"They didn't let me push them around." could be a summary of Dwight's plea to the NBPA. Twisted, turned and hyperbolized, Dwight came out accusing the Magic of blackmail, while another collective "LOL" and "WUT" descended upon the twitterverse. Had this been the pre-Web 2.0 Dark Ages, the editors would've probably double-checked the story before printing it in tomorrow's news. But today, as information becomes moot with every minute, those with sources have no such restraint. They'll throw whatever their sources tell them out to the masses, which will be subsequently reposted, reinterpreted in a thousand of ways.

And as the story of Dwightmare 2: Electric Boogaloo unfolded, I wanted to write an instant reaction, just as many others. Because waiting? That means that the interest goes dry. Waiting means that people probably already said what you've wanted to say independently. Fast wins, and when a few days later something changes, you always have an excuse for your too-quick reaction post.

All things considered, I've narrowly avoided that.

• • •

Now that a bit of the fog of war has cleared, we know one thing. He never said "blackmail". And while it might be an unimportant detail in the big picture of his treatment of Orlando, it's also a tweak to his image. Still egoistic, but not insane. Still a child, but not as annoying. The rationality of his argument, the intent of his actions seemed to hinge, at least to me, on that one word. Suddenly, my whole perception changed; he went to get advice, rather than to blithely attack the Orlando Magic. He was just looking for a way out of this situation, rather than doing stuff best described as "literally insane." What's the truth? How should I know? Unless Dwight Howard is our source, it's all speculation.

All that said, Dwight remains our villain. He gave Orlando hope just because he didn't want to be shipped out anywhere else but to New Jersey. He could've left in Free Agency, yeah. But a 5-year contract was -- evidently -- just as important as reaching the promised land. It's really hard to empathize with an annoying dude earning millions of dollars, especially when he's acting like a spoiled brat. Still, I don't really feel significant anger towards Dwight. Not as much as pity.

Dwight is a part of a rare (and dying) breed in the NBA. He's a superstar drafted out of high school, he's been a superstar since day 1, and he's probably going to be a superstar when he retires. As I mentioned in my recent LeBron James piece, while a lot of people probably think that it's fun to earn millions at the tender age of 18 (and doing it through the sport they love, too!)... I don't really think so. Not with the scrutiny of today's sports world. It's much akin to a life of a Hollywood celebrity, only they don't get death threats for missing free throws instead of passing on a role in a deranged fan's favorite reboot. While these celebrities fall into addiction and depression as the result of their fame, NBA players generally don't. Maybe it's because they're famous at a different level, or in a different way, or maybe because they don't spend their lives having to pretend someone that they're not. I don't know. But for the most part, NBA players deal with it.

So, here's Dwight, an 18-year-old baller, making decisions. These are decisions that change his life. I remember when everyone around me told me that my IB Diploma exams could ruin my life. I can't even imagine what a choice between going to college and going pro must've been like, even if it seemed easy on the outside. After all, everyone in his big family wants a piece of the cake he'd bring home. From there, it's just more and more people banking their hopes on him, some financially, others in a fan-capacity, but whatever it is, it's always pressure. And it's not just Dwight*.

* I'm not trying to suggest that the early-entry is to blame for Dwight's behaviour. This happens to one-and-doners, two-and-throughers, juniors and seniors all. It's just that it seems to me that college is a very good adjustment period for the fame to "kick in", if you will, an adjustment period that Dwight, LeBron, Kobe and others never had. They were thrown into the deep waters straight away, and that's not all that easy, I feel.

• • •

I've already discussed LeBron, noting how the decision and a post-heartbrake outburst were the biggest gaffes of his career thus far. One of them, I'd always felt, was an unintentional faux pais. I doubt that LeBron, with all his faults, would want to rub in the faces of Cleveland. Or maybe he did. The conference seemed to me to be the plea of a frustrated man, and beneath the venom, there was a snippet of truth. Almost everyone was surviving a moment of Schadenfreude at the expense of one man that never really wronged us, but simply pissed us off by teaming up with some other good players.

(It's only wrong if you're younger than 30, mind you.)

And LeBron's not the only one struggling with his own ego, Kobe had a Battle Royale with Shaq and more than a fair share of outbursts before he matured, while Kevin Garnett seemed to focus all that negative energy into his on-court persona. In Dwight's case it's not an outburst, or a weird on court persona. It's not a single gaffe or a big P.R. misstep. It's something much more fitting his goofy charm -- it's this spoilt, child-like conviction to get what he wants no matter the cost. When someone stops him from doing so, he seems to play the victim, losing sight of rationality.

And in all that? Dwight just seems lost. Just like it took time, mass hatred, and a myriad of defeats for LeBron to develop, Dwight needs more time. He's a victim of fame, as much as he is a villain. He will be hated by Magic fans, and people who hate to see behaviour like this, and (in time) Dwight will be loved by the franchise he commits to. And in time, he'll realize what he's done wrong, and rather than beg forgiveness, take a lesson for the next time he'll be in a similar situation. Just like a regular human being, which must be said. After all, think of how often we forget, that these marvels of athleticism and skill we observe through our magical machines, are people just as much as we are.

So no, I don't hate Dwight, and neither should you. You may dislike what he does, or his approach, but in the end, we should cut him some slack. Not despite him being a famous basketball star earning millions of dollars. Because of it.

• • •

Stealth reminder from Aaron: tomorrow, we'll be doing a fourth-of-July Statistical Q&A. For those wondering what those are, check the first installment of the series. General discussion topics will be the cap, free agency, and next season's predictions. These Q&A sessions are only as good as the questions we get, so we hope everyone comes up with some great ones. You can start sending questions today on twitter -- just send them to @docrostov or with the #gothicginobili hashtag. See you tomorrow!

