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 has one of the longest pieces we've used for this series in a while, with Alex ruminating on the Nuggets' elimination to the tune of Sorkin's ultimate masterpiece, "Two Cathedrals."

• "Brothers in Arms." by Alex Dewey.

Click the jump for today’s take.

• • •

Brothers in Arms
Alex Dewey

You ever see that masterful West Wing episode "Two Cathedrals"? Well, I got to thinking of it as I watched Game 7 of the Nuggets-Lakers last night. The episode - for those unfortunate souls who haven't seen it - carefully sketches out young Jed Bartlet's friendship with Dolores Landingham at a Dead Poets Society-type prep school. Jed, of course, would become the president one day, but it takes a wake-up call from new secretary Landingham to send his intelligent, compassionate character into a life of public engagement. Meanwhile, in the present, Mrs. Landingham (now Jed's longtime secretary) has recently died, having been senselessly hit by a drunk driver. And Now-President Bartlet -- attacked on every side, personal, emotional, professional, physical -- is doubting whether he should continue his career and seek a difficult second term. After Mrs. Landingham's funeral, Bartlet tells the Secret Service to seal the cathedral, so that he can give God a piece of his mind.

"She bought her first new car and you hit her with a drunk driver. What, was that supposed to be funny? "You can't conceive, nor can I, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God," says Graham Greene. I don't know who's ass he was kissing there 'cause I think you're just vindictive. What was Josh Lyman? A warning shot? That was my son. What did I ever do to yours but praise his glory and praise his name? There's a tropical storm that's gaining speed and power. They say we haven't had a storm this bad since you took out that tender ship of mine in the north Atlantic last year..."

Bartlet's anger builds and builds until finally, feeling totally betrayed by a God he'd lived to serve, Bartlet shouts some blasphemies in Latin and tops it with an emphatic: "You get Hoynes!" This is the ultimate blasphemy, giving way for his dismal, cynical rival (Vice President Hoynes) to receive the nomination, effectively ending Bartlet's future political intentions.

• • •

The Gasol-Kobe-Bynum Lakers are there to break your hearts, to make you blaspheme against the Basketball Gods. Again and again, these Lakers will kill your favorite and your second-favorite team and send your most intense and enigmatic players to the locker room feeling like they had a chance. You will learn to root against these Lakers by virtue of the character and intensity of the other teams they inevitably face. But to the victors go the spoils, as they say, and for all the talk of their dogging it in this series, they clearly did have a few spare bullets in their chamber. Once again the strength of their game has justified their own perennial boast to relevance. No one has beat them four times in a series this season and it really doesn't matter that the Nuggets thrice refused them. That's how a seven-game series works, and more power to them if they can do it their way.

Their way or not, though, I get a naive and vulnerable feeling sometimes. Too often it's when I watch the Lakers or the Heat enact their prescriptive doomsday against some wonderful, joyful team doomed to fail. Like these Nuggets. These Lakers in particular make you question again and again just what it is we're all doing watching a game where the catty, drama-laden forum blue and gold can simply use teams like this as their personal scratching post solely and shamelessly coast through a series on account of their natural advantage. "You get Hoynes!" I actually tweeted this during the game, when the Nuggets' deficit was at its most dire. The dismal march of the Laker machine churns onward, and with it the remarkable joy that watching the Nuggets brought me.

But remembering "Two Cathedrals" also made me stop and reconsider. At his low point, after he's decided to concede the nomination to Hoynes, Bartlet utters ruefully to his wife that "the world can rest easy." The moment is shocking in the context of the series, even beyond the cursing of God (which is at least active and assertive). It's something as bad as death when you've given up hope. And when you look at the emotional arc of "Two Cathedrals," hope is the real problem of the episode, not the cliffhanger of whether Bartlet will run again or whether we'll give our goals another try.

• • •

And so the climax of the episode isn't Bartlet deciding to run again: It's Barlet (thanks to an apparition of Mrs. Landingham) recognizing where he came from and recognizing who he is: a flawed, occasionally impulsive, decisive, compassionate public servant that will stand up again and again for what he believes in. What matters is that Bartlet has regained hope. For all his weaknesses, he can always rely on his virtues and experience to keep hammering away against the problems of the world as long as he can draw breath. And he can always have the solemn faith that maybe, one day, some of these problems will break forever. Once that's established, the outcome of the political story is an obvious, meaningless afterthought. After a long motorcade ride set to Dire Straits' "Brothers in Arms," the president enters the press room and takes the hardest question first: Will you be seeking re-election, Mr. President? Bartlett's actor Martin Sheen - in one of my favorite moments in all of television - wordlessly answers with a posture of hope and affirmation. Roll credits.

Because of the appearance of Metta World Peace for Game 7, George Karl felt averse to using the Nuggets signature smallball backcourt of Ty Lawson and Andre Miller. But down 16 in the third, Karl realized he had nothing to lose and sent in Miller at the middle of the third quarter. Before the inevitable run that ensued, the run that put the Nuggets up 4 but still kept a Denver victory well out of reach, I muted Steve Kerr and Marv Albert, turned off my other monitor, and cut the lights in my apartment. Well, all the lights save for the light from two cathedrals in the backcourt, perhaps never to play again together. I played an apt song for the occasion: "Brothers in Arms." It was impulsive and superstitious on my part, but I don't know that I'll ever forget 'Dre Miller and Ty Lawson getting the Nuggets back into their unique brand of steal-and-rebound-and-transition, if only for a few glorious minutes of game time.

That stretch was a wordless affirmation of the Nuggets season and of the Nuggets themselves and while the Lakers tonight will wake up as the Lakers tomorrow - with a still-extant chance to deliver Kobe's 6th - the Nuggets on that team will wake up as Nuggets forevermore, and that moment of hope will always give Denver's mountainous sunsets a blip on the horizon, a hand silently reaching for last traces of light.

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 covers Adam discussing how you simply must make your free throws and Aaron discussing the hilarious breakout of "project" big men in the 2012 Playoffs.

• “You've Got to Make Your Free Throws.” by Adam Koscielak.
• "The Playoffs of the Project." by Aaron McGuire.

Click the jump for today’s two works.

• • •

You've Got to Make Your Free Throws

Adam Koscielak

Recently, in one of the rare weeks of good weather you get in a Polish March, I went to my local basketball court. I was out of shape. After all, the only shots I'd taken were bounces off an X I drew on my wall. So, I started taking a few shots. A few from midrange, a few from beyond the arc. Made some, missed some, and did a hell of a lot better off the dribble for some unknown reason. Then, out of nowhere, I decided to shoot some free throws.

When I do shooting practice, I make mini-deals with myself. I make a nice point system, I make myself string together a few hits, et cetera. When I came to the line, I decided that I'd have to make five in a row just to make sure my form was ok. Hell, I even set up a shot counter on my iPhone to keep stats. I made my first free throw. Then the second. And then I just started missing. A few went long, clanking off the unforgiving rim, so I adjusted. I hit two again, hoping that I could string this into my self-promised five in a row. ... Ha! Nope. I didn't even make 4 in a row that day. In fact, I may have shot more air balls in a row than free throws made in a row.

It was strange, really. I could make the Tim Duncan bank shot without a problem. I could make a running, Steve Nash-style three pointer. Hell, I could even nail a couple of turnaround Js in a row! But I couldn't make a shot I'd easily make as an 8 year old kid. After around 20 minutes, the counter on my iPhone, that I'd tap my scores into every time I'd miss a free throw (not to break a streak, of course) was showing a ghastly percentage. Around 33% on 70 attempts. Yikes. I was alone on the courts, nobody was watching me. Except for myself. And I just kept missing a shot I knew I could make. Missing a shot way easier than the (... international length, ahem) threes I swished, banked, and rimmed in less than a half hour earlier. It was humiliating. More humiliating than missing a wide open layup, really. The rim wasn't bent, I wasn't tired, I just couldn't make it.

