Here's the run, in my eyes. On game nights, I felt that I was vicariously solving some great problem through my Spurs. Every night, they solved some advanced geometry problem with methods the world has never seen. In the mornings, I'd get the glorious feeling of stillness and placidity that accompanies triumph. My favorite team has been fun, likable, and virtuous, at least in my view. I've been quite pleased with what this team has offered up in the previous 20 games. I don't know if any fan of the sport wouldn't be pleased with a run like this.

It probably helps that at the same time this was going on I - a mostly sedentary individual that has always seemed just a bit depressed and cynical and vaguely way-too-reserved - lost something like 25 pounds during the winning streak and developed hitherto unexplored levels of maturity and self-confidence, as well as the vague overtones of a workout routine. The Spurs have reinvented basketball less than I've reinvented my life, and that might not be obvious just talking to me. This blog is as successful as it has ever been, which probably has at least something to do with my editorial mind being as sharp and direct as ever. And I know as much as I ever have about basketball, because for me every other night has been a clinic in the sport, not just as it is today but as it shall be 5 years hence in some optimal future. Most of all, I finally have some mental picture of the end, the culmination, of all my recent work and struggles.

The timing is coincidental, of course. But it's also uncanny: I can't deny that the streak probably helped.

• • •

Or maybe it hasn't helped at all. Perhaps it was a prelude to darkness.

Perhaps the Spurs are just building up my confidence only to unkindly tear it away in the span of one defining week, succumbing to a collapse previously unseen in basketball history. The Thunder are a great team, and last night they found another gear. The tenacity we saw last night retroactively justifies every "promising young team" label previously affixed to them. Maybe the Spurs shall lose, and I with them, these present delusions of efficiency differential and emotional honesty to be unkindly discarded into a bin of reminiscence labeled "Worst Possible Match-Up, or that's what you can tell yourself" on the fringe of the quicksand pit.

But you know what? Although it may not last, I'll always remember Tim Duncan quietly rising up the blocks list. Loudly punctuating the blocks with vision and spryness in his forays to the rim, forays that we'd thought had left this land. There's some magic still, in that old knee brace.

Although it may not last, I'll always remember Manu finding the exact moment of leverage when his team needed a throwback. On the margin, a crucial defeat averted. His hammering -- constant, pounding -- of that margin with the precision of a sculptor.

Although it may not last, I'll always remember Danny Green and Kawhi Leonard -- players inexplicably discarded by the decision-makers of the league until the interest of the Spurs -- burying the Jazz almost singlehandedly in a 20-0 run as their battle-tested brothers in arms watched with glee.

This team is not forever, yet. After all, last night hinted at a dark possibility. They can be, but they aren't yet there. This team is mortal -- they bleed, too. To make presumptions, as a fan, is to be taken by surprised and bleed right with them. But even as they lie, bleeding in the corner like a boxer who wasn't expecting the perfect counter, I can't focus on that right now. I can only focus on what I know, and the things about this team I know I'll never forget. Tiago taking over the fourth, the senseless carving-up of the weaker teams (28 in total), the faint praise for Richard Jefferson, the backhanded compliments everyone gave Stephen Jackson, the passing and drives of Boris Diaw, the ridiculous enthusiasm of Patty Mills, Matt Bonner receiving a transdimensional warning from 45 light-years away and calling up to the president without hesitation, Gary Neal's limited handle and limitless self-confidence. S-Jax - swiftly upon return - guarding Dirk as it was written and as it shall be done.

• • •

That was the month (or two, or three) that was. Learning the early offensive sets, seeing that "sometimes it's a miracle" (as Popovich said of the offense after Game 2), the aura of success, trying desperately to write about it but knowing I'm simply too close and vulnerable to it to express myself, recalculating legacies, becoming superstitious, judging the Spurs fans that predicted the Spurs in 4 and incurred the wrath of the Basketball Gods, watching every game. It was surreal and awesome at every turn, in something like equal measure. In parallel came my personal journey: cooking low-calorie masterpieces in eternal taste and economy at the half, watching in shock as the numbers on the scale dropped past even my expectations, finally running that entire path without stopping, having my concerns change from anxious fixations and strange abstractions to plans and to what has precedent, reading every blog post I could possibly find, and finally... discovering that I could have the ideals I'd imagined myself having when I wrote things nine months ago in anticipation of a better life.

Things seemed to come full circle. And after the bags were unpacked, I simply relaxed and enjoyed as I watched Tony Parker finally become a Spur in his unimpeachable, inarguable way. His way and theirs did not so much as align as fuse in a hundred imperceptible gradations. The Front Office -- hallowed be thy name -- and its inscrutable brilliance to solve simple problems in simple ways, and Tony's simplistic "I will take shots close to the basket and eat baguettes all day" style. They finally meshed. Good. Took them long enough.