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

There are bad trades, yes.

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

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

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Let's say you're a GM for an NBA team. Your team just came off a dismal 25-57 season, which is probably about right given all the D-Leaguers you called up near the end and the decent-but-flawed players at the top of the roster. Particularly the injured ones. All that sound and fury, signifying... the fifth pick in the draft! Your owner is excited, you are wary. As expected, on draft night, the top three players on your draft board are gone after the 3rd pick. You know where the 4th pick is going, so you cross that guy out too. No matter, you weren't really expecting anything different. But you look on that sparkling fifth pick with indecision even at this absolute moment of truth. Maybe this is the year you hit lucky five, where (by sheer coincidence) several present and future HOFers have landed.

Because, really. Look at the history! Maybe you'll get Kevin Love. Or Kevin Garnett. Or Ray Allen. Or Dwyane Wade! Devin Harris wouldn't be so bad. All of them (including Scottie Pippen and Charles Barkley) were 5th picks at one point. Statistically the fifth pick is the only one that has yielded close to the All-Stars as the big #1 pick in the last 25 years. You didn't know that until a few days after the lottery, but now it feels like the only thing you've said in years. Your mind dances with one part anticipation, ten parts dread. Your reputation as a GM is on the line, and you might lose your job when all's said and done if this pick never pans out. Nothing like playing roulette with your job, right? You find you have two realistic options. Open the doors, Vanna.

• • •

Option #1: The Nicest Bro You've Ever Known

Here's your first stop. A lengthy defensive wing that spent 4 years at a college known for scrappy work ethic and virtue. You know that Option #1 can defend the 3 and the 4 really well. He has a tremendous work ethic, and he'll be a solid NBA player for many years (so long as he's healthy -- luckily, your scouts give no indication of an injury risk). The only problem? Well, he's not that quick, and he's not that long. His defensive instincts are tremendous -- Shane Battier with some gruesome length -- but that's all he brings to the table. His offense is barely passable, showing rotation-player stuff at best. He doesn't have a jump shot, much less a corner three. And, obviously, you aren't the Spurs. His offensive upside as a vet is something like rookie Kawhi Leonard (intelligent, some driving ability, a 3-ball-corner-pocket to keep defenses honest, decent vision).

But his rebounding instincts are undeniably subpar and his 5 rebounds per game in 35 minutes as a college four suggests he'll always be a liability. Perhaps the peril and the promise of Option #1 is his mind-numbing and undeniably valuable consistency. His college numbers paint a freakishly uniform picture - defensive tenacity and intelligence, bad rebounding, vaguely-passable offense. Every game, every second he's out on the floor you get this. You figure if you take him you'll certainly make your team 5 wins better and make your differential a point or two higher, for about 5-7 years (maybe more) until his expensive free agent days come and his legs start to slow down. Your fans will complain about his rebounding and wish he could give you more, but overall they'll respect the work he puts in. Not bad. You probably won't regret picking Option #1.

Option #2: The Startling Heights, The Subterranean Floor

Option #2 is a bad dude_._ To prove to you how much of a bad dude he really is, he spent a single year in college and played terribly. Didn't produce all that much, is what we're saying. You don't know his deal. He's showed up at all your combines with a mixture of intelligence, vigor, and earnestness. That was cool. He also fully utilized every single combine to show you the fundamental inferiority of his current skillset. That was not-so-cool. But the upside? Considerable! Option #2 gets physical comparisons to everyone. Dwight Howard to Chris Paul to Elgin Baylor -- confusing, yes, but they make total sense when you see him play. Yet, in the next sentence, a litany of warnings pour forth that this guy might just be a huge Kwame-style draft bust.

It's speculated by these scouts that while Option #2 is an intelligent player and his physical attributes are undeniably unique, Option #2 will probably never reach that plateau of talent his upside demands. His one year of college wasn't just disappointing in the averages: it was extraordinarily high variance, filled with insane displays of athletic brilliance that left their spectators in awe of this Olympian that were followed two possessions later by tripping over his own feet and airballing free throws. At the combine, while you saw the good side of his personality, you never really saw the Olympian rumblings. What you did see wasn't encouraging in the slightest. As far as you're concerned, Option #2 failed the final exam. The most important thing in the NBA is consistency (hello, Option #1!) as all your wily veterans will amply attest when asked.

• • •

Your stats guys -- all of whom backed up your intuition -- give a 10% probability on the premise that Option #2 is a once-in-a-decade type talent, with the potential to be the evolutionary Scottie Pippen or the evolutionary Dwyane Wade. Both of whom were, well, the #5 pick in their respective drafts. There's even a small percent chance that Option #2 is simply beyond compare; the chance that Option #2 is the first in an evolutionary line of a world crushed under his making. The things Option #2 can do on a court rival what any franchise player in the league can do, after all. Which is all well and good, but rather dwarfed by the 50% chance your stats guys give you that he's simply NBA jetsam, a rotting waste of athletic genius and your coveted draft pick. In the final 40% he's just another infuriating marginal All-Star or 7th man that just kind of hangs around for five years and brings crowds just to see him in that brief garbage time spectacle. Anthony Randolph, Tristan Thompson, the like. You run the numbers again, and again you find what you'd calculated 1000 times. Option #1 is the clear-cut winner on average. He makes your team a lot better at the 3 or 4 and you could tell your owner (truthfully) that that position is above average.