And this is how I understood. There are no easy shots when you're over-thinking it. I haven't played basketball since, but I've watched. And the night of May 10th was just the perfect example of how big of a deal free throws can be. After all, a make on one end and a miss on the other in the Bulls game would've changed the outcome, and sent it back to Chicago. One make in the Hawks game would've sent it to overtime. I, alone on a court, couldn't make a 70% of my free throws. How can I expect a guy playing under the basket to make one with 20 thousand people booing him with all their hearts? How can I expect anyone to take that kind of pressure? This is how I began to understand all the big guys in the league, the ones who probably had a rough start to their free throw shooting careers and just never got it out of their heads.

Everyone finds it so easy to say "you got to make your free throws" or laugh at the air balls. The truth is, sometimes mental blocks can kill the best. Derrick Rose is a prime example of that. Andre Iguodala had to think about his son and let his muscle memory make the shots for him. In the end, the time a player takes to make a free throw might as well be a long internal battle, a long line of questions. "What if miss?" "I always miss... What am I doing wrong?" "I pulled it long last time, I should adjust". This is probably why the best free throw shooters (*cough* Steve Nash *cough*) have characteristic routines. It's finding the happy place, taking the mind off the shot... And just drilling it. The problem is, not everyone can. Perhaps what we should be saying instead of "you gotta make 'em" is "just shoot them, no pressure."

Because in the end, it seems like it's all about that.

• • •

The Playoffs of the Project

Aaron McGuire

These playoffs have been pretty interesting, if not always amazing. We find ourselves on the verge of two first-round game sevens, something that's only happened thrice in the ten years we've had ourselves the 7-game first round. While the entire Eastern gauntlet has been historically dismal, we've been (in some sense) blessed -- the only two series to go the full seven have also happened to be the two most entertaining to watch, in contrast to the last time we had two game sevens and one was the historically awful 2009 Heat-Hawks series. And in tonight's bout to conclude the Nuggets vs Lakers thriller, we get a final look into one of the most hilarious and unexpected upsets of the first round. I refer to the trend that this year's playoffs have been defined and fueled not necessarily by the stars, but by the projects.

Consider this. In separate games this year we've seen:

• Reggie Evans take Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph's lunch in a 4th quarter shellacking to steal game 1.

• Glen Davis take Roy Hibbert to town and utterly dominate him en route to their upset game 1 win.

• Boris Diaw outplayed Paul Millsap at both ends of the floor, leading the San Antonio attack.

• JaVale McGee outplay the combined effort of Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum to force a game 6... in Los Angeles.

• Spencer Hawes -- SPENCER HAWES, GUYS -- completely destroyed Carlos Boozer en route to the shocking Philadelphia upset over a Bulls team that (even without Rose) still destroyed teams throughout the entire regular season.

Absolutely none of those are things that you could've seen coming going into the playoffs. The talk of every commentator prior to the Denver series was that the Denver big men would wilt against the Laker front line -- but after they punted the first two games, the Denver bigs have fought Los Angeles to a draw at worst. Kenneth Faried's coming out party has been extraordinary, but not any more insane than JaVale McGee finally making good on his potential and showing the league exactly what he can give to a team when he has his head on straight. He's been phenomenal, despite being the stirring image of a "project" big. As for the rest?

Davis is a fringe prospect-level big man who has never really been all that much more than a jump-shooting widebody with a lack of defense and a lack of marbles. He still produced excellent numbers throughout the series against the 7'2" Hibbert, and somehow managed to outscore Hibbert in all but one game of the five game series. Boris Diaw -- never a player known for his defensive acuity or real impact -- held the almost-all-star Paul Millsap to a 11.9 playoff PER, and (despite taking 15 shots to Millsap's 54, and playing 45 minutes less than Millsap over 4 games), managed to outscore him once and outrebound him twice. Reggie Evans -- REGGIE FREAKING EVANS -- has thrice in the series outscored Marc Gasol in the 4th quarter of a game, and twice outscored Zach Randolph in that same period. Who saw that coming? Ever? And Spencer Hawes? Look at that picture I began this piece with. Just look at it, preferably for several minutes. It's the only argument I need, Shawn.

We may see a return to form going forward. To a certain extent, we've already returned to the status quo. The Reggie Evans magic ran utterly dry in game 6, and the Randolph-Gasol attack overwhelmed his formerly shutdown defense and surprising offensive attack to pull the Grizzlies into their needed game 7. We could, tonight, see JaVale and Faried finally wilt and allow the Gasol-Bynum duo to go nuclear on the Nuggets and show us why we were fools to count out the Lakers. (I actually think that's going to happen. I'd love to see the Nuggets win, but come on -- they're the Lakers, and all things considered, a team that has the 3 best players in a series rarely loses it -- and the Nuggets have won in LA only once this year. I don't get why everyone is so sure the Lakers are toast.) Spencer Hawes could (potentially) remember that he's Spencer Hawes, and stop making every jumper he takes. And Glen Davis, JaVale McGee, Reggie Evans -- all of them could be gone by the next round. By all accounts, they probably will be.

But if anyone asks me what I remember about this first round, right now, the answer is obvious. It won't be Rose's injury, because I don't like thinking about things that sad. It won't be the dominant attack that the Spurs and the Heat unleashed on their first round fodder. Because their real playoff moment will come later. No. It was a first round dedicated to and in celebration of the "Project." Those few, merry, unheralded big men that carpet-bombed their expectations and dramatically outplayed their betters for several games in a row, and showed the world just how talented they really can be. When they get past their foibles and stop wearing American flag button-downs, of course.

• • •

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 covers Adam discussing his confusion at the peculiar success of the Spurs system and Alex discussing the peculiar everything of Pierre McGee.

• “Why Can't Everyone Be Like the Spurs?” by Adam Koscielak.
• "JaVale's Good Game and the End of Days." by Alex Dewey.

Click the jump for today’s two gems.

• • •

Why Can't Everyone Be Like the Spurs?

Adam Koscielak

The ball moves around as if it were on a tight string. On some possessions every player touches it, on others only two. Whatever happens, however, you can be pretty sure that it's going to swish through the net sooner rather than later. With ruthless efficiency and a wide array of talent, the Spurs are making Suns and Mavs fans remember the heydays of Steve Nash. Ruthless, efficient and (perhaps most surprisingly) beautiful to watch. But their Steve Nash is Tony Parker. Quick, agile, but not exactly known for his playmaking prowess, and utterly lacking in Nash's magnificent shooting stroke. Their big time forward is an all-time great, but at age 35, he's not the Tim Duncan we used to know. All that while their elite wing player isn't even playing 25 minutes per game? The rest of their roster are, if you will, pure role-players, from rookies to washed up vets. The truth is, the Spurs don't have the most impressive roster in the league. Despite that, they remain the most impressive team.

They murder teams with an artfulness reserved for thriller-ish serial killers. Yes, Gregg Popovich is a genius, nobody will deny that, and yes, the Spurs management has done a great job of finding diamonds in the rough, but my question is: Why isn't this replicable? Pop manages to get everyone to buy in, all the time. Nobody takes stupid pull-up jumpers out of the rhythm of the game, nobody breaks up a play to get an ISO, unless he has a mismatch, everybody plays their roles without scoffing about it. It's beautiful, it's what basketball is about.

My question is this: Why can't everyone be like the Spurs? Why can't the Heat, with all their talent and might, just make an offence work? Pop is a wizard, surely, but I'm pretty sure that if Erik Spoelstra watches film of the Spurs, he can get his team to run the plays, particularly given the very similar makeup of both teams (Wade can be very Parkeresque in his game, after all, and LeBron is... Well... LeBron). Why can't the Sixers start moving the ball instead of relying on Lou Williams to bail them out in the ugliest of ways, why can't the Lak... You get the point.

Perhaps coaches in the league are lazy, and so are GMs. The front offices make reckless decisions based on bad research and stick with them, while the coaches decide to go the easy way out and focus on the individual rather than the team. Players are signed and played based on reputation rather than facts, systems are built for stars not around them, killing the beauty of teamwork and cooperation. Am I really supposed to believe that the players are so boneheaded that they don't do what coaches tell them? Am I really supposed to believe that coaches will automatically get fired if they try to get their team to listen to them?