And as I fully realize the temporary, transient permanence of this team (especially if we lose that crucial Game 4)? Yeah, I'll always remember the punctuating games, the losses that started and ended the streak and perhaps the run: The Lakers doing their dynasty act for what may very well be the last time, on the broad back of Andrew Bynum's 30 boards, and being unkindly swept twice thereafter by the same team, renewed. And then the Thunder, alchemizing their youthful enthusiasm and love-of-game and desperation into something else: by dipping uncertainly into adolescent spasms of swagger and differentiation before inevitably emerged a mature, vicious tenacity that the Spurs have not yet countered. I don't know if they'll find a way. I know they've found ways so many times before. But maybe they won't this time. And that would hurt. If that's so, then I guess I'll remember and sigh at these punctuating games (and perhaps the ultimate result of the season). I'll learn to know this present uneasiness as a deeper shade of melancholy in retrospect.

But I won't despair in some ultimate sense if all the apparent alignments pointing to a title turn out to be a mirage. For in several years, barring unkind fortune to poison the memories, I'll remember this time with a nostalgia I'll know is not simply a mild form of depression, as the aphorism goes. After all, I know that it's quite possible that (as Eliot puts it) these are but the fragments that I've shored against my ruins. But I also know that even if it's true, even with the pain of separation from this time that awaits me, those ruins far hence will not be those of Ozymandias. And without arrogance or bragging, I will know that at least once, as you stand at the ruins, all the fragments you see before you once filled out a mosaic that fit perfectly together in my head, one complete picture of placid confidence as I stood on some balcony, the ocean stretching out before me, yawning with a recent awakening.

The news broke yesterday. Next week, the Orlando Magic plan to interview Shaquille O'Neal to fill the recently vacated office of ex-General Manager Otis Smith. I don't remember where I was when I heard the news, but I assume I was home. Because I distinctly remember laughing far louder than would've been called for at work. As I thought about it a bit more, though, it began to make more sense. If the Magic are indeed becoming comfortable with a post-Dwight world, it's worth noting that moving on would (necessarily) cement Shaq's status as the greatest player in franchise history for at least 6 or 7 more years. The franchise has had a relatively awful relationship with Shaq since he left. Starting a dialogue through an interview and starting a back-and-forth to bring your greatest player back into the fold isn't the worst idea, from a PR perspective. Certainly, a GM interview with a man that would almost certainly be one of the worst GMs in the league is a weird way to go about it.

But from that standpoint, it makes a lot of sense. After all -- if they do retire his number (which I believe they will), wouldn't it be pretty awkward if Shaq and the Orlando management still had their awkward, angry back-and-forth going? Obviously, if they hire him as GM, we can resume making fun of them. I don't think that's particularly likely, though, given Shaq's relatively lacking abilities as a talent evaluator or as a communicator. We'll see. In any event, realizing that Shaq's GM interview was best understood as a way to mend the fences with a player quite important to the franchise history, I decided to think up a few other people the Magic could tap if they wanted to continue to make amends to all they've wronged. In that spirit, I was going to title this column "three sleeper candidates"... until I realized that describing these brilliant choices as sleepers would simply undersell them. People aren't just sleeping on these guys, they're straight up hibernating on them. Join me, behind the fold.

• • •

CHOICE #1 -- COURTNEY LEE

SIN TO AMEND: Letting him taste title contention his rookie year, then rudely trading him to a dead-end Nets team.

WOULD HE BE A GOOD GM, THOUGH?: ... you know, maybe not as bad as you'd think. Lee is currently 26 years old. Believe it or not, the youngest General Manager in the history of the NBA was hired at age 28, and still manages a team. Who is it? Answer to the trivia question may surprise you: Rick Sund, GM of the Atlanta Hawks. He was first hired as a GM by the 1979 Dallas Mavericks, at the age of 28 -- he had several seasons of abject failure before finally putting together a half-competent Mavericks team in the late 80s that, unfortunately, got their hearts brutally torn out in a tough 7 game series by the Showtime Lakers. Sund hasn't been a fantastic wunderkind of a GM or anything close, but other than Joe Johnson's contract, he hasn't made THAT many terrible decisions. Lee could be similar to that. In the case of Lee, the Magic could do worse. He does have his degree, having stayed four years at Western Kentucky to get a bachelors in sociology with a minor in criminology. Which... okay, that isn't very relevant to being a GM, but since when did your degree matter in the real world? He was a fan favorite in his tenure in Orlando, and there are STILL some Magic fans who wish he hadn't been traded away. Could be some good PR.

BIGGEST OBSTACLE: His short NBA.com bio lists his biggest superstition as -- I quote -- "Walking with a group of people and there is a pole, we all need to walk on the same side of the pole. Don’t split the pole." The big problem? The new Amway Arena has many poles. This could be a big problem for Courtney as a general manager -- he'd probably need to get over that superstition right quick. And while working through your superstitions and fears lead to great stories of personal accomplishment, it might be a locker room distraction. And Dwight doesn't like distractions, guys.

• • •

CHOICE #2 -- LEBRON JAMES

SIN TO AMEND: Callously eliminating the best team of LeBron's career in the Eastern Conference Finals.