Option #1 is buying insurance; Option #2 is putting your existing insurance in the mega-millions. Easy.

But before you click the trigger, you stop and mull it over. You think to yourself... What if I had to make this same choice 10 drafts in a row? That is, for ten drafts, you had the #5 pick and you picked the same archetype you picked this year. You stop. Ten players like Option #1 would be great, right? Well, except that you wouldn't have an offense. Your entire team would turn into a contender-feeder for a few years, just trading and developing successive combinations of "Shane Battiers with gruesome length" for more players and picks. That wouldn't be bad, all considering. You'd probably keep your job. On the other hand, 10 players like Option #2?... Well, you suppose you'd get to play the odds and on average one of those ten would be that once-in-a-decade player.

You gulp. That one guy would make the other nine Option #2 clones -- as well as your 25-win team -- into contenders in two or three years. What's more, you're a thinking man. You tend to see the contributions of players in a game, series, or season, as being of the Pareto distribution mold, where 20% of players are responsible for 80% of the wins, and Option #1 will never be that guy... Option #2 has the possibility to be_. There's a one-in-ten-chance_. Sure, if you were making that same choice for ten years, you'd probably be fired. But your team, and your owner, would be building for a title, and for greatness. Not just building for being the next in a long line of oh-so-close Houston teams, unable to evolve into even a relevant team. And that's what troubles you.

• • •

In the end, you pick Option #1. This isn't a fun little mental exercise, or a quirky stat project. No, this is real life -- this is about keeping your job. Plausible deniability will always be there, and the on-record quotes from your hoopshead luminaries about Option #2 as a Kwame-level bust will always be there. You file them away in your secret locked cabinet of job-defense documents. Don't laugh. It'll be there if you need it. But after this solemn consideration you've thought through a thousand times and expressed to your ownership with the nobility of a man obsessed, you know in your heart of hearts that -- if you were only about the team -- you'd have picked Option #2 in a heartbeat.

Really. Bust or not. Because you've got 9 to 1 odds on 12th place magically turning into 2nd place. That's worth everything, in this league. But you didn't. You went safe. After your pick, you go home to watch tapes of Option #2 stinking up the second combine. You laugh. You drink. You laugh some more. And then you get a draft alert for Option #2, and on force of habit, you check it. Your eyes water. In a draft-day trade, the Spurs acquired the 13th pick for DeJuan Blair and Gary Neal. They chose Option #2.

Seconds later, your Blackberry meets the pavement. You live on the third floor.

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

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

• • •

And then, there's me.

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

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

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

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

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

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Nature, nurture, heaven and home
Sum of all and by them driven
To conquer every mountain shown
But have never crossed the river
Braved the forest braved the stone
Braved the icy winds and fire
Braved and beat them on my own
Yet I'm helpless by the river

Angel, angel what have I done?
I've faced the quakes the wind, the fire
I've conquered country, crown, and throne
Why can't I cross this river?

In terms of raw talent and ability, LeBron might be the best player to have graced our game. The questions always concerned his psyche, his drive, his motivation. He won trophies, accolades, but always lacked the one attribute everyone associates with the best – those damned rings. With expectations from his rookie season, being a star from age 16, it’s hard to say whether he ever found himself within the huge body he inhabited. I know that when I was 16, I was pretty confused, and I didn’t have a documentary about me anywhere. I’m not a student of psychology. I don’t know LeBron. But from my (albeit limited) experience, I can tell you: that much attention, that much hype, that much expectations? Never does good for a person’s personality, never. Especially one that never had much of a life aside of them. And yet, he played through those, and yet he dominated, with no regard for human life. And the new basketball great showed he was ready to become the new basketball legend.

• • •

But in Cleveland, he failed. I’ve never seen it, blame lowspeed internet and lack of exposure in Poland. But I’ve heard. The comparisons to Jordan and Kobe, the resulting Decision, a rather ill-fated attempt at a charity event, and then? The most annoying welcome party ever. It seemed like the unstoppable force entered the NBA, with the arrogance of an annoying prizefighter, we were ready for a new era. LeBron climbed all the mountains, but he couldn’t pass that one river that separated him from the championship. Nothing illustrated that better than his struggle in the Finals last year, and his rather shameful “y’all gonna live the same pathetic lives” skit. The frustration and pain was evident, and the ever-present narrative of “not clutch”, magnified. With the lockout looming, it looked like we’d be hearing a lot of it without anything to counter, while LeBron went to work on his game even further, expanding it into something that is legendary.

Fast forward one year, and LeBron sits before us, having exorcised his demons. In sports, winning cures everything, from softness to unclutchness, from indecision to the Decision. The most annoying narrative in sports turned into a redemption tale. LeBron, from angry, to calm and happy, from arrogant to humble, from his haters “returning to pathetic lives”, to “the only thing that matters is that I’m a champion.” Tonight, LeBron passed the river, humbled, and with a burden off his chest. He’ll probably go back and forth across it a few more times, sometimes falling into the deep waters, sometimes going back over it again. It's the way of the game.

But as he said himself, he won’t do it out of spite, he’ll do it out of love.

• • •

Pay no mind to the battles you've won
It'll take a lot more than rage and muscle
Open your heart and hands my son
Or you'll never make it over the river
It'll take a lot more that words and guns
A whole lot more than riches and muscle
The hands of the many must join as one
And together we'll cross the river

Puscifer - The Humbling River [Lyrics: Maynard James Keenan]

On the night of June 21st, 2012, a Midsummer Night’s Dream came to be for a group of men. One of these men just placed his first step on the path to a heavenly basketball throne, killing one narrative, while creating several others. He is no longer the angry, lost young man that told us all to screw off last year. He's changed, a bit. He's now a confident, calm and happy person -- that, more than anything, might speak more than any of his evolution on the court. And in all this mess and commotion, one quote stands out above all.