I don't want to believe that. I want to believe that everyone can be like the Spurs... All it takes is a little thought.

• • •

__JaVale's Good Game and the End of Days
___Alex Dewey_

"Hang on to that game ball, JaVale," Craig says indifferently with that powder-blue outfit that - despite the overtures of a tailor - just looks to JaVale McGee like an indivisible morning sky above the mountains. With only the basic hesitation of finding a place to throw it, JaVale more or less immediately hurls the ball into the emptiest, lightless corner of the Staples Center.

Later, JaVale would dream of morning sky. In the dream, the sky's shapeless clear powder blue would crack into crystalline factions of the same hue and would never reform: upon cracking, the sky would crumble down, bringing violence to the mountains and to the people: cracked blue shards of rock candy. In the dream JaVale would look for cover, or maybe try to save his mother, or one of those other urgent motives of dreams, he'd notice - that instead of the familiar and infinite blue ceiling that could crack and crack forever with our triumphs to an even deeper shade of blue, JaVale would see only the perfect black airlessness of space amid the cracks. JaVale would wake in the middle of the night, impatient for twilight.

The only thing better than a game-ball was sixteen of the same, JaVale would suppose sadly. And yet - on this solid balcony overlooking the Denver mountains, JaVale would still wait on the morning sun because - like even the most apocalyptic of nightmares - the shattered ceilings and broken ambitions of yesterday would mercifully be forgotten and the once-blackened sky would seem just as blue and the day would hold just as much time and energy for all his endeavors.

When they ask him - right after the game - why he'd thrown the game-ball he says he'd have to think about it. Later, sipping coffee on a glass deck-table that held cold and wet condensation, JaVale would feel as hot as the sun, burning lakes under his feet and sending the light of his soul up to the sky for all to behold and to derive strength from.

• • •

Fun times. Join us tomorrow for more coverage, and be sure to watch tonight's slate -- it should be fantastic.

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 covers the exaltation of Knicks fans in the wake of their first playoff win since 9/11. We were going to have another piece, but I'm on deadline at work and can't finish the second piece until later, so for now we'll stick with a single piece.

• "Dewey Defeats Miami." by Aaron McGuire.

Click the jump for today's piece.

• • •

Dewey Defeats Miami
Aaron McGuire

Governor Thomas Dewey was not a particularly interesting man. The former Governor of New York did not glad-hand, did not preen, and did not excite. Dewey was the youngest Republican nominee in the history of the party, and the first presidential candidate born in the 20th century. To put his positions in shorthand, Dewey liked tax cuts, the death penalty, federal education funding, internationalism, and anti-discriminatory labor laws -- he represented the lighter and liberal wing of the 1940s Republican party, and his ongoing control over the party through the 50s represented a generalized triumph of Roosevelt's New Deal and a victory for casual liberalism over Robert Taft's conservative wing of the party. Dewey's place in political history -- while little-mentioned -- is quite substantial. Without Dewey leading the way, it's possible Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, and Richard Nixon couldn't have come after him. His impact on the Republican party is vast.

Despite all this? I sincerely doubt all but a few history buffs really know Dewey. Few people could rattle off a succinct view on Dewey's person, like the above paragraph, without the benefit of a Britannica or an encyclopedia. But virtually everyone could name his surname. And thus he lives on, though perhaps not in the way he'd like. Dewey lives on not in his accomplishments, his person, or his creed. He lives on through a silly journalistic snafu, an ebullient President Truman, and a clever photographer who happened to be in the right place at the right time. "Dewey Defeats Truman." It's a timeless photograph -- every history features it prominently, seemingly every American has internalized it, and the headline itself may be the most famous headline in U.S. history. Who Thomas Dewey has long been forgotten by most, but the fact of his presence has not been. And thanks to that photograph, it never will be.

On Sunday, the New York Knicks upset the Miami Heat and pushed their best-of-seven series to a fifth game. Is it premature to say that the Knicks really "defeated" the Heat? Perhaps. In a day, the Heat will likely blow the Knicks out of the water and leave New York's fans dismayed, disjointed, and disillusioned about their future. One game won does not a series make, and as the joy of playing the victor fades away, another lost season lies in its wake. The sadness will likely return. All the headlines, the joy, the exaltation -- all are ephemeral, as sports is in general. But stop short of saying that this moment is fated to be lost in time. Because I don't really think it will be. Keep in mind that the Knicks had lost 13 straight playoff games -- within that 13 they'd suffered two agonizing sweeps, a first round defeat at the hands of Vince Carter (of all people!), and were but a missed shot away from a third straight sweep. My favorite of the various cracker-jack stats on the long wait that Knicks fans suffered through would have to be this; out of the 478 players that played in the league this year, 422 of them began their NBA careers after the streak began. Infamous.

One victory in a gentleman's sweep means little, but when you contextualize the Knicks' now-infamous record and the historic struggles of the franchise, meaning begins to stir. In the grand scheme of things, it's unlikely the facts of the matchup are remembered well. But the ugliness of the series, the drama, the distastefully lacking performance of the New York stars are all as unimportant to the mass consciousness of Knicks fans as the personality and accomplishments of Governor Dewey are to the mass consciousness of the American populace. Just as the Governor lost the race and his place as a truly important figure in history, so too do the Knicks lose their series and their place as a truly important team in history. These dismal Knicks are important not for who they are, but for the moment they gave their fans -- they're important not as a collective team, but as the harbingers of a brighter future and as the motley crew that closed a dark chapter in the history of the franchise.

The New York Knicks have quite a ways to go until this team truly contends. They probably aren't going to win a title with this core. They probably aren't as close as many Knicks fans think, and this win -- in isolation -- doesn't mean they're going to stand a chance against the Heat next year without clever trades and large-scale roster tweaks. But just as the famous photograph has reserved Dewey's name in the hearts of Americans everywhere, this victory offers a short reprieve for Knicks fans. The moment -- fleeting, temporary, and short though it may be -- will live on in Knicks fandom beyond the point where this team is truly remembered or deserving of thought. If I can't fault Americans for remembering Dewey more for a silly photograph than his greater accomplishments, how could I fault Knicks fans for wanting to bask in this one glorious moment?

Perhaps you can. Me? I can't. Congratulations, Knicks fans. Keep your heads high.

• • •

We may add a piece or two to this Outlet later today. Keep an eye on my twitter at @docrostov for any pressing updates.

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

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

Click the jump for the two pieces.

• • •

Only at Nightfall: a Dirge for the Dallas Mavericks

Alex Dewey

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

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

JaVale McGee and the Imagination of the Imperfect
Aaron McGuire

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

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

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

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

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

As advertised in our Prognosti-ranking series, we’re bringing our formerly retired series of daily vignettes — titled “The Outlet” — back for the playoffs. “Don’t call it a comeback.” Though, you can call it series 2, as we are in the title. Every day, we’ll try to share two or three short vignettes from our collective of writers ruminating on the previous day’s (or weekend’s) events. In this case, the previous few days. Should be a fun time. Today’s Outlet covers primarily Amare Stoudemire's hand injury, and includes the following two pieces.

• "All is Well, All is Good." by Adam Koscielak.
• "Wow, no it's not. I Punched a Cactus Once." by Aaron McGuire.

A distinctly punch-drunk theme, today. Continue at your own risk. If you're made of glass, that is. Which does beg the question: how are we going to save Amare... from himself? (That was a Bad Joke. I should feel Bad. And I do.)

• • •

All is Well, All is Good
Adam Koscielak

The reports came in last night. “After their crushing game 2 defeat, Amar’e punched a fire extinguisher” ... “Amar’e bleeding all over the place, because he punched straight through the glass casing” ... “Amar’e surrounded by security and paramedics, getting stitches now." In response, the non-reporters tweeted a collective “What?”

