Nash should be back in a few weeks and we can see what a dangerous team the Lakers can be.

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Our offseason edition of The Outlet is back, in full-on preseason mode! Don't call it a comeback, we've been here for, well... bit under one year. Still. Sit back, play David Bowie's "Changes," go to your shrine of David Bowie in the other room with all the candles, ask David Bowie's effigy to make haste with the start of the season, go back into your computer room, play "Changes" a few more times, and then read some fresh takes on the preseason. We're almost back in the swing of things. In fact, go ahead. Call it a comeback. The Outlet is back, and soon, in its tow, so will the season. Get ready, fansketball.

• DET v TOR -- The Dunking Drummer (Adam Koscielak)
• WAS v NYK -- Beal's Frustration and Burden (Jacob Harmon)
• SAC v PHX -- The Play-by-Play of a Lost Friend (Adam Koscielak)

• • •

The Dunking Drummer (by Adam Koscielak)

What a surprise. What an enigma.

Coming into last night's Raptors-Pistons game, I wanted nothing more than to see some Jonas Valanciunas action and to swoon over the ever-improving Andrea Bargnani. Instead, about all I'd find from the Toronto end were some vintage Jose Calderon offensive talent, a new and improved DeMar DeRozan, and last but not least, a shockingly non-trigger happy John "The Human Cannon" Lucas III.

No, the real shocker came from Detroit in the form of one Andre Drummond, gliding o'er all, singing many deaths, reigning down with a barrage of alley-oops, and generally looking the part of gleeful athletic madman, rather like Kenneth Faried in his preseason debut. Just how good can Andre Drummond become? Or to ask perhaps the harder querstion: How good is he right now? I have no idea. Last night, Drummond played to his strengths, doing what he knew how to do: Dunking, rebounding and swatting. Yes, qualifier barrage: it's preseason, yes, and the Raptors' defense is once again only getting into gear with Dwane Casey over their heads with a whip. I don't know what, but whatever it that Andre Drummond has was something to behold last night.

As twitter proudly noted, Andre Drummond has a boatload of potential. And it's a boat filled with the apparitions of seasons in which Drummond has become the best player in this league. That's a mouthful, but before we have to spit some of it out, let's gather the evidence: He's bigger than Dwight Howard and at least as athletic. Fast, furious, big, athletic, and raw. And that's the kicker. He's so raw that he can be molded in a lot of ways, and so raw that we can build nightmarish potentials around his actuals. His actuals, right now? DeAndre Jordan 2.0. But he can grow to be Dwight Howard 2.0. That is the madness that made him a player that could've been picked absolutely anywhere in the 2-15 range of the NBA lottery. Every team had to ask themselves: "Can we develop this kid? Do we look for that fertile end of rainbow?" The Pistons have given him a chance, no doubt hoping to have instantly an envious frontcourt of two top-30s (at minimum) in Drummond and Greg Monroe. But will that happen? And what comes next for the Pistons? I have no idea. Drummond is raw in basically every aspect of the game save for dunks, rebounds and blocks. A good coach and system can teach him how to harness the space he creates to post up, to know when to pass and how to pass, etc. A bad coach can leave him scrambling for minutes as another big man comes in, a big man more suited to bad coaches: With little potential to grow, but skills that make him more immediately valuable and workable than an undeniable beast of nebulous future.

And let's not make this about coaches: The NBA is a grind: What happens if Drummond is ever forced to play out of that personality, is ever forced to post-up and lead (or passably maintain from his position) an offence? Who knows how he would react? And how long will he last in the now-information-besotted NBA before hack-a-Drummond becomes a prominent feature of the anti-Pistons gameplan? These questions aren't going to go away unless he proves he can deal with it. His current value is in large part based on how he handles himself on the floor. After all, not even Lawrence Frank can force him into posting up and shooting midrange jumpers. That's his choice. And his choice might greatly weigh on what he becomes.

And that's the thing with players like Drummond — you just don't know.

• • •

Beal's Frustration and Burden (by Jacob Harmon)

Responsibility is a difficult thing. Growing up, we're often given the impression that at some point we'll simply be qualified for it; that having graduated from childhood to adolescence, and then adolescence into adulthood, we'll be at least marginally prepared for the expectations and pressures of our adult lives. But of course we know this isn't the case. There is no threshold to be crossed, final examination to pass; no orientation to complete that ushers us into the personal spotlight of true adulthood and all that it entails. At some point we all willingly accept our relative trial by fire: some set of responsibilities for which we feel not entirely prepared and from whose achievement, in spite of that feeling, springs confidence. Well, that and realizing you don't know anyone at your old high school anymore. Most of us often find our individual trials aren't insurmountable. Most of us aren't Bradley Beal.