_“_About damn time.” LeBron James: Champion.

We'll look back someday and chuckle. It was only a matter of time, after all.

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

Trading Russell Westbrook for Rajon Rondo

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

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

• • •

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

Let's go over some numbers.

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

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

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

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Most of this week, we'll be ceding the floor to our resident Dewey and allowing him to examine NBA storylines through the vise of the first piece in the series, Chekhov's Compassionate Comedy of the NBA. In today's Part III, Alex will examine the complex and Chekhovian narratives surrounding the exit of his favorite team, the San Antonio Spurs.

It's time to deal with the Spurs. It's Chekhov Week here, and I think now is the time to plumb the Western Conference Finals for Chekhov's compassionate, biting comedy -- comedy that brews like an oil well right beneath the surface of the blog. It's a take as hot as the sun and we've been waiting for our emotions to cool down a bit.

Anyway, let's recap: The San Antonio Spurs have had the smartest, most effective players in the league for a decade. They have had the best coach, the best franchise player, the best management, the best scouting, and the best system for a decade and a half -- all of this despite limited financial resources. The Spurs dynasty in the Tim Duncan era has been nothing short of amazing. And, like all great things in life, everything hinged on a couple strokes of luck and a group of people that took full advantage of their luck, with the players and staff bringing to the table clockwork consistency and organizational excellence. This is the Spurs as a franchise, minus a few crucial instances when their key players and their role players took their play yet another step up to take basketball excellence into basketball transcendence seemingly through sheer force of will.

• • •

And recently, in the past few years, the Spurs have managed something more: They've completely reinvented everything about their basketball, and nearly as much about their personnel, without sacrificing a drop of their tremendous success. The Spurs have changed up their fundamental approach to basketball, moving from largely defensive squads with some great offensive players to offensively-dominant teams with some great defensive players. For those who understand basketball, the change is about as stark as any in the sport. One day they woke up successful but needing total change just to stave off stagnation, and, about a thousand days later, they woke up having made that change with as much success. A total tour de force: They solved a fundamental problem while simultaneously insulating themselves from most of the secondary problems that seem to inevitably arise with such fundamental solutions. The Spurs had (in ecologist Wendell Berry's terms) solved for pattern successfully. And, as this post-season dawned, the reputation had finally caught up to the reality and the Spurs had established their offensive brilliance undeniably, culminating in a dominant 20-game winning streak.

It felt like learning, just to watch. And maybe we really did learn something, after all of that. All signs -- save for some inauspicious 12-minute sandbagging borne of supreme confidence now and again -- seemed to speak with one voice: that they were probably going to get yet another title. This postseason, to continue the auspicious trend, many of the Spurs' other contenders fell to injury or the mires of lesser vision.

So, as the Spurs' greatness reached its zenith in a massive Game 3 comeback against the Clippers, thoughts moved to their biggest remaining concern: The Oklahoma City Thunder. In the Thunder you have a team that literally and figuratively came out of nowhere over the last few years. But, of course, the Thunder was not a team to tread lightly on: in about half a decade the team had gone from a troubled, owner-neglected (albeit fan-beloved) franchise in Seattle whose better days had passed to a team that was instantaneously on the Spurs' level as a similar model of organization, team culture, personnel, and intelligence. Not by coincidence, many of the Thunder's key personnel actually had come through the Spurs in the early stages of their dynasty, most notably Thunder GM Sam Presti.

And so it went that with these two teams and the values they organizationally represented, only one glaring difference (besides athleticism) presented itself. Yes, that's right: the Thunder organization was built in the fresh ashes of a great and legendary crime of sports fresh in everyone's minds for which their current owner was primarily responsible. Great twist, right? I won't rehash the whole Sonicsgate ordeal (and I'm deliberately excising the word "steal" from this piece), but for posterity, the relocation to Oklahoma City by the ownership group was one of those things that almost no one is defending, but that plenty of people are explaining, if you get what I'm saying.

The movement of the Seattle SuperSonics franchise to the fine city of OKC certainly wasn't uniformly negative (after all, relocation from one fine fan base to another is kind of a zero-sum interaction). But the whole sordid affiar of relocation raised so many ugly economic, social, and ethical questions about the provincial nature of sports (especially of the NBA) in a sometimes-capitalist society where, oh, by the way, you can ask for your host city's taxpayers to build you an arena and successfully carry out a threat to leave if not. The rent-seeking alone... Anyway, my lasting impression of the move is of a cosmic dollop of unfairness that is indefensible if you have even the slightest inclination towards class, sentiment, and the fan experience. The subject is still sore with swaths of fans, and rightfully so. But just to summarize: The Thunder were built on a legendary crime of sports.

On with the series: the Spurs held their home court for two games with characteristic dominance, and the Thunder appeared to be a team of the future, for now. After two games (one close but with a comeback, the second one anything but close), the Spurs looked to have a strong case for one final extension of their great dynasty, an extension that in one stroke would have validated not only all of their organizational virtues but their ability to turn these organizational virtues into an era-defining, historically-untouchable team, something that had yet eluded them. People have the remarkable ability to misunderstand the greatness right in front of them when they have any sort of way to avoid it, and only Jordan-level pathology is enough to finally and permanently break the public's will. The Spurs had never quite been as unsubtle as Jordan or his Bulls. But this season, the Spurs had finally reached the cusp of that kind of greatness.