And somehow, it just fits. It just fits so effing perfectly.

Of all the losing teams out here, the Knicks, a team that honestly has no business even pretending they can compete with the Heat in a seven game series (and I say this as an optimistically joyous believer in the chaos theory of sports miracles) are the ones frustrated to the point of PUNCHING A GLASS CASING. Perhaps this is the epitome of the Knicks season somehow. The high point, somehow. It’s really all hindsight, ifs and buts, and pure insanity.

From Linsanity to Pringleburnia, the Knickerbockers have been going from great to bad, intense to lazy, all while the New York Media Big Brothers are staring and passing judgements. And as STAT is surrounded by paramedics you can’t help to think that it fits. Delusional fans will have an(other) excuse and a scapegoat, the media will have the producer of the casing and the details of the lawsuit, bloggers will have another meme, all will be well in the world, and the evil Heat empire will bask in another power forward attempting to physically harm an inanimate object because of their dominance.

All is well.

All is well...

• • •

Wow, no it's not. I Punched a Cactus Once.

Aaron McGuire

I disagree completely, Adam. All is not well. Though perhaps that's just my background obscuring my vision. You see, dear readers, I am a man that has made mistakes in my life. And I may understand more than just about anyone what Amare is feeling right now. This is because -- when I was 13 years old -- I punched a cactus in a bout of misguided fury at a less-than-stellar Biology test. I'd studied and studied, and done my best. Didn't matter. I came short of passing, by just a few points. In the interests of helping our readers understand how the flying fuck a person could make such a stupid decision (as well as solidarity for Amare Stoudemire), I have produced from memory a retro-liveblog of my own incredible punching exploits. Proceed with caution.

The date: April 22nd, 2004. The place: Phoenix, Arizona.

12:32 -- School is out, and we got out quite early that day. I am walking home with my friend Jean. We are discussing my failure to secure a passing grade on my latest Biology test. My parents had been pushing me to finish the semester strong. I at that point had a C in Biology and a few Bs as a freshman. The weight of failed expectations bubbled up. I felt impotent dissatisfaction in my throat.

12:35 -- "Damnit, Jean, I'm angry enough I could punch someone." Jean looks around. He is the only person present. After declaring that he was quote-unquote "not it" he suggested I find something of the non-human type to punch. I like animals, so the passing pigeon was a no-go. As a joke, he points out the cactus right ahead that we pass on our way home every day. Hmm...

12:36 -- "Yeah, I'm going for it." ... "Wait, what?" Before I can respond, I throw my fist at the cactus in feckless rage. Time seems to slow as I realize the sad and unreasonable truth. This was a remarkably bad idea. I slow my hand as it approached the cacti, but it was all too late. As a note of ultimate irony, the test I almost passed had ironically been about the biology of plants. Being that we lived in the desert, cacti played a big role in our studies. This was no ordinary cactus. I should have realized it. This was a jumping cactus. Welp. I'm fucked.

12:37 -- I somehow manage to slow my hand to a gentle love-tap by the time I reach the cactus. Really doesn't matter. After all, it's one of the dreaded jumping cacti. (They exist. Really.) The second I tapped it, the entire fucking limb jumped off and lodged itself into my balled up fist. Because that's actually how those things work. Jean stares at me for what seems like a minute. I stand there staring at my hand, which is now home to a medium-size limb ejected clean off the cactus. Instead of making any notice of pain (Jean was and is 5 years my senior, and I felt as though it was my duty to appear as Kid Badass) I start laughing. This -- contrary to my deepest expectations -- does not make Jean join in, and instead makes him stare at me as though I have gone completely nuts. I realize this is a preeminent possibility, note it, and continue laughing. He asks if we can stop laughing and keep walking. "Yeah, man. Walking. I love that shit." I am Kid Badass. I am the king of the Jungle. Wait, I live in Arizona. I've never even seen a jungle. Fuck.

12:42 -- We pass by a little league game taking place in the local park. In an effort to amuse myself, I wave my cactus limb'd fist at the umpire. He stares at me and gets hit in the chest by an errant swing. I laugh, accidentally managing to get the cactus limb stuck on my shirt. Oh god damnit why did I do that.

12:47 -- A senior citizen is walking his dog, and trying hard to pay no attention to the dumb kid with a cactus in his hand. I nod at the dog, and narrow my gaze. I am superior, Mutt. I have a cactus in my hand, and you do not. This is my day. I am Kid Badass. Vacate my sight. The dog barks at me and I jump in a start, getting one of the spines stuck past my shirt and painfully into my chest. Oh for the love of God are you kidding me right now.

12:54 -- We reach Jean's house. There are maids about, all of whom are staring quizzically at the all-too-obvious result of my impromptu fisticuffs. I begin the careful process of extracting the cactus limb from my hand with all the care of a retired bouncer, indiscriminately rending it from my shirt (and, more painfully, my chest), tearing exactly four holes in the shirt and a small patch of skin off my chest. "That could've gone better." I ask Jean for a swiss army knife, because those are useful. "We don't have one. I do have these scissors we use to cut cereal boxes open with though." ... "That'll do, I guess?"

1:29 -- After about 30 minutes, I finally have carefully extricated the limb from my hand. I cut off the limb proper, deposit it on the ground, and take each remaining spine out of my hand with tweezers. Shockingly, there was very little blood -- sometimes it pays to have poor circulation and extremely bony hands. I am not done being a moron, though, because in my pride at finishing I proceeded to pick up the cactus with my other hand and throw it into the trash can like a basketball. I made the bank shot, before realizing the cactus husk had left its last three spines in my other hand and completely covered it with smaller splintered spines. Apparently Kid Badass is another word for "total fucking idiot."

1:45 -- I return home, play it cool, and pretend like nothing ever happened. I spend the next month with cactus splinters all over both hands and strange prickly scars on my right hand. I tell nobody, because why would I do a thing like that.

So, long story short, I feel for Amare. That's what I'm saying here. Sometimes otherwise smart people make stupid decisions. Sometimes, these stupid decisions are not your garden-variety "wow, I did a stupid thing" decisions, they're incredible stories that will forever remind you of how much of a bloody moron you were, for at least one ephemeral moment in time. Today, it was Amare having one of those moments. On April 24th, 2004? It was a 13 year old Aaron McGuire, showing beef with cacti and picking fights over an insignificant Biology test. So, I hear you, Amare. I hear you deeply. I feel the struggle. Get well soon. And... despite everything I just said, for the love of fuck, stop punching things. From one Kid Badass to another, it's not a good look.

• • •

As advertised in our Prognosti-ranking series, we're bringing our formerly retired series of daily vignettes -- titled "The Outlet" -- back for the playoffs. "Don't call it a comeback." Though, you can call it series 2, as we are in the title. Every day, we'll try to share two or three short vignettes from our collective of writers ruminating on the previous day's (or weekend's) events. In this case, the previous few days. Should be a fun time. Today's introductory Outlet covers the first weekend of playoff action, and includes the following two pieces on the Grizzlies/Clippers opener and the Mavericks/Thunder opener.

For more, click the jump.

• • •

"A New Easter Sunday for Christopher Paul"

Aaron McGuire

When I dig back to try and think of a reasonable comparison to this particular meltdown, I keep going back to the opening game of the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals. The Cavs went up huge, as you may remember. LeBron had a legendarily impressive game, and the Cavs were rolling. They'd scored the first 4 points of the game, and were up 10 less than 3 minutes into the contest. Lead was up to 17-33 late in the first. Mo Williams made a 66-foot three pointer at the half to put the Cavs up 15 at the half. They had lost just twice at home that season -- a 15 point lead at the half, with that kind of a home court advantage? Really seemed insurmountable, for Cavs fans. An impossible climb for a Magic team that was very good, just not good enough.