Most of us aren't being given joint responsibility of a franchise, expectations of thousands of jaded fans, the mocking eye of the media and country at large, and - in the final tally - baggage from decades of utter failure and dysfunction. Our trials are somewhat overlooked; our expectations adjust without notice. Not so for a high-lottery-pick rookie: These guys come in young and take on the immediate burden of typically-floundering teams in dire need of their services. But most of those teams aren't the Washington Wizards. The expectations upon Kyrie Irving are enormous, and he's responded in spades, but at least there's a template: The Cavaliers have had plenty of glory in recent memory. Sure, LeBron never delivered a championship, but you can't sniff at years of deep playoff runs and a Finals appearance. The Bobcats are mocked for their incompetence, but they're young, and fans have stuck by the team can console themselves with the notion that things basically can only get better.

But what do you say about the Wizards, whose brightest moments have been the brief comet that was Gilbert Arenas and the high expectations for a 38 year old Michael Jordan? Whose John Wall has been, if not a disappointment, thus far in danger of being severely overhyped? Whose national attention last season came mostly at the Youtube-worthy antics of JaVale McGee? On the floor against the Knicks, near the end of what was a optimistically strong game for Beal, I saw a flash of rookie frustration that gave me pause. After nearly a whole shot-clock of wasted ball movement, a blown screen, leading to a wild chucked 3, a wide-open Beal stood at the top of the arc, lifted his arms and shrugged his shoulders in dismay, before running back on defense shaking his head to no one in particular. It was familiar primarily because it was the body language John Wall wore almost permanently throughout last season. The Wizards are ostensibly a much improved team this season, having shipped out much of the bad blood and brought in some legitimate talent to accompany the Wall/Beal backcourt. But with Wall and Nene both out early, the newest high draft pick looks to confront a situation not unfamiliar to Wizards fans. Beal may have many frustrating nights ahead of him. I only hope it's not the case, as his talent and degree of controlled confidence on the court indicated a player deserving of much better.

• • •

A Play-by-Play of a Lost Friend (by Adam Koscielak)

As you probably all know, not all preseason games are televised. Some local stations just decide that the broadcast costs of a preseason game as opposed to the quality and intensity of a game are not really all that worth it. When that happens, fans of some teams get quite irate. Kinda like I did, when I found out that the Suns game was not televised on NBA TV as advertised, and was instead put into radio only mode. And rather than watch (and cry) at Steve Nash no-look passes against the Blazers, I decided to go all-imagination using NBA.com's play-by-play feature to "watch" the Suns in their first game without Steve Nash. In some ways it was easier: I did not cry. I did not weep. I just watched the stats and made comments, pretending I knew what the hell was going on.

But even so, even with Steve Nash being in a completely different city, with a completely different team, as Goran Dragic and Kendall Marshall passed through the game and their pictures flashed before my eyes, I refused to accept that Steve Nash wasn't on that team. Marcin Gortat making good offensive plays felt like it. Michael Beasley's suddenly efficient jumpshooting felt like it. Wesley Johnson on a scoring tear felt like it. I just can't wait to see if Goran Dragic is something of a second coming for us (though I might just be crazy). Steve Nash's spirit was still in that Suns jersey, and the fact that I couldn't watch them in his absence helped me go further into denial.

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To bring our playoff coverage up, we’re bringing our formerly retired series of daily vignettes — titled “The Outlet” — back for the playoffs. “Don’t call it a comeback.” Though, you can call it series 2, as we are in the title. Every day (or, rather, every day we aren’t doing a larger and grander piece), we’ll try to share two or three short vignettes from our collective of writers ruminating on the previous day’s events. Should be a fun time. Today’s Outlet is just one piece strong, featuring a short piece on the current dogfight between the Indiana Pacers and the Miami Heat. As the title indicates, I don't think it's over.

• "It's Not Over Til It's Over." by Aaron McGuire.

Click the jump for today’s take.

• • •

It's Not Over Til It's Over

Aaron McGuire

This may seem somewhat self serving, in a way. Last week, with the series tied 1-1, I published a piece outlining how the Pacers could win the series. That night, the Pacers won. Two days later, the Pacers blew out Miami at home and made me look really, really smart. The Heat proceeded to -- as many expected -- knot the series up at two apiece and regain home court advantage in game 3. Which made me look less markedly less smart. The Heat looked good, with Udonis Haslem coming up with big elbow jumpers in crunch time and the LeBron and Wade duo scorching the Pacers for 70 points, their highest combined playoff total in their 30 playoff games together thus far. LeBron put up a completely unprecedented statline, putting up 40 points and 18 boards with 9 assists, 2 steals, and 2 blocks. Absolutely eldritch. I'm not kidding when I say that's unprecedented -- even if we relax the constraints to something a bit more human, like 37-16-7, it's still only the 3rd game of its brood in the last 17 years. Demonic.

Which isn't to lessen the contributions of his tertiary players -- while LeBron dominated the game in a way that's impossibly rare, Wade shook off an abhorrent 1-8 type first 20 minutes to the tune of a 12-15 second wind, leading most of Twitter to declare that he'd shot up with cortisone during halftime. It came out after the game that, instead, he'd simply had his knee drained earlier in the week -- that makes sense, given that one's body is often late to respond to stress relief like that in a game situation until the player's had a chance to walk on it a bit. And Udonis Haslem had the best game he's had in months. Literally. If you use Game Score (a 1-game representation of John Hollinger's PER metric), Haslem hasn't had a game as good as Sunday's since April 1st, 2012. And keep in mind Haslem did virtually nothing in the game until his 4-5 fourth quarter. It was excellent, and for a quarter, showed Haslem at his best. The Heat were aggressive, assertive, and powerful. They utterly outclassed the Pacers in just about every facet of the second half. The game was a 9-point win, but it felt like more. The rest of the series -- as goes the narrative -- is little more than window-dressing. The Heat have won.