WOULD HE BE A GOOD GM, THOUGH?: LeBron is a lot of things. "Effective talent evaluator" is, unfortunately, not one of them. After all, this is the guy that wanted Larry Hughes on the Cavs. But let's be fair -- he has a lot of experience in being wooed in free agency by NBA GMs. If he remembers the pitches that made him the most impressed, he might be able to attract free agent talent to Orlando. Maybe. Then again, he never attracted any talent in Cleveland, so maybe he didn't learn anything after all. On the plus side? He's the best player in the sport and by hiring him as a GM the Heat would by definition be removing him as a player in the league, which weakens a division rival. The Magic would finally have a shot at winning the division again!

BIGGEST OBSTACLE: I'm pretty sure he's making more money as a player than he'd make as a GM, unless DeVos decides to simply split his salary half-and-half with LeBron. That's... probably a problem. Also, LeBron could potentially practice with rookies when evaluating who to draft. What happens if one of those rookies dunks on him? Do the Magic ban them from entering the arena? Wouldn't that be kind of a problem? LeBron as GM simply raises too many questions. And not enough answers. Or headbands, if I'm honest.

• • •

CHOICE #3 -- GRANT HILL

SIN TO AMEND: Grant Hill completely fell apart in Orlando, and ruined a HoF career. Come on, Orlando. Get it together.

WOULD HE BE A GOOD GM, THOUGH?: This may sound crazy, but honestly? I think he'd probably be a pretty good GM. Grant Hill's degree isn't exactly relevant to basketball (History with a minor in Political Science), but he's a very cerebral player whose time in the league has given him a lot of great relationships and experience working with players. He's been on teams that contended for titles, and teams that didn't -- he's got to have some sense by now of which players helped and which players hurt. More importantly, though, he played the last several years in Phoenix on the other end of their brilliant medical staff. Don't you think, as a GM, Hill would try to bring that competitive advantage wherever he went? He knows how brilliant the Phoenix staff was. Combine that with 17 years of NBA experience, crazy talent, and the intelligence to put it all together? He might not be great, but he certainly wouldn't be worse than Otis. Right? Right???

BIGGEST OBSTACLE: Oh, wait. He went to Duke? Gross!

• • •

That's all for today. Join us tomorrow as I write an Outlet piece about how much of a bloody idiot I was to actually pick the Pacers in the Heat series. Seriously, what was I thinking? Anyway. Should be a blast.

Today, Chris Ballard dropped one of the greatest profiles I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Twenty-one facts and anecdotes about one Timothy Theodore Duncan, written in Ballard's incomparable form. Beyond Joe Posnanski, I'm not sure there's a man in the business right now with writing as joyous as Ballard's. I don't mean that lightly. The profile stirred a lot of long-standing pride and wonder I've had at Duncan's career. Which got me thinking. In this post, I'll share a perspective you might not be expecting from a Spurs fan. I love Tim Duncan. But after years of sniping at friends for their incomprehensible loathing of Tim's game, I've realized that in my dismay over our difference in opinion, I've been derelict in the imitation of the ideal I defend. At this point, I know where I stand. I know where they stand. I love Tim Duncan -- as a person, as a baller, and as an institution. Many don't like him, or don't care, or find him boring. And at this point? I really couldn't care less if they -- or you -- give a damn.

• • •

Look. I'll be straight with you. Put my bias on the table, once and for all. Tim Duncan is my favorite player. Not simply in the game today, not simply on the Spurs. I've never rooted for a player's success or a player's legacy the way I've rooted for Duncan. I've gotten into an untold number of arguments over where Duncan stands historically. Yes, readers. I think he's the best player of the last decade. Yes, I think he's better than Kobe, and one of the 7 best players to ever play the game. Yes, I realize my opinion (while backed up by statistics, intuition, and results) is remarkably subjective and remarkably skewed. If there's one person in the world I'd stretch my data to accommodate, it's probably Duncan.

But there's something you learn growing up. Or, at least, attempt to learn. Not everyone agrees with you. Perspectives, experiences, and the changing cauldron of perception lead everyone to wildly differing views on... well... pretty much everything. I wasn't always okay with it. Nobody is. Tell me, who here hasn't gotten embroiled in a feckless political debate only to realize 30 minutes too late that your guiding principles are completely different? Who hasn't argued in favor of their favorite sports team to a fan of your greatest rival (to, obviously, no avail)? Who hasn't argued for an issue they feel is a completely done deal, and an open and shut case... only to face a person who is completely and utterly bought in to your opinion's inverse? You get irritated, annoyed, and insistent that you must be right. You call them stupid. You preen and rhetorically claw at their views. You need to argue your case, show them the true way of things. How often does that work out, really?

Realize this. People find the Spurs boring. They've found the Spurs boring for years -- the Spurs have had 15 years to spread their brand to the NBA, and fans simply don't appear to like it very much. Outside of San Antonio, anyway. Because the Spurs have the highest local ratings in the league, and their local TV presence is historically deep -- for ANY team, not just a small market. But outside of San Antonio? No, there are no Duncan jerseys hanging in bars. No Adidas commercials featuring Duncan giving a beluga the high five. Little hype, little fan presence, little love. We as basketball analysts complain, and cry foul. "Watch the games!" we cry. "The crisp passing, the flawless execution -- their offense is sublime! Their defense is beautiful! This team is everything you want to watch!" We pound our fists and cry to the heavens and argue til our faces are beet red. We try in vain to convince our friends and followers that the Spurs aren't boring. That being bored of the Spurs is inherently wrong.