But instead they lost in six to the Thunder.

Here's the comedy: The narratives of sports tend to be constructed precisely on differences in process being responsible for differences in outcome. So we focus on the differences between the teams and ignore the similiarties as memory fades. As noted, the similarities between the teams are so immense and numerous they're practically defining in scope. Both teams possess uncanny levels of intelligence and effort and luck and success. That's basically the whole franchise right there, no? The fact that these two franchises are meeting is an incredible story by itself, considering the ultimate rarity of such teams in the history of the league. By all rights, this should be the only story, with the victors celebrated for taking advantage of their opportunity in their own unique way and the losers celebrated for setting themselves on the right path to glory and giving a good go of it. But because the two teams have this key difference of a massive sports crime and little else, their areas of greatness precisely cancel each other out in the logic of sports and the main takeaway, the main difference that fans may get from all of this is simply that athleticism and relocating teams in the sketchiest possible way can end up winning out, and that good management and luck for a few years can completely cancel out the horrible karma and cosmic unfairness of something to the extent of the sordid Sonicsgate affair.

So there it is: From the most virtuous premise imaginable (with one wrinkle) comes the most sordid, butchered takeaway imaginable, that one ugly wrinkle subsuming the whole face. It's madness, but we also recognize that it's our madness: this is how competitive logic has to function. The logic of sports demands that when two identical twins fight to the death, the one that survives must have had something extra, and not just the benefit of luck. Sample size an issue? Okay, give them seven fights to the death - first to four wins. You don't look at your opponent as fundamentally similar to yourself when they beat you by a tenth of a second in the 100-meter dash. No, you look at the things that differentiate the two of you, because something had to account for that perfect quaver on the margin, even if you end up blaming the wind.

That Sonicsgate is at the heart of the narrative in the Thunder's victory over the Spurs won't be how GMs see it going into next season (one would hope!), but that may be the ultimate takeaway for many fans, just as the ultimate takeaway of the 2007 Suns-Spurs series was another act of apparent cosmic wrongness as the outcome-determining event (the Horry hip check; iconic albeit a billion times less wrong than Sonicsgate), that time on the Spurs' end. So there it is: we sit down to tell the story and the first thing we have to explain is how the victorious heroes started out in Seattle. And altogether that's high comedy, even though I'm not exactly laughing about it -- Chekhov might be.

• • •

This legitimizing of a terrible sports crime might be the narrative takeaway of sports logic, and it has some appeal, anyway. Plenty of Spurs fans and Sonics fans still licking their wounds could surely be forgiven for tapping into that well for a long while. But then maybe when that long while is over, we can look again and realize that for us, this is all an elaborate, merciful rationalization to explain how a team of destiny was fairly taken from us - without such mercy - by another team of destiny. After all, we have to live with this loss without letting it define our experience as a fan. We have to grieve without becoming the object of grief. Chekhov's settings are littered with remarkable characters forever held back by their grieving fixation on some unfortunate part of reality. But we're different, friends. We can and will find a way to move on. We have that power. So let's start over with the narrative. Let's flip the script.

First and foremost, we fans (not just of the Spurs, but of basketball in general) have imprinted on us memories of a wonderful season by the Spurs, filled almost without exception with brilliant basketball. I once described the Spurs' renaissance to a friend at one point as "better than fiction." And I meant it. The Spurs rolled through every opponent, testifying to the heights of which team basketball is capable. The quotes about the Russell Celtics and the '78 Blazers and the '86 Celtics and the Showtime Lakers seemed totally applicable to a team right before our eyes. It was truly amazing stuff.

Then fifty days were up, the 20-game streak ended, and four consecutive losses later, the season abruptly ended, disastrously. In the Thunder series, the Spurs played their hardest and they might've even been the better team over the course of the series. But even as the Spurs under-performed from transcendent to excellent, the Thunder certainly took advantage and over-performed from excellent to transcendent (and if Game 1 of the Finals is any indication, they're still on that plateau). To their credit, Oklahoma City figured out some facsimile of the Spurs' system on offense, including, yes, that pin-down play of legend and nightmare. The Thunder - thanks in great measure to Thabo Sefolosha's tenacity and to Kevin Durant's development as a defensive wing - found a way to stifle the Spurs offense just enough to outscore them with their own great offense. I turned the broadcast off when they interviewed Clay Bennett after Game 6, not because I'm biased, but because it's simply not his victory and I simply couldn't acknowledge otherwise. And I couldn't stomach seeing that guy's face.

And that's the end of it, the whole story of the Spurs' rise and collapse, without fixations or narratives. It's not exactly how I feel about it, but it's as close to the truth as I'm going to get as a fan. Feel better? Me neither. I really wish they'd won. But it's a start.

And so we turn from misery to coping. The takeaway. Remembering without having to experience, learning without having to dwell. Here's mine: Besides the great basketball, the Spurs showed us in long-form how you make an about-face in your direction as an organization over several years without losing face or admitting defeat, by mixing the proven and the unproven in a slurry of potency and intelligence, relentlessly culling and thoughtfully tending, every day, every detail. That's worth remembering, and, along with the unique players that made up that slurry and the coach, it's a lot of what I'll remember.