I admit, it wasn't as sudden as this particular loss. It wasn't as jarring. But the stakes were higher, and in a sense, I feel it was even more unexpected. The Magic chipped away at the Cavalier defenses, and by the fourth quarter, the Cavs were only up 4. They looked like they had the game close in-hand, though, after LeBron took a two point lead with just 25 seconds left. That was fool's gold. Rashard Lewis made an impossible three, and Delonte missed a shot he ALWAYS used to hit. The Cavs (and their fans) were left with a freshly burning loss as they wondered what the hell happened. I remember that feeling. And I feel impossibly bad for the Grizzlies and their fans. They worked hard for this win, and would've had it in the bag if they hadn't allowed a 26-1 run. Perhaps if they'd allowed a 26-4 run, or a 26-5 run. Then this is just a cautionary tale, a reminder to the Grizzlies that they can't take their foot off the gas on a Chris Paul team. Instead? They let the Clippers close the game 28-3, and still lost the game by a single point.

That's the feeling that the Grizzlies players -- and their poor, beleaguered fans -- are facing today. And I feel for them. Because that's a feeling I remember all too well. As might some Clipper fans, deep inside. Clipper fans can relate, in some ways, to the abject failure of unexpected loss. But I'm really giving myself shivers, here, so I'll stop and move on to lighter matters. When the game ended, with Memphis fans frozen in abject horror, Chris Paul got his customary endgame interview with Craig Sager. It was funny, because even though Paul's role in the comeback wasn't nearly as extraordinary as anything he's done in recent years (and to be frank, Nick Young deserved the interview just as much), he ended the interview with a classic quip that made it all worth it. Remarking on Craig Sager's pastel-blue suit with the bright pink tie, Paul commented with "oh, also. Nice suit." America's most grandiose color man grinned and thanked him. Paul patted Sager on the shoulder and followed with "Easter passed, though."

It hearkened back to the classic Sager-Garnett interview where Garnett told him to burn all his clothes, but there was something a bit different about it to me. In the case of the Garnett exchange, there was really nothing there but a hilarious joke. No deeper content, other than Sager's inherent loneliness. In this case? Paul's statement was true both in the factual and the narrative sense. Easter was -- literally -- the 8th of April, quite some time ago now. It passed. But in the 4th quarter of last night's game, the Clippers and their fans experienced something incredibly special -- it may never happen again, and it may be a flash in the pan in a series the Grizz take in 5 or 6 games. But it was indeed the greatest moment in franchise history for the bedraggled, downtrodden, luckless Clippers. And in that sense, the game was nothing less than the Clippers' own Easter Sunday. A miracle resurrection, a metaphorical pentecost, a high that Clippers fans will always carry with them. It passed as well. And why not cap a night like that with a timeless quip at a quixotic journalist? If you came back from 27 points down to most improbably win the game in a hostile field of battle, wouldn't you crack a few jokes too?

• • •

"Building a Legacy, one Bounce at a Time"
Jacob Harmon

There’s something to be said for building a legacy.

Dirk Nowitzki sealed his with some supernatural play last year, nearly single-handedly willing a team of aging veterans to the Finals and triumphing over the duo of hyped and signed legends in LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. But that was then, and this is now. Though Saturday night wasn’t Game 7 of the NBA Finals, from the reaction in Oklahoma City after Kevin Durant dropped in a prayer in the final seconds of Game 1, you’d have thought it was. As much as Dirk Nowitzki and the 2012 Dallas Mavericks showed that they won’t be relinquishing their championship title without a fight, the Thunder showed once again that they hold their own unlikely grudges. This young team, perhaps by virtue of its relatively small body of experience, remembers every major slight against them.

This game was by far the most entertaining and heart-pounding game played on the opening day of this year’s NBA playoffs, and even after it ended with the kind of bang basketball fans appreciate more than any other, it left me wondering about the game's real significance. On the one hand you have the Mavericks, an undermanned team, the lowest-seeded defending NBA champion team in playoff history. A team that even the most stalwart of tradition-obsessed pundits wrote off as an afterthought. Yet they're also a team that absolutely outplayed the Thunder. Right down to the wire. Out of the gate they made a statement. "We will not be swept." They in one fell swoop dismissed the notion that the only real threat to Kevin Durant and Oklahoma City’s Western conference juggernaut was the ruthless efficiency of the Spurs.

But as I watched the replays of the deafening celebrations in Chesapeake Energy Arena from a crowd that looked like it wouldn’t disperse until the series ended, I couldn’t help but think about legacies. I read recently that if Kevin Durant and the Thunder were to make it to the Finals this year, it would only be fitting that they would have to pass through Dirk Nowitzki and the Mavericks, Kobe Bryant and the Lakers, Tim Duncan and the Spurs. From a narrative sense, it would only be right. And as basketball fans who revel in melodramatic advertisements that muse on glory and legend, could there be anything more fitting? If anyone thought Dirk and the Mavericks wouldn’t put up a fight, did anyone actually want that? If any OKC fan thought Kevin Durant would simply rampage through the west, knocking off aging, impotent rivals as he went, I think they should question whether that’s what they really wanted to see.

For the amount of times I’ve already seen Durant’s game-winning shot juxtaposed with the famous image of “The Shot”; this is not 1989, this is not Game 5, this is not the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Kevin Durant is not Michael Jordan. The Mavericks are defending champions, there is a series yet to play out, Dirk Nowitzki is a Hall of Fame talent, and there are many more like him standing between the Oklahoma City Thunder and immortality. But Saturday was Kevin Durant’s night, and there’s something to be said for building a legacy.

• • •

May the action tonight be as tense as this weekend's closing slate. Catch you tomorrow, folks. (Or, alternatively, later today when we drop the last part of our Prognosti-Ranking series, covering the final five teams and my finals prediction. Should be a barnburner when I inevitably miss the mark entirely and get mocked for a solid offseason or two for my awful predictive abilities. I can't wait!)

I don't like free throws. Let's start there. They're efficient, lovely, and essentially free points given how well most teams shoot them. But as a general rule I don't like them. They remind me a lot of football, a sport that (for all my love of sports) I have never been able to get very excited about. It's a stoppage in play that extends the game, often results from a sketchy call, and leads to boring no-effort full-court defense as teams return to their offense from the scene of the crime. And unlike play-stoppers like timeouts, there are rarely fun and interesting plays to be run after a free throw. There are rarely intrinsically interesting schemes. Just leisurely bring the ball up court, maybe rotate it a few times, and shoot an iso. That tends to be the play-of-choice on the other end after a free throw. And it's incredibly aggravating, from a strategic standpoint.

And really, a free throw is fine, considered alone. It's an occasional pause of the action to catch one's breath. They aren't always bad. And time-outs are fantastic, sometimes, for the same reason (and because the strategic laziness that tends to be prevalent on post-free throw plays isn't there at all). But too many free throws takes a great deal of strategy and the fluidity out of the game of basketball, and I find that aesthetically problematic. For a game whose lifeblood relies so much on the essential movement and flow of the offense versus the defense, and the strategic mores of the 10 men on the court, free throws are about as interesting and fun as a comatose dancer. It makes the referees more important than any player. And it warps the game around it, if it occurs too often.

Let's discuss last night.

• • •

In trying to adequately measure my dislike of free throw-driven games, I once took it upon myself to try and determine what the optimal number of free throws are for a game of basketball with good offensive execution to be enjoyable. I came up with an admittedly patchwork solution after watching a random sampling of games that fit certain criterion. If a game's free throw attempts are more than 75% of the game's field goals made, there are problems -- that is, if both teams combined for 75 field goals but combined for 55 free throws, it was probably a pretty uninteresting game to watch from an aesthetic standpoint (unless it's a defensive team that get into pseudo-offensive flows that are intrinsically fun to watch, like the prime Celtics, prime Spurs, or a Mike Brown team -- and even then, the offense was probably awful to watch). On the other hand, if both team's combined free throw attempts amount to less than 40% of the total made field goals in the game, it was probably a pretty fun game to watch -- the action probably came in a relatively uninterrupted flow, there were probably at least 3 or 4 key runs where teams went 5-6 minutes without a single free throw, and you're far less likely to get performances where stars shoot terribly but were "efficient" due to the volume of their free throws. Last night provided the starkest test case in a while for two games on polar opposite ends of this spectrum.