But... why?

I love Tim Duncan. And at this point, I've realized something. It doesn't matter to me whether you do or not. You can find the Spurs boring. I don't. It's a subjective call -- the entire concept of boring depends on what you like to watch. I like beautiful basketball, and value the aesthetics of my team's game. I like watching properly executed offensive sets. I enjoy watching Popovich run his magic. And Duncan, well. I've always thought his defensive dominance is the closest thing to an impressionist painting you can find in the NBA. Watching him move off screens, help off a weak offensive player, front the post -- there's no defensive skill that Duncan couldn't excel in, during his prime, and there wasn't a single player who could consistently outsmart him on the block. Not Shaq, not Dwight, not anyone. As he ages, things fall off -- but the flashes, those moments where Duncan outsmarts his body's age and functions on a higher plane than he should logistically be able to? Those still happen. They're still amazing, and they're still a thing to cherish... to me, at least.

And that's the key. "If you watch basketball like me." Because in the end, there is no platonic ideal for what a fan should value from their team. Many NBAniks would love to think that every fan wants to watch the aesthetically best team. We'd love to think that the quality of the basketball played actually matters to everyone watching. But that's not the case. Never was, and never will be. Fans like what they like. Some like dunks. Some like superstar calls and clutch free throws and disgustingly poor isolations. From an aesthetic perspective -- the one behind fans who run sites with micro-analysis as exacting as the NBA Playbook, or Hardwood Paroxysm, or any of the possession by possession folks at Truehoop -- that may seem absurd. And yes, to some extent, it is. But who are we to say that there's only one right way to watch basketball? Who am I to get mad at you for disagreeing with the way I watch the game? I love basketball because I love the sport. I watch the game to enjoy it, not to lord over other people how without-question superior my manner of watching is to your own. Sometimes, as a Spurs fan, I forget this. I get caught up in the wave of people pounding their fists and yelling at God. "Why don't people understand the Spurs? Why don't people see how beautiful this is? Why don't you appreciate it?"

• • •

As Ballard's piece ends, he asks Duncan why Duncan never lets the public see his lighter side, and the one that his fans have known about all along. Why not let them in and see the kind of man you really are? Don't you care about your legacy? About how people view you? He asks why, and blows it off. "I have no control over that." Ballard says he does, and insists on it. Duncan thinks, ponders, and frowns. "I guess I could. I could be more accessible and be the darling for everybody. I could open up my life and get more endorsements and be out there and be a fan favorite. But why would that help?" A pause. "Why should it?"

And there, in no fewer than four words and a minute of thought, Duncan succinctly realizes and internalizes what Spurs fans and NBA scribes should've realized long ago. Sure. Duncan could show his personality, become more accessible, get more endorsements. The Spurs could play nice to the national media, Pop could tell more jokes, and they could get a few more great commercials in their favor. But none of those things cut to the grain of what Duncan really is -- he's a basketball player, and his on-court style and demeanor would never stray far from the place it's at right now. Ruthless efficiency. Aesthetically strong. Dynamic, strong, powerful. And nothing he says, or shares, is going to change that. If people don't like his game, are they really going to like it all that much more if he spent the time to put a few more bows on it? Would the Spurs be more likeable? Would more people watch?

Appreciate Duncan, if you'd like. I will, forever. If you don't want to? That's OK, too. Because if Duncan hasn't shown enough to make you love him on your own, nothing I say is going to make a damn bit of difference. So as the Spurs continue their "boring", plodding, nationally ignored quest for Duncan's fifth ring, you can think whatever the hell you want. It's subjective. Duncan realizes that nothing he does is really going to change your mind, and he'd be better focused on what actually matters to him. His friends, his family, the game that he loves. At his 1000th game, Tim Duncan was asked how it felt to be at that kind of a milestone. He sighed at the reporter. "I'd rather not be told that. I've played for a long time and I'm getting really old, alright? I'd rather be at my tenth game with a thousand to go." That's Tim Duncan. He doesn't have many games left, and he doesn't really care what you think. Duncan is more focused on enjoying the time he's got left in the game he loves than giving the time of day to those who find him boring. I think that's admirable. And going forward, I'll try to live up to that. Call the Spurs boring, call Duncan a dullard, call Pop a crusty fool. Don't expect me to dissuade you.

Because if you aren't convinced already? Well, there's really no reason for me to try.

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

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

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

You'd think, in our introductory post of the Gothic Ginobili playoff preview series, I'd be talking about the overall composition of playoff defenses and playoff offenses. Something about coaching, perhaps? A look at the matchups at hand. Some interesting statistical tidbits, some oddities that keep us intrigued. A look at how past champions did? Aging metrics? A mournful introduction to a disturbing fictional take on the situation by Alex or Jacob? The possibilities are endless. Must be one of those. ... Well. You'd think. But you'd be wrong.