And that's about it. While I'd love to say that what you get from something like this loss is what you've decided to take from your experience with the team, I just don't know if that's true: After all, I was there. I know what I saw. I appreciated every moment, really. And as for the Spurs: They held no illusions or hubris about who they were and so had none to lose. No one got any lessons out of the Spurs' defeat and no one gained or lost any validation to anyone that was paying attention. It was just an jolting, arbitrary absurdity that unpleasantly ended an otherwise pleasant couple of months.

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Most of this week, we'll be ceding the floor to our resident Dewey and allowing him to examine NBA storylines through the vise of the first piece in the series, Chekhov's Compassionate Comedy of the NBA. In today's Part II, Alex will examine the complex and Chekhovian narratives surrounding one LeBron James.

To get you up to speed as quickly as possible: In Part I, I gave an overview of Chekhov's life and works, specifically his dual-author persona as both compassionate storyteller and surgical comedian. I used this duality to get at a description of Chekhovian comedy, which blends compassion and absurdity in equal measure to give us an impressionistic case history of its characters, a prognosis, and by-and-large an open ending plot-wise from which we can draw our own conclusions. Then I stated that - on just about every imaginable level - the NBA with its absurd narratives is more like a Chekhovian comedy than a Shakespearean comedy or tragedy. I'd like to expand on this statement by taking on some prominent narratives. Today: LeBron James.

• • •

LeBron James comes to mind immediately as an instructive case. In my opinion and in the general opinion of basketball fans, James is the most interesting, polarizing player in the sport -- and almost certainly the best and most athletic player in the world right now. He is interesting for so many reasons: it starts with his athletic gifts that allow him to express himself with seemingly second-order reasoning; that is, LeBron is so transcendent with his athleticism that he may as well be a human in a game of arbitrarily complex robots. His actions on the court - unlike the "efficient," "smart," and "creative" labels we generally reserve for lesser mortals - casually get sophisticated labels like "ironic," "enigmatic," "uncategorizable," "witty," "disappointing," "astonishing," and "brilliant."

And that's not the half of it: his narrative arc itself - starting some time around his discovery as a teenager and ending with his death or the death of civilization, whichever comes first - feels big and higher-order, like we're telling the story of an entire, second species through its archetype and only member LeBron. His narratives are simultaneously so alien, so familiar, and so overwhelming that we've reached a surreal stage where LeBron can do something fantastic for an entire game with his season on the line (like Game 6 against the Celtics), and the inertia of so much prior spectacle around him (like that other Game 6 against the Celtics) will immediately and ridiculously wash over the accomplishment, deconstructing and subsuming -- or even forgetting -- the latest gem. Our culture's reaction is something like an amoeba eating random chunks of nutrients, always growing, always moving through space, always changing to reflect back on all of us. It's like watching history in both its infinite malleability and its endless path-dependence. That amoeba was going to eat a Game 6 in some form, come hell or high water.

And then there's "The Decision."

• • •

Chekhov shows us a large cherry orchard into which a woman (now on hard times, but from aristocratic roots) pours all of her sentiment and pain and nostalgia, and precisely because of this sentiment and nostalgia never addresses the simple business affairs of the orchard's estate, and so allows her childhood orchard (and her childhood estate) to be bought and sold pitilessly to a former peasant with none of this sentiment or nostalgia. And yes, her story taken together is heartwrenching, Chekhov calls it a comedy, and he's right. LeBron showed us a twisted inversion of "The Cherry Orchard" two Julys ago. Even though "The Decision" was easily one of the more dramatic moments in American sports history (with a whole lot tangible and intangible hanging in the balance), it was filled with dark comedy: Even beyond LeBron and Wade's infamously facetious "make your pitch, guys" tour of various teams in the week prior, the program itself had LeBron wearing a pink, ridiculous shirt, talking about doing what was best for him (Really, LeBron? I thought I was watching "The Sacrifice"!), and treating it like those old "Fact or Fiction" shows on Fox or those "trailers that will appear sometime during this program" where you needed to wait to the end to get the answer.

The unfathomable amount of dramatic irony, extended to comic proportions, came from the fact that he and his handlers were apparently the only people on Earth that did not understand that he just needed to treat it like a solemn, respectful parting of ways. If he had simply gone up there with a straightforward case to the American public about his decision, then all would've been quickly forgiven (if there were, indeed, anything to forgive), and no one (other than a few Cleveland fans that [fairly] bought into his "hometown hero" approach) would have held it against him. To top it all off, someone decided to donate all the proceeds to charity, as if someone knew what would happen and exercised damage control but was powerless to stop the spectacle.

But for his ignorance of the fan's mindset LeBron was punished, again, with comic and unreasonable severity by those same fans: his wording in that program and in the ensuing celebration have launched a million seedy and bitterly ironic comic take-offs, and I don't know that any of the responses came close to the sheer comedy of the original telecast itself. Jokes and narratives that hit home regarding "The Decision" seemed largely to recreate it in its surreal splendor and to help us wrap our minds around the spectacle's enormity. This is all high comedy, and even if we can't fully muster a laugh ourselves, the gods with their infinite time and trademark British appreciation for irony are finding this all quite amusing. Do I even have to add Dwight Howard's situation? "The guy who tried to make everyone happy in small ways but missed the big picture and thereby cast himself as a villain." It's straight out of a Christopher Nolan "Batman" film. Only it's hilarious. That one off-cuff interview could practically stand in as the definition of "dramatic irony" in a freshmen English course, and it came out of nowhere.