In last night's overtime thriller between the Rockets and the Spurs, the teams combined for 29 free throw attempts to 83 field goals -- that's 34.9% as many free throws as field goals, well under my Mendoza line for a fun offensive game. And it was -- both teams were making some great shots, with the Rockets even making a lot of great ones against solid defensive pressure from Tiago Splitter and Kawhi Leonard. The offensive flow was something to behold, and overall, there were scarce few dead balls that didn't result in a brilliant offensive play by Popovich. Even the last play of the game, one that I originally thought was a bust, actually was a reasonably clever slip screen attempt to get Tim an open elbow jumper. The Rockets played it well, and there were probably better plays in that situation, but despite the ugly result (a poor Danny Green runner as time expired) it was a relatively creative play. Sometimes the shots didn't fall, sometimes they did, but it was an incredibly fun game with a distinctive flow and an absolutely electric performance by both teams. It was a lot of fun, on the purely offensive spectrum. It's exactly the kind of basketball that most people love to watch.

Then we have last night's overtime... something, between the Clippers and the Heat. Now, I wrote about the Clippers and the Heat the other day, and why I dislike both teams. This game was a great reminder of basically every one of my points. It was absolutely excruciating to watch. And when, post-game, I checked my numbers to see if they passed the FTA/FGM "bad" game Mendoza line of 75%? Sure enough, the teams combined for 57 free throw attempts to 68 made field goals. For those counting at home, that's 83.8% -- on average, for every 5 made field goals, there were 4 free throw attempts. That's ugly. Incredibly so, in fact. LeBron James himself had 17 free throws, more than the Rockets attempted as a team and just as many as the Spurs attempted despite the Rockets ending the game with two desparation fouls to get a chance to win. The percentages from the line in that game were disgusting (the Heat shot 58.8% from the foul line, akin to the Heat being a team composed of nothing but Shaquille O'Neal at every position on the court), but it wasn't the percentage that made that game such a slog. It was the utter lack of offensive creativity for the Clippers (and, really, Blake Griffin's insistence on pretending he can make a 20 foot jump shot), the constant bailout calls by the refs, and the fact that with so many non-transition post-free throw dead ball possessions, the Heat rarely got a chance for Coach Spolestra (an excellent play-calling coach) to actually do his job and call good plays.

Why does it matter, really? Simple. The amount of press being spilled from the Rockets-Spurs game is minimal. Virtually nil. It's just one of many games in the regular season, even though it happened to be quite possibly the best played offensive game of any so far. It was beautiful basketball. The ESPN game, on the other hand? Postmortem is that it's a glorious struggle, a smashmouth display of basketball grit, a game with more Olympiads on the court than any other we'll see this season, et cetera. Realistically? It was a slog, and one of the most uninteresting games of the season -- on both ends -- from an aesthetic standpoint. Sports media has its successes and it has its flaws, but the conflation of a game's theoretical "importance" with aesthetic ideal has to be one of the most aggravating.

Repeat after me. Just because a game has a bunch of great players on the court doesn't mean it's a good game. Just because three of the five best players in the world were faced up in crunch time doesn't mean the game was fun. A great game takes a lot of factors coming together and a whole lot of luck. The Heat-Clips game was just about as bad a game as you could possibly have when you pit those two rosters together. Instead of properly placing it where it belongs -- a forgettable regular season tilt between two teams that were playing absolutely horrible basketball in no way reflective of their talents -- the media feels the need to spoon feed a narrative warping the definition of a good game just enough so that this game fits. Well, it wasn't. It was awful.

Call it important, call it a close one, and certainly call them stars. But don't you dare call it a good game.

• • •

Instead of a programming update, I have a depressing website note. In updating WordPress, the powers that be evidently saw fit to completely and totally delete our old theme. As it was a theme I made by hand and hadn't backed up anywhere, this is an incredibly awful turn of events for us. I've been incredibly busy and frankly don't have time to mess around with this today (or this weekend). So, for now, we have a pretty awful-looking temporary theme. Our apologies. Hopefully in the next two weeks I'll have time to rebuild our old one. Really incredibly mad about the whole thing, if anyone has a smart idea for getting it back, I'd appreciate it. Anyway. My lunch break is over. Back to the daily grind. Have a good day.

EDIT: Great news! One of our readers was able to recover our old CSS from their internal firefox cache. They sent it to me. After I re-implemented it there was only some minor code shuffles I needed to do to fix the theme. So we're good as new, and the theme is actually backed up and saved this time. So, hooray! I love our readers. For real. You guys are fantastic, and in this case, saved me from hours of excruciating re-work to try and rebuild the old theme. Thanks a ton.

According to Aaron, the end of the Lakers-Suns game was a vintage Mike Brown performance, featuring crucial defense down the stretch and a 16-1 run without Andrew Bynum. Which is crazy. I didn't watch it, but I'll trust him on that one. We've both have seen more than our fair share of MB defenses. But in any case, today at the Gothic we're not going to talk much about the games tonight but of two key players from these games. These players both have the weird property that their talent levels and aesthetics reflect certain (very specific) qualities upon their teams, only to find their teams reflect these same qualities back upon them. It's kind of complicated, and strange. So without any further ado, let's talk about our two Richard Jefferson and Chris Paul.

• • •

SAS 103 - MIL 106; A decent game that we will ignore to discuss RJ instead. [Alex]

I woke up screaming today. It's ironic: being the first night after buying extra pillows to elevate my awful-breathing throat, it was possibly the first good night's sleep I've gotten in years. Perhaps it's only because my head was elevated that I was able to muster the strength in my vocal chords to start screaming without even waking. Of course, then I woke up. Screaming.

So, let's talk about Richard Jefferson, because before all of this I was having a dream that Richard Jefferson was the best player on the Spurs. It was a wonderful dream at first, and even well-supported. His remarkable resurgence has been a breath of fresh air; RJ has elevated the Spurs, keeping their heads above water despite the tough loss of Manu Ginobili, their best player. It's no coincidence: RJ -- despite his ostensibly small role -- is playing wonderful, versatile ball. Jefferson's a great player in set plays, and shoots well above the percentages needed to call a player an ace or a sniper. Spurs fans call him "Rebound Jumperson" and call his famous jumping rebounds "RJbounds". He bought in, and Spurs fans have returned the favor. And he's even played more than adequate defense, recently.

Somewhere along the line that paragraph describing my dream turned into nothing but lies and half-truths. And as I realized it, my sleep was disturbed by screaming. It was a nightmare, all of a sudden. That's the last time I watch "Eraserhead" alongside a marathon of the 2011-12 Spurs season to date. But it's also the last time that dream - in its recurrence - will be at all pleasant. This dream will become a nightmare. The soundtrack to this "dream" will now be "One More Red Nightmare" by King Crimson.

Because it is actually a nightmare.

Why? Because RJ's relative quality and aesthetics are usually a sort of anti-canary in the hoops mine for the general quality of his team. And there are far too many days when he is and looks like the best offensive player on his team. Aaron has a theory about how RJ looks. In short, it follows that when RJ looks like a fourth option that can get hot with oops, finishes, and smart dribble-drives while rebounding decently despite average, banal, helped defense? He's probably on a contender, or a team that's better than its record. When he looks like a superstar, a prime-Ray-Allen-at-the-SF-with-more-hops-and-speed, that means he's on a 30-win team where the players around him are so bad that his volume-producing ways make him look far better than he really is (Bucks, Nets). To use the starkest example of why this is, jumping for a rebound dramatically (really his aesthetic signature) only looks really good when defense and effort are a scarce luxury on his team, and that only happens on a bad team (or the Hawks). Dribble-driving past a good defense to the rim a few times looks great, but doesn't really bode well for a team if he's the third-best penetrator, so he doesn't do it very much.