It's Hornets time, folks.

• • •

The 2012 Hornets were, by all intents and purposes, an abominable group of talent. The 2011 Hornets were pretty poor as well, but they had Chris Paul and David West to smooth over the gaps. If you take the top two players off of a wholly two man offense -- one of them being an MVP-caliber point guard -- you aren't left with all that much beyond a shell of a team and whatever exogenous value the coach can give you. And if you noticed, the Hornets lost their only promising young talent (Eric Gordon) three games into the season. He played less than 10 games this year, and the overall talent level on this Hornets team went from "bad talent" to "oh my god how will they win 10 games" talent. They proceeded to perform the following feats.

• Ended the season with an average point differential of -3.8; despite being tied for the 3rd worst record in the league, the Hornets had a better point differential than six other teams. For clearly bottom-of-the-barrel talent, that's rather impressive.

• They had 10 wins over playoff teams, including a 26 point blowout of the Magic (who had a healthy Dwight Howard), a 13 point road win over a rested Denver Nuggets team, and a 19 point shellacking of the Celtics that really wasn't all that close. At all.

• They pushed the 2012 Spurs -- who took the #1 seed in the Western Conference -- to the final possession of a basketball game twice. They pushed 4 playoff teams to overtime, winning one. In 33 home games, they lost ONLY TWO by over 20 points -- the Hornets rewarded their home crowds. A Hornets season ticket holder who went to every home game saw fewer 20+ blowouts than a Magic season ticket holder, or a Knicks season ticket holder, or a Mavericks season ticket holder.

You can't look at me and tell me that those accomplishments aren't fairly incredible, given their roster.

• • •

Look. The Hornets were gritty, incorrigibly talentless, and all manner of a tough out no matter who they faced. They lost about as much as anyone, in the regular season, and had the occasional game where they looked their talent level. But if the game was important to them or the opportunity arose to make a statement, they made it. They put legitimate scares into half the teams that beat them. They accomplished it all under incomprehensible duress, acting as a franchise with no owner and no guarantee that they'd even be in the same city in two years. If you coasted for a game, Monty pulled you. If you got injured, Monty sat you and made sure you healed. The team was bad, certainly, but it cared about its players.

As we go into this year's playoffs, the 2012 Hornets represent to me the undertones of just about everything you'd want in a playoff sleeper. They embodied the spirit of all great upstart teams. There was never a sense of "oh, phew, this team is finally performing to expected levels" when they had a good game. There was never the ruddy complacency that permeates through a blowout Heat win, or a Lakers win, or a blowout Bobcats loss. That sense that the basketball placed before you was preordained. Expected. Exactly as planned. The Hornets scrapped, clawed, and made clear that they weren't going to succumb to everyone's expectations without a fight. You didn't simply show up and beat the Hornets -- you had to come to play, or they'd make you sweat it out and give your fanbase shivers. "Did you see that? This team almost lost to the second worst team in the league! We're terrible!" Or so they'd say. But this Hornets team, despite the awful record and the incomprehensibly thin talent, was not the second worst team in the league.

I promise that.

• • •

The season's over now. They lost their last game, and I wave my goodbyes to the shiftless 2012 Hornets, and so long for memories more poignant and stirring than anything I had the right to expect. I hope that during the playoffs, we can find ourselves a good pastiche. I hope a coach pulls a 2011 Monty Williams on us and pushes an underdog roster to a height greater than the sum of its parts. I hope Stan Van Gundy inspires the Magic to sweat the Pacers out in 6 tense games, or Doug Collins micromanages his men to push Chicago silly. Like the 2011 Hornets, they probably won't win -- they may not even go 6 games. But a series of close, gritty, grind-it-out ball where the favorite has to count their lucky stars they got a few bounces to keep the score respectable over their unsung rival? That's what I want to see. It's what, to a certain extent, we all want to see.

... You know. As long as the Utah Jazz aren't that team, right?

In 2008, the Boston Celtics won an NBA title. They won it on the backs of three aging all-stars players, an excellent coach, and a killer defensive system. In subsequent years, the surrounding pieces changed, but the team continued to contend far past their star trio's refreshingly crisp salad days of yore into the significantly-more-wilted salad days of today. Entering this year’s playoffs, the Celtics are playing extremely well. They may have one last title run left in them, though it'll certainly take some luck. That said? Very few would honestly say they can see the Celtics keeping their team together next year. They'll have cap room if they give up some of their stars, and it IS a business -- it's unlikely that this year's Boston team returns for another go-around, no matter how successful their swan song.

In 2010, the Miami Heat won an NBA offseason. This too you may have heard about. They were able to keep their home-grown finals MVP and add to that a young and versatile all-star finesse large forward and the reigning two-time MVP -- by most accounts, one of the greatest basketball players on the planet. Like the 2008 Celtics, the 2011 Heat got to the NBA finals in their first year as a dynasty-by-design. Unlike the 2008 Celtics, they didn’t win. They of course have their own advantages, though, not least of which the mysterious allure of the unknown. As everyone’s quick to note, the stars assembled in Miami are significantly younger than the ones that set up shop in Boston. Their time together will be larger than that of the Celtics’ big three, if they care to keep it going. Given that, and the fact thatMiami’s stars are (in a general sense) better basketball players thanBoston’s, wouldn’t one have to expect greater things from their collective? Not necessarily. That may be our expectations, but having seen this team for two years, I’m of the view we’re approaching a full-scale revision of the generally understood “ceiling” of this Miami team. Here's why.