"But, Alex," you might say, "this is just the spectacle inherent in the business end of things. It's one guy, making himself look foolish. Of course there's comedy in the embarrassing spectacle. Talk about the basketball. Life is earnest, life is real, and the grave is not its goal!" I'd agree... except that the spectacle simply doesn't end there: even LeBron's purest basketball narrative, taken completely on its own terms, is never actually going to have a culmination and instead will fester in comedic (but compassionate, you understand) ambiguity until the end of his career. Let's be real: What really happens when he finally gets that first ring? Does all the noise against him stop? Do you think LeBron's going to stop going for rings, or that LeBron will stop having those completely absurd and inexplicable gear shifts that have maddeningly defined him and simply win rings without conscience for a decade barring injury? And do you really think his first ring will retroactively validate everything that came before, or that his failure to get a ring thus far has retroactively poisoned that game against Detroit? Perhaps. Or maybe Kobe is still going to be Kobe, flaws and all, and LeBron then is going to be LeBron now, flaws and all.

Flaws and all, these players are who they are and, like us, they change incrementally through conflict and feedback. I think NBA history tells this story mostly without exception. There is no light switch, just a constant grind for improvement and (generally speaking) a much faster change in scenery that comes with aging and roster churn. There's no end, no culmination in that process, no enlightenment, and, if there is, it wears off just as quickly with the struggles of age and injury, and soon the perfectly-validated champion is a goat and a second banana six years later for honestly marginal differences in approach. I see you, Dwyane. No, LeBron's long, unfathomable journey is not going to end with that first ring, and most of the change will be in ourselves, pretending like he totally changed his approach instead of finally finding four reasonably favorable matchups and a suitable supporting cast.

• • •

Like the multiple loops in that sick hip-hop instrumental you like so much, Chekhov's characters in "Uncle Vanya" are sitting in the exact same spot at the end of the play as they were in the beginning, with the characters that had appeared during the play having disappeared summarily, with only a tearful, whispered testimony to tell us that something has changed over the course of the play. Then it's back to endless, relentless, thankless inventorying for a dying estate. That's far closer to the narrative of an aging player looking for a ring than any sort of Hero's Journey.

Michael Jordan didn't go home after the legendary win in 1998 and just decide to stop being pathologically competitive. If you challenged him to billiards the next day, he'd probably take you up on that, and maybe you'd want to put your money where your mouth is. Tim Duncan didn't learn to defer these last few years so much as he'd always known how to defer to his coach and his management and his role players while he built his teams up socially and on the court. Now he's just deferring a little more on the court. Dirk took over last season not because he figured something out about toughness or pressure, but because Dirk has been taking over games since 2002, and the Mavericks finally got a great defensive center and an unstoppable play to help him put it all together for a title run. For Kevin Garnett, the drive never stopped when he won, he just wanted to win again and again, to increasing and increasingly brilliant futility. (And bark like a dog, too.)

All these players enter the stage from unknown lands and exit to unknown experiences, their experiences mostly centered on building working relationships and managing and understanding stage fright in its full psychophysical generality, and zone defenses from time to time. They fight for our entertainment and dollars for 15 years, change with the flow of eras and surrounding circumstances, develop with us, and then you wake up one day and they've retired, gone to China, or died. There is no third act to these players. There is no first act. Or, more precisely, the first act is always on the sleeve, the third act on the back of the neck. If you could draw it you'd see Chekhov's gun, semiautomatic with fifty bullets a day in the clip, one hundred reloads a year. The trigger is always there in the adrenal gland, always glad to be pulled by the drama to take us from Act One to Act Three in an always-already instant of impressionistic glory and humanity.

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Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov is one of the greatest dramatists to ever live. Born in 1860, Chekhov worked as a clerk in his father's store, absorbing stories and conversations from every segment of Russian culture. By the age of 20, the young medical student had established that he possessed all he necessary writer's talents: the gift of gab, an eye for detail, an ear for narrative, and a heart for compassion. A prolific author of tiny, clever humor pieces at first, Chekhov (on the advice of a noted writer of the time) began soon to focus more on quality over quantity. His stories grew organically into longer and more elaborate works until the day he died -- even his increasingly-less-frequent short stories became better, more potent, and ever more masterful in their craft. And by the end, the depth of his character studies required plays and novellas primarily. By the time he was struck down by a long bout of tuberculosis at the age of 44, Chekhov had given us an unfathomably long trail of personal letters, stories, and plays containing the framework for much of 20th century theater and short fiction.

In his most famous play "Uncle Vanya," Chekhov shows us Dr. Astrov, a compassionate and humanitarian doctor that knows no rest and whose only spare moments are consumed by an earnest attempt to preserve the forests of Russia for the people 100 years hence. Astrov harshly criticizes the other characters in the play as layabouts with a demon of destruction inside themselves that threaten one another's souls as surely as civilization threatens the forests. Dr. Astrov is basically Chekhov in all these senses. Get this: Chekhov was a fully-trained medical doctor that (as his prime as a writer was beginning) actually took an extended trip to the distant Sakhalin penal colony in the far east of Russia -- regions you'd only know from Risk -- to take a freaking __census_.___ This is Jordan-on-the-White-Sox stuff, except if Jordan were instead going to Pakistan to play cricket because he wanted to find a way to humanely apply an economics degree from UNC. Soon after this (by all accounts arduous and sorrowful) adventure into possibly the most miserable region of Russia, Chekhov went on to become a great and compassionate landlord in the waning years of his life.

Far from the philosophical long-form of his contemporaries Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Chekhov wrote impressionistic stories about all classes and situations in Russian life. This was no accident: His universal treatment of human nature was deliberate, for it allowed Chekhov's characters, almost from the outset of his career, to speak in his tender humanitarian voice without pretense or prejudice. An imperfect healer of his character's conflicts, Chekhov could put the most soothing, noble words in the mouths of his idealists, even as these characters were bound to struggle to live up to their ideals. From peasants yearning for sustenance to aristocrats in a dying estate to the parties to a love affair clinging to a desperate hope, Chekhov's characters successfully testified to their hopes and failings.