I disagree. The Pacers should still be favored to win this series.

Look. A few things worth noting. The series is 2-2, not 3-3 or 3-2. The Heat are still two wins from wrapping the series up, and judging by how effective the Pacers have been in Miami during the series thus far, it's hard to ascribe some sort of momentous, game-changing home court when the Pacers played the Heat to a 1-1 draw in their first two matchups at home, with Bosh available for half of the Heat's singular home win and a curious set of circumstances conspiring to keep the Pacers' two best players muzzled in crunch time as well. In fact, there are a few key takeaways one can make from the two games the Pacers won and the two games the Heat won. To wit: when the Heat won, LeBron James averaged 36-17-7 on 44 minutes per game. When they lost, he averaged 25-8-4. While the Heat have yet to win comfortably by double digits, let's relax the criteria here a bit. Let's say that in order for the Heat to beat the Pacers, LeBron needs to put up a line of around 30-15-5 in 40 minutes of play (to ensure the lowest possible dip into their shoddy bench). He needs to rebound, with Bosh gone. He needs to score, to help make up for Bosh. And he needs to set the offense up. A bit. How many times in the last decade has a player done that more than once in a single postseason?

Oh. Uh... hm. So, what we're saying is that this relatively pedestrian statistical accomplishment of LeBron's, a mark he's met in two nail-biting wins and come just under in their two losses, is something that's virtually unprecedented in NBA history and can only really be said to be repeated by Tim Duncan's constantly and hilariously underrated 2003 scorched-Earth playoff run? Yes, I think we are. If the Heat are to win this series, they'll need one of two things to happen. The first would be that LeBron simply repeats his virtuoso game 1 and game 4 performances in 2 of the remaining 3 games. LeBron is an amazing player. He is very good at basketball. But he is not immortal. That expectation -- much as the national media would like to claim it's reasonable -- is not. The other possibility? The bench and Wade step up. Wade has one of his godlike, 40-50 point outbursts to carry them to a win in a game where LeBron is pedestrian.

It's also worth noting that, as I keep beating the drum on, this is a very good Indiana team. Roy Hibbert has spent the season shocking all of us and making us look like fools for ever doubting him. The Pacers are +30 with him on the court against the Heat in this series -- they're, conversely, -25 with him off it. George Hill has fit in well, and while I agree with John Hollinger that the hullabaloo over Indiana's "killer depth" is essentially for naught (the Pacers are not deep -- they're merely a 6 man team instead of a 3 man team, and the sooner Vogel realizes that the sooner his team can start actually closing the damn series out), West/Collison/Granger form a trio of solid players fully capable of taking over a game for very short stretches. Paul George has had a disappointing offensive series, but he's been a MONSTER on the defensive end, and other than Wade's game 4, he's absolutely throttled Wade's game and kept the Heat in check.

Furthermore, just as in game 1, the Pacers battled extreme foul trouble in their game 4 loss. Roy Hibbert (whose series +/- I've just mentioned) played barely 12 minutes of the second half, as compared to LeBron's 22. David West only played 15 minutes in the second half, also due to foul trouble. The Pacers led at the half in both games, then lost the lead in a war of attrition, primarily wrought in fouls and the Heat pounding away as Vogel found himself forced to rest his two best players. For a period of almost ten minutes in the second half, foul trouble limited Vogel to a frontcourt including neither Hibbert OR West -- the Heat proceeded to extend the lead from a tied game at 63-63 to a 9 points before the two of them came back in the game. By that point it was simply too late. Haslem was on after Hansbrough and Amundson blew rotation after rotation and gave him the wide open shot. Wade was on fire. LeBron was completely disengaged, but it didn't matter -- the game was in hand.

I don't know if the Pacers win the series. I think they're favored, because I can't see LeBron playing this well for more than one more game. The series now falls to the Heat's supporting cast, and the general ephemera that flip a roughly even series one way or the other. The idea that the Heat lost games 2 and 3 simply because they were "disgracing themselves" is absolutely bollocks. This series is about as even as a 2-2 series can be, and at this point, it's anyone's game. The Heat need to finish it off before LeBron's body wears through. The Pacers have the inertia of youth, energy, and 5 of the best 7 players in the series. Both teams play hard, and will continue to do so -- if the Heat lose this series, it won't be because they've somehow disgraced themselves or the sport. It will be because the Pacers smelled blood and struck. And no, the series isn't over yet. It's a new day, and a 3-game series with a tired LeBron and a streaky Dwyane Wade against a solid, five-man team with a chip on their shoulder and a Batcave in the rafters.

Or, as I like to call it, "exactly what the playoffs are about." Game on, gentlemen.

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