• • •

When the Celtics acquired their big three, the general consensus was that they’d be a dynasty of some import. To these eyes, they succeeded with some caveats. Assuming they break the team up this summer (as I do assume), the Celtics’ Big Three Era will have been a five year dynasty. At all points in those five years, the trio was in at least fringe contention for an NBA title. That’s a relatively successful legacy in the modern NBA, although winning only a single ring will certainly lessen their staying power. All things considered, the Celtics’ reign is more akin to the 2003-2008 Pistons than, say, the 2002-2007 Spurs or the 1999-2004 Lakers. Not necessarily a bad thing -- those Pistons are criminally underrated, and a dynasty doesn’t necessarily mean multiple rings. At least they got one, right?

When the Heat acquired their three, a similar consensus was formed. Danger Will Robinson; a Dynasty is here. Not one, not two… well, maybe two or three, but only at a minimum! The general impression the league had as theMiamitrio joined was the Celtics dynasty on steroids – not just one ring, several were at hand. Here, we had three extremely young and talented players around the same age joining together to win titles. The players were not only younger, they were slightly better – LeBron’s two-time MVP trophies to KG’s single, and two finals appearances already present among the collected stars. If the Celtics could accomplish so much with just five waning years of their stars’ careers, how much could the Heat accomplish? The possibilities were endless, the ceiling too high to comprehend. Until now, anyway.

In this table, I’ve provided the ages, minutes, and games played over the careers of the individual components of each team – the 2011 Heat, the 2008 Celtics, and the theoretical 2013 Heat (assuming, as I do, that despite their current struggles they get out of the east and play as many playoff games next year as they did last year – 21 – with the same minutes distribution). The G/MP columns correspond to the regular season, the PG/PMP columns correspond to the playoffs, and the TG/TMP columns correspond to their total games and minutes of both playoffs and the regular season added together.

Age is a funny thing. At the close of the 2012 season, the trio the Heat will be left with is going to be, rather ironically, closer to the 2008 Celtics than a team of young up-and-comers. LeBron has played more playoff minutes than almost anybody else in the league over the last 7 years, and as such, LeBron’s regular season minutes (already very high) are extremely amplified by his insane playoff minutes. Same with Wade, though he’s starting from a lower base due to his regular injury issues. When the Boston Big Three came together, they were combining three men in their thirties who had played a lot of basketball. The 2013 Heat will combine:

• Chris Bosh, a 28 year old power forward who over his career misses an average of 8 games a season and has played barely 300 fewer minutes than Paul Pierce at the start of the Celtics dynasty – the equivalent of less than 10 games.

• LeBron James, a 28 year old wunderkind who despite his young age has nevertheless played over 32,554 minutes in his career. That’s more than Marcus Camby, Pau Gasol, Tony Parker, and – believe it or not – Chris Webber ever played in their careers. He’s avoided serious injury in his career, and while nobody would PREDICT that it will happen… one has to wonder how long he can go on like this. Of the Celtics’ big three, only Kevin Garnett had played more minutes than LeBron will have played at the start of the 2013 season. And while KG has had his moments, he’s been an injury risk for years. That’s a problem, for this team.

• Dwyane Wade, a 31 year old former Finals MVP whose game is predicated on wild injury-risking drives to the basket and athletic feats of brilliance that – while still necessarily present in his person – are certain to begin decline sometime in the next two or three years, if not sooner. Also, misses about 15 games a season. Also, is a relatively poor shooter – his game is not primed to age like Ray Allen’s, although Heat fans certainly wish it would. I discussed Wade's evolution with age earlier this year in a season preview post that I still think turned out reasonably well. Perhaps worth a read now, if you never got the chance to check it out.

It’s interesting how time works. Two years into the Miami dynasty, we’re already at a bit of a crossroads. Despite the Heat’s struggles this month, I don’t see them losing the East this year. The Celtics don’t have the offense to defeat them, I think, and I certainly don’t think the Bulls (with a gimpy Derrick Rose, of course) are going to be able to muster up the offense to crack the Miami playoff defense either. But assuming that any championship series in an even-conference year is something of a crap shoot (and, quite honestly, I think in the right circumstance this Heat team could be evenly matched by any one of the Thunder, Spurs, or Grizzlies), where does that leave the Heat if they let slip another Finals from their grasp?

• • •

Entering next year, the Heat will be almost exactly where the Celtics were five years ago.