Thus was Chekhov's compassion manifested in his life and works.

• • •

On the other side of things we have Chekhov the brilliant satirist, rational doctor, thinker, and comedian. With the clinical touch of a doctor, Chekhov would - at the end of a dramatic arc - take all of the facts of a character together and pronounce not a final judgment but an autopsy or (most frequently) a prognosis. Allergic to hypocrisy, for example, Chekhov took it upon himself to relentlessly mock the false intellectuals of the poshlust, an infamous class of Russian philistines. Dr. Chekhov had a surgeon's toolkit of sharp, biting irony: Remember the Chekhov-like Dr. Astrov from "Uncle Vanya"? For all his love of humanity 100 years hence, he couldn't recognize present love, lust, or respect towards himself that his deeds and vision had accorded him, as many awkward scenes surely demonstrate. And at the end of the day, Astrov ironically loves instead a woman that could never reciprocate that love within the confines of society and that temporarily mires Astrov in the same demons of destruction he criticizes so harshly.

Usually the characters survive their ordeal to receive his prognosis, for Chekhov loves an open ending in plot terms (in an extreme example, the final paragraph of his most famous short story ends with a look to the"long, long road before" his characters). Unlike Shakespeare, who reveled in the bloodbath of a star-crossed tragedy or a grand wedding in the third act of a comedy, Chekhov simply has his infamous first-act gun (though usually it was subtler than a gun) go off in the third as the exposition's conflict come to a climax and then to some resolution. Simple as writer's pie. And there is no grand epic of a tragic arc, even in the longest pieces. Like Hugh Laurie's Dr. House, the histories and the likely futures of his patients of the soul come up through exploration of the present, and mostly not the other way around. Chekhov doesn't (and doesn't want to) explore their every thought or relation so much as he wants to show us a case study and what we can learn from it. For all of Chekhov's compassion, he is still a surgeon, and there are times when all good surgeons must put away sentiment utterly in favor of the cold, logical, medical realities of their patients.

And yet, even though the stories that Chekhov tells have relatively few (but oh, how poignant) instances of bloodshed and the much more understated and impressionistic plots, I'd say that most of Chekhov's characters have dramatic arcs that encompass great suffering and inevitability and unrealized hopes, all of it rather befitting tragedy. After the early, more jocular stories, you can't go through five Chekhov stories without finding at least five tales of pain, disappointment, loss, and renewals that fail to materialize (even if those are not the only five tales you'll find).

Now, all that said, Chekhov often refers in the manuscripts of the saddest plays to the "comedy" he is writing. He's not just cruelly toying with us: Almost every character in a Chekhov play like "Uncle Vanya" or "The Cherry Orchard" bears some great burden of sadness, and the sadness is explored in depth. But, on the same token, so much of that very sadness is self-inflicted, so many of the reactions are farcical or absurd, and so many ways in which the saddest stories play out are filled with comic irony that you could easily find laughs; that is, if the stories didn't linger so darn long. "Annie Hall," the famed film from Woody Allen, is instructive: Despite its great sense of humor (so many great scenes and lines), "Annie Hall" is ultimately a sad, gloomy tale of a neurotic-but-loving relationship and then the long divorce that follows. In its dramatic moments, the film is almost impossible to bear if you have any empathy at all. Geez; it's like that episode from "Futurama" where that dog dies (spoiler), except extended into a movie with two people and no one actually dies. That said, I don't hesitate for a moment to call "Annie Hall" a comedy, given all of its elaborately realized anecdotes, situational humor and Allen's signature approach to wit and his humorous observations. It's just very honest, raw comedy that doesn't always allow you to laugh along with it.

"Annie Hall" is a romantic comedy and delves into the honest truths about relationships. Chekhov writes compassionate comedies that are willing to delve into the honest truth about human nature and suffering.

• • •

(via Charles Trainor Jr, MiamiHerald.com)

I generally see the NBA in its narratives - even with its grand, alpha-dog swaths of epic drama, even with its thrills of victory and agonies of defeat, even with its archetypal runs of dominance by the best players and teams - more as an understated, compassionate Chekhovian comedy than a grandiose and clearly demarcated Shakespearean comedy or tragedy. The NBA as a sport may have the overtures of a grand Shakespearean universe with eternal culminations and grand proclamations, but in practice, in the everyday fan experience, the NBA has far more to do with the spectacles, the self-deconstructing narratives, the random quirks of players and the stylistic explorations of twenty-four players over a hundred possessions.

An NBA game, for all its billing, often comes out to be more like a sketchy, stubbled battle of the bands than a cosmic symphony of athletic excellence. For every Heat-Thunder masterwork, there's a terrible regular season imperfection like this year's 3OT Heat-Hawks game. And sometimes, the game is both! Filled with wacky characters often from unique backgrounds and with so many poignant backstories, with players that could fill ten volumes of quotebooks if you know the right questions to ask, the NBA certainly passes the "laugh test" for farcical comedy (groan). And as for the rest? Well - as we'll see in Part II - Chekhov's more awkward, verge-of-tragedy comedy is central to my impression that the grand drama of the league is tempered by absurdity even at its supposedly most serious moments.

Because this post is a 4000 word epic and virtually impossible to read in one sitting... see Part II tomorrow!

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