When he doesn't do these things (or when he does them less) his game looks markedly worse, but in the end the team wins more. Because, you know, prime Richard Jefferson is their third-best penetrator and that means you aren't looking at a bad roster or a poor allocation of possessions. The fact that this season he's looked like a minor superstar on so many occasions -- or at least the Spurs' best offensive player -- is severely troubling for the Spurs' prospects. It will give us sleepless nights. Manu may give us fits when he (on rare occasion) shoots us out of the game or (more commonly) threatens to do so, but at least he doesn't give us -- as they say in medical circles -- screaming-mad insomnia. RJ looks like the Spurs' best offensive player right now. That, Spurs fans, is the literal definition of a nightmare.

(By the way, obligatory context: RJ seems to be one of the nicest, smartest, most reasonable people in basketball, and before his infamous contract extension, the Spurs asked him to spend his summer completely reformulating his game down to the fundamentals, despite a widespread reputation as an above-average, great scorer, and he did it. He put in the hours. And when he returned (extension in hand) he really helped the 2010-11 Spurs offense work. So really not a knock on RJ, who I respect and enjoy as a person: he's just the messenger. The scary messenger.)

• • •

Q: What high school did Chris Paul go to?
A: Intensity High
Q: Heyo! I seriously dislike Chris Paul, though.

LAC 97 - POR 105; __A decent game that we will ignore to talk about Chris Paul instead. [Alex/Aaron]__

Actual, mildly edited conversation from during this game:

Alex: Let's talk about Chris Paul. CP3 is so tense.

Aaron: I'm going to be honest. He's been playing awful basketball for 3 or 4 games now, and the fact that his one or two good plays a game still inspire people to say that kind of annoys me.

Alex: I'm not saying he's playing especially well. Or well at all. I'm literally saying he is full of intensity. He is 'tense as a wound-up ukelele.

Aaron: That seems like a really weird sentiment to me. Really odd.

Alex: What do you mean? He's yelling at people constantly, jumping up from fouls, having to be slightly restrained, working the refs, working his teammates, working, working, working. Besides, how is that a weird sentiment? A weird sentiment would be that he avoids looking at the camera when he's glaring because he would break that camera. That would be a weird sentiment. [Alex's Note: One that I actually, literally believe.]

Aaron: I can't disagree. That's all true. But I think -- to some level -- I just sincerely dislike CP3's current game. As fun to watch as it was, years ago. I mean... I appreciate him. He's undoubtedly a great (and formerly MVP-level) player, but...

Alex: Then why? I could understand if it's because he's like LeBron with this media presence and branding BS, but. Gamesmanship?

Aaron: Because I hate his attitude, I hate his demeanor, I hate the way his aesthetics warp the perception of his game to push it beyond its actual quality -- and it's really fucking good. And yes. His gamesmanship. That's mainly it. Maybe entirely it. His dirty, excessive gamesmanship. At his peak he's underrated, but he hasn't been at his peak in years. Byron Scott destroyed his career with his insane practice regimen. And honestly, CP3/Blake is the absolute most annoying duo I have ever seen on one team. At least in terms of arrogant/dirty players who -- while great -- haven't really proven anything yet beyond their own greatness. They are great. In Paul's case, transcendent. But the aesthetics of their games can't overcome the way they approach this Clippers team. I can't stand watching the Clippers. It's like the opposite, in every way, of the collective Popovich-reflected Spurs attitude or Steve Nash. Maybe it's Vinny. I don't know.

Alex: That makes a lot of sense, but for my sake, I appreciate greatness for its own sake. More than that, in fact. I enjoy it and what it does to the game as a whole. His aesthetics may warp the perception of his game to fans (which is bullshit, yes), but they also warp the perception of the game to being more important and significant as far as his teammates and opponents are concerned, and he raises the tenor of the game in doing so. Sure, he may call attention to himself with a burst of light that isn't just about basketball, but the light is real and casts a shadow and a reflection from everyone else. When he loses despite making every right decision, despite working over everyone possible? That feels important. When he wins because of the same? That feels important. CP3 is important partially because he's important, and that's unfair, yes. But as a viewer? There is a real, substantive difference in the end product.

Aaron: See... I don't totally agree with that. It makes a difference to the lazy viewer, perhaps. (Not meant in a mean way -- it's not a bad thing to watch basketball in a "lazy" way, it's a matter of personal preference. Not a value judgment. Bear with me.) But to the observant, careful viewer who takes in every play, who sees Paul get absorbed in their dirty knocks, the wonder of his overall play is somewhat lessened and arguably erased by this attitude with which players like him and Blake approach the game. Effortless preening dominance without the results to back up the hype, I mean. The Heat are about 20-30x better than the Clips in this sense alone, because goddamn, they're arrogant as hell... but they back it up, and they don't let it control them. LeBron has, in the 5 Heat games I've seen him in so far this year, once neglected to get back on defense so he can argue a call. Blake does that 5-10 times a game, minimum. Same with Paul, so far.

And really, that's the story with Heat versus the Clippers. So far, the Heat don't really make a habit of showboating in-game on every other possession. They don't try and kill opposing players with dangerous screens and the old "tug on their jersey, endanger them midair" tactic. They don't do the sneering preening that Blake became slightly obsessed with late in his rookie year (and has continued this season). They don't punch Marcus Camby midcourt then cry foul so the ref T's up Marcus. The Heat don't do the dirtiest stuff. And their coach -- who, despite my hatred of the Heat, I very much respect -- demands effort and excellence. Unlike Vinny Del "No Creativity-ro". [Alex's Note: This nickname is now GG canon.] Now, this isn't to say I love them, obviously. The Heat are bad. Really aren't a ton of fun to watch. Free throws galore, occasional preening, the off-court arrogance, et cetera. But their coaching, their execution, and their relative lack of being self-absorbed on the court make them markedly more fun to watch if you completely decontextualize them and the Clippers as teams, during the games themselves. I really, really hate what the Clippers do to the game of basketball. They are a team that define preening, and a team that make all the ore than the Heat. more than the D'Antoni Knicks. more than Shaq. They just turn basketball into a petty game where arrogance and dirty play become synonymous with "intensity"

This is especially irritating when there are players like Nash who are intense without being dirty. Manu is intense without trying to kill Andre Miller every trip up the court. Even Wade, who's intense by drawing a shitload of undeserved fouls (which is incredibly annoying and sometimes completely unwatchable) -- even he's better than Paul and Griffin. There's just this general air of disrespect around the Clippers. They don't respect their opponent. They play dirty. And what's worse? They aren't even effective in doing so! They're a bad, mismatched team that plays lazy defense and reflects Vinny Del Negro's worst instincts. I should love seeing a talent like Paul and a talent like Blake fly across the court. I should love this team. I mean, hell, I love Mo Williams and I can enjoy Reggie Evans every once in a while. But in the 4 Clippers games I've watched so far, I can't say I love them. I can't even say I like them. I hate watching them together, in fact.

In short, I have a proposition for you. There's no one "right" way to play basketball. However, there is a monotonically WRONG way to play basketball. The Clippers embody that -- they play the game with no respect for their opponent, no respect for the intelligence of their fans, and no effort to play in a way that doesn't hurt the game and cheapen the sport. They play as though defense is nothing more than dirty hits and stealthy grabs, and as though arrogance and self obsession is the platonic ideal for a team of stars. They run lazy set plays and coast on their talent. Their coach runs their stars so many minutes that they take shortcuts and put in lacking effort for much of the game. In all forms of the game, they play under their potential and under what a "good" team would do. And that's why I hate this year's Clippers team, to this point. They aren't fun to watch, they don't respect their opponent, and they coast like no other. That's not good for the game, nor is it good for any of the players involved. In my view.

... And as if to prove my point, as I wrote that, Billups kicks Wes Matthews in the balls. Wonderful job, Clippers.

Alex: I respect that, and you're right: They're an annoying, dirty team, especially in combination.