They have their best player and the team core, who has not coincidentally played way more minutes in his career than either of their other two stars. They have their oldest player, who in 5 years may not be a starting-quality guard in the league (as Ray Allen is only on the fringe of one now, despite a much more age-defying game). They have a solid, versatile big man who nevertheless will not provide an eternal defensive anchor behind their two perimeter stars as they fall off. And behind them? They have even less than the Celtics, whose non-Big 3 assets in 2008 weren’t exactly chopped liver. The Celtics had a young and dynamic defensively dominant wing in Tony Allen, three promising young pieces (Kendrick Perkins, Leon Powe, and Rajon Rondo), and the soothing calm of Brian Scalabrine’s tender gaze. The Heat will enter 2013 with just one player outside their big three with particular import or promise in Norris Cole, and beyond that, a roster of flotsam and ring-chasing veterans. Unfortunately for them, they’ll also inherit a more restrictive cap structure that makes adding pieces quite a bit more difficult than it was for the Celtics dynasty. This leaves the Heat in an odd position – having through their actions brought upon themselves the popular expectation of a multiple-title dynasty, they’re approaching a period where the most likely outcome of their partnership is a single ring bookended with many competitive (if not ultimately successful) seasons, perhaps some pocked by injury, but all with the knowledge that their core could've been more if they'd gotten together sooner. If only, if only.

Titles aren't particularly easy things to get. In any sport, but especially in a sport as rigorous as the NBA. Even if the Heat win just a single title, that's still quite an accomplishment. There are few who wish to denigrate the Celtics dynasty because they won just a single ring together, and when it comes time to write the book on the Miami Heat, I doubt there'd be many historians chomping at the bit to lessen their accomplishments. Except, of course, for the key aspect that differentiated the Heat from the Celtics or the Pistons or any other one-title dynasty in the NBA -- I refer, of course, to the Heat's own inflation of their own expectations. The giant party when their trio came together. The crying on court after beating the Celtics. The odd post-game conferences, the unnecessary jabs at the media that fuels them, the unsportsmanlike disregard for their opposition. We don't really fault the Celtics for winning a single title, because while they certainly wanted to compete, the Celtics didn't spend two or three years talking about all the titles they'd win. They reveled in it, and did nothing to counteract the sprawling media machine's over-hype of their team. If they disappoint their arbitrarily large expectations, why did they allow them to be set so damned high in the first place?

In that sense, that's where the Heat went wrong. And where they may -- someday -- find cause for regret. Not in their accomplishments, but in the way they framed them. It's true that a team with a ceiling of the late 2000s Celtics is still a team that’s the envy of 90% of the league. But as we enter this year’s playoffs, it may be time to start revising our personal expectations of the cadre. Not four, not three, not two – if this group wins a single ring together, it may be time to admit that such an outcome would well validate their dynasty as much as the Celtics’ one ring validates them. For fans of schadenfreude (or Cavs fans, like myself), it would still be a hell of a funny situation. And it's quite possible that the Heat's failure to live up to the expectations they set for themselves will color all subsequent historical interpretations of their reign. Flying Death Machine? More like a Flying Disappointment Machine, if you account for all the hype.

But for fans of the game, and the game alone?

Let's just stop expecting to shoot the moon, here. The Heat are the Heat. That's good enough.

EDIT: _Call off the dogs. Matt was able to recover everything after a lot of hard work. We can stop cache-hunting now -- although I have to state that I'm pretty impressed we were able to collect over 525 posts in the email inbox of our cache-dump email account. Excellent crowdsourcing. Sorry it ended up being unnecessary, but had the website been unable to be recovered, it was pretty important that we get things from the cache before the caches expired. Thanks to everyone who was a part of this, and my apologies for anyone who feels it was a waste of time.___

I woke up today and went to Hardwood Paroxysm, intending to look up an old piece I read every now and then for inspiration. Imagine my surprise when I found, well... nothing. I immediately checked Twitter and heard the news -- server got hacked, entire blog was deleted, things looked grim. Very sad story. I've actually had limited experience trying to recover lost websites before. Specifically, I had a forum I ran in high school whose website was unexpectedly wiped. We tried to save as many posts as we could, but we didn't get much. Most of it (including the tales of Spiderdude, a bro-ified Spiderman knock-off that only a high schooler like me would find funny) was lost to the endless ether of the internet. In trying to recover everything, though, I became at least a little more knowledgable in figuring out how to go about recovering a site when the server-side data unexpectedly vanishes. To the uninitiated, here are two key points to keep in mind.

• Caches have everything. ... Sort of. There are three main cache servers that spider virtually everything on the web and keep records for varying lengths of time. Google, Yahoo, and the Wayback Machine are my three mainstays -- there are quite a lot more, but those tend to have everything you need (with the others coming into play only later in the process). The process of accessing files cached by Google is simple -- you search for something, hover over it, then click on the "Cached" link that comes up on the right side of the page. As seen below, on the far right side of the image.

• Time is of the essence. This is why I say "sort of." Caches have a catch. They've got a relatively quick churn rate, and because of this, a webpage that no longer exists only stays cached in Google for a limited amount of time. The time varies based on how popular the website is -- I'm not sure what the algorithm is, exactly, but after a certain amount of time if the webpage no longer exists the Google cache picks up on it and removes the file. The Wayback machine doesn't work like that, however, it picks up historical data quite a bit less often than the Google/Yahoo caches. So it may not be as useful for this exercise.