But what about when Chris Paul was carrying the Hornets (who actively, strongly stood behind him for the MVP in 2008)? What about all those times he's devastated very good (and more talented) teams by unreasonable margins? When he was at his peak, his ego was more than compensated for by performance, and now because of his knee injury, only traces of the talent remain and all the arrogance remains. But it could be said that Paul signed the death warrants on the Spurs and Lakers dynasties. Just because his ego hasn't caught up with his lessened abilities does not invalidate what he's done, which is more than merely to prove his own greatness. He was arrogance; he was dirty; he was all of the above, but he was at heart a great competitor. And that hasn't changed.

The problem with CP3 is partly ego but it's also exogenous: Now he's surrounded by people that he doesn't need to pump up, that he doesn't need to build up by setting an example, people for whom building up is probably worse than just harshly and loudly criticizing all facets of their game and asking to reciprocate the honesty. And being around these people accentuates the cheaper, dirtier parts of CP3's game. His rage and swagger is real, not just the rational trolling for points and possessions, and I admire that. But when you put him right next to the living embodiments of veteran cheapness (Billups), arrogance (Blake), and unwarranted hype (DeAndre Jordan -- not his fault, of course), you start to make these unpleasant comparisons directly. And it doesn't exactly help CP3 or make him seem like a franchise savior as much as one more unpleasant piece. The fact that he also has done a lot to dislike off the court (the oddest trade demand cycle of any superstar yet, and his recent insane levels of branding that exceed even LeBron's at least in terms of relative accomplishment) doesn't help an already cynical person.

Now, all that said, I think the "lazy/careful viewer" dichotomy is a bit silly. [Aaron's note: It really is. That was the wrong word for that. I'll leave it in, but I have to emphasize that it's not the right word.] People value different things in the game, and look out for different things, and that's one of the great things about basketball. If someone is looking for "swag" with nothing objective to back it up, that's kind of dumb, honestly indistinguishable from celebrity culture, really. Celebrity for its own sake. I get that. But what about the fierce, unrestrained, total embrace of competitition, with or without visual evidence? Is there really nothing of value there to an astute viewer in Chris Paul's game? I don't think that CP3 corrupts the game of basketball, nor is his style the end-all and be-all of the game of basketball. It's just one more dimension that he displays to such an extreme extent that it's instructive, entertaining, and inherently interesting when it matches up with another extreme like Nash, Manu, or Duncan.

Now, you and I personally love the Spurs' unselfishness and unpretentious attitude (along with their "we'll do what we do and if we don't win that's how it goes" approach), and I see what you mean about how the Heat conduct themselves comparatively. I also recognize that CP3 (and, before someone else says it, Bruce Bowen) is arguably the complete opposite of that. While I wouldn't exactly encourage kids to be like him, it still has its value to me as a viewer (though it's value lessened by his surrounding team, as you and I have both said now).

• • •

Epilogue to Clips-Blazers:

Aaron: Fair enough. Nothing to add. I think we're done with this Clippers stuff. Let's move on.

Alex: Okay, then we'll edit and publish it later, probably.

Aaron: You're doing Spurs-Bucks?

Alex: Yeah. "I woke up screaming today." First sentence of the RJ thing. Thoughts?

Aaron: Did you really wake up screaming? Jesus.

Alex: Well, I was building to a parallelism with your RJ theory, you know, where the quality of his teammates -- ...

Aaron: Stop. Can we establish whether this really happened before we go any further on it?

_Alex:_ ... No, no we can't.

_Aaron:_ Fine. Too many adverbs in the third paragraph. Get rid of "all at once." Hanging comma in the second. Patch it, please.

• • •

Thanks for reading.

I was hallucinating all night with a deathly combination of caffeine, tylenol, and the strangest sleep schedule ever. Technically, I'm not sure if I should've been up, much less writing anything. But Aaron would like us to take a new direction with The Outlet, and apparently, stepping into this new direction involves some growing pains in the form of hallucinogenic metaphors. Take my words with a grain of salt, my organization of concepts with a lot of leeway, and my concepts themselves as canon. I am going to attempt to describe the 2012 San Antonio Spurs, as they appeared last night in a thrilling game against the Warriors of Golden State.

• • •

It's been five games into this long and deadly season. The Spurs are in dire straits entering their sixth. How dire? Well, permit me a long metaphor: their conductor is dead - or, for those who care, on indefinite leave with injury - and all his replacements will not do, for they all lack the normal conductor's competence and fluidity and artistry. Now at the concert tonight, the orchestra plays disjointed, suddenly-half-remembered cues; the first violin steps up to conduct and finds again how hard it is. The program director asks if they even want a conductor tonight, if this is to be the alternative. All the while, from the stands, the injured conductor watches intently, moving the baton discreetly in his seat despite injury, the clipped bird flapping his wings and concerned at what he sees.

In spite of all of this, the audience applauds warmly. They've been to other concerts; they know the backdrop of injury; they know what music these people are capable of making with the right conductor. But the audience cannot endure the harsh tones much longer. Because they know the score. The conductor's void is palpable and hangs over every missed cue and every fourth beat that stumbles or rushes a bit to the next measure. Still, they clap. It's not just sympathy that moves the audience. The people in the stands also clap because they know that the orchestra is trying its best. That they've tried so many different, seemingly random conductors tonight, to everyone's muffled amusement (the third-chair trumpet reveals to the audience's laughter that he'd taken some conducting courses in college as he steps up). But a careful eye will also note the muffled horror on everyone's faces: How long can an orchestra like this - even one so brilliant - survive (much less thrive) without a good conductor? They've got the lanky, funny-looking drummer with the headband running the show now, getting assists from the wide, jolly bassist, and that's all well and good, but this is an orchestra not built for the most part on philanthropy or corporate sponsorship: this is an orchestra mainly built on its own acclaim and attendance. Built on its own recognition as the champion of orchestral accomplishment. And the way things are going, it won't command an audience much longer, and it certainly won't reach the end-of-year awards except on momentum alone.

This is an orchestra that will soon be silent, and at the intermission the silence to come hangs palpably over their fans.

But something is different when they come back from the intermission. All at once - after a pep talk from the program director - it seems they're starting to change the rigged game to one that they can win. They're using their acknowledged talent to find new paths to the heart of the music. They're taking matters into their own hands. If they can't find a conductor, well, as the concert has gone on, it turns out they know the score a little better than they'd thought. As their vestigial memories of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky return, they split the melodies up into chunks and deliver by committee.

Their program director, exhausted by apprehension and futility, had foreseen his opening in that pep talk and told them: "If you have something to deliver for this measure, then do it. If not, just stay out of the way. Whatever the case, stay on beat. Defend the first beat and make sure we get back to it at the end of the measure. Above all, the more the merrier. Attack the piece! Feel the music's direction and react, damnit!" Not in years has the program director gotten so livid, so animated, so soulful in willing his orchestra to action. And they respond, in time; they're attacking the piece, getting right to its heart, and the audience knows it. Making mistakes, but using each mistake as an opportunity for finer concentration. To build something better for the next measure. Dvorak's "New World" symphony has sounded much grander and more cohesive in other, better orchestras. But in their improvisation, they're rediscovering the emotional heart of the symphony: the long, grinding, arduous journey for innocent truth and affirmation, and then, at the end, a celebration for what has been regained and the journey that led there. They've made that journey, and they celebrate their "New World" that suddenly feels so easy by the end.

They've won.

No, they aren't going to be able to do this piece many times again. And they all know their orchestra is still in peril without its great conductor. But for a night they've staved off insolvency and shown their audience what it is that makes us look for music and its salvation in the first place. And, a bit merrier, they prepare for tomorrow's encore. The show must go on. And perhaps they can do it on their own, for a time. Perhaps the entertainers still have a few vintage nights left.

• • •

You know, I'm not a big fan of writing about the creative process: It's usually forced and overwrought (see above). But I had to say something, had to put it into my own words, because all I know is that the Spurs without Manu played in a way that evoked the unmistakable joy of rediscovered creation, and whether they won or lost, whether I can put it the right way or not, it's a thought worth remembering: An aging team that played an encore of "Summertime" and was bathed in light.