Why is this relevant? We can still backup Hardwood Paroxysm. There are two ways we can do this -- either through sifting through the RSS feeds of people who don't delete old articles, or by downloading articles based on cache data. I've already started the second process, but given the incredible amount of material amassed by the Hardwood Paroxysm crew, there's absolutely no way I can do it alone. And that's where you come in. After the jump, I outline the ways that you can help save Hardwood Paroxysm's archives and preserve the content of one of the best basketball blogs to ever grace the web. Let's get to it.

• • •

From my local drive, I was able to save many of the key style elements from HP's page -- the logo, the CSS stylesheets, et cetera. I also was able to save the text of HP's last 10 posts, which is good, because most caches don't seem to have them. When thinking about how to best organize the task of sifting through caches for over a thousand posts, I came across what I think is a relatively good structure for backing up HP before the content churns out of the cache. We start by searching the Google cache for specific HP authors, crowdsourcing the task to one or two authors per person so that work isn't duplicated. We can collect the document text by copying the cached page text into emails and sending them to an email account set up specifically to take old HP articles, so they're saved in a place we know they won't vanish any time soon. Then we can turn the archives over to the HP writers so they can undertake the task of repopulating the blog with content. That may have been a bit hard to follow, so here's an easier to follow instruction manual:

STEP 1: PICK AN AUTHOR

Here is an incomplete list of Hardwood Paroxysm authors, provided to me by Matt Moore in no particular order. Italicized authors are ones whose work is already backed up:

1. Rob Mahoney -- (Articles to be found by Mogias)
2. David Sparks -- (Articles backed up.)
3. Zach Harper -- (Articles to be found by AJ)
4. Jared Wade -- (Articles to be found by Alex Dewey)
5. Matt Moore -- (Articles to be found by Iz)
6. Scott Leedy -- (Articles to be found by Adam Koscielak)
7. Curtis Harris -- (Articles to be found by Jordan White)
8. James Herbert -- (Articles backed up.)
9. Jovan Buha
10. Steve McPherson -- (Articles backed up.)
11. Sean Highkin -- (Articles to be found by Jordan White)
12. Danny Chau -- (Articles to be found by Blake Potosh)
13. Connor Huchton -- (Articles to be found by Moglas)
14. Jared Dubin -- (Articles backed up.)
15. Jon Nichols
16. Amin Vafa
17. Eric Maroun -- (Articles backed up.)
18. Noam Schiller -- (Articles to be found by Ian Dougherty)
19. Conrad Kaczmarek -- (Articles backed up.)
20. Andrew Lynch -- (Articles backed up.)
21. Joey Whelan -- (Articles to be found by Aaron McGuire)
22. Josh Tucker -- (Articles to be found by Tim)

Please comment on this post with your name and the name of an author, if you'd like to take the task of helping to back up their work. We'll put your name here, so that nobody else duplicates your work in getting their articles back. Once you've got an author, move on to Step 2.

STEP 2: LOOK UP THEIR WORK

Go to Google and search for the following string:

site:http://www.hardwoodparoxysm.com "[author name]"

This should bring up several pages of results, with each of their posts on Hardwood Paroxysm.

STEP 3: EXAMINE THAT CACHE, DOGGS

So, you have a list of articles. By hovering over the article link, you'll get a menu on the right side of the screen with a screenshot of what the article once looked like and a link that reads "Cached". Click the link. You may notice that it takes a long time to load -- if that's the case, just click through to the text-only version, which'll be in the right corner of the box on the top of the screen. Like this:

STEP 4: EMAIL

This is the important part. Copy the text of the article -- including the title, author, and date-stamp -- into your email program. Then send it to savehp@gothicginobili.com, with the email titled as so:

[Article Author] - [Article Title]

Then go back to the original google search from step two, go to their next article, and repeat.

• • •

It's a tedious, mind-numbing process. But it's probably the easiest and most organized way to get HP's content stored before it gets churned out from the cache. If anyone has better ideas, I'd definitely be up for editing this post or altering the strategy. But I thought it'd be good to start something now, before articles start dropping like flies and the cache gets emptied. It's all at our fingertips right now, if we can organize enough and get it before it goes. This whole thing sucks, but hopefully we can minimize the damage and recover as much as we can. Good luck, campers.

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I was 16, I wrote an "essay" that I locked away for a year without reading. It was a stream of consciousness ramble a la Joyce that went on for a good 5,000 or more words before I cut myself off and went to sleep. The intent was to strike brilliance through a mental dump of everything on my mind. Had to be something in there I wasn't accessing, right? Like many other teenagers who thought they were something special, I looked back a year later and realized that I'd failed miserably. There was no humor and no intelligence at play -- it was worthless fluff in every extent of the word. I eventually figured out why. I used to be an extremely uninteresting person. I remain that way, to an extent. Back then I was a teenager who buried himself in work and barely got out of the house. I am now an adult who buries himself in work and barely gets out of the house. The depth of my experience was skin deep. I wouldn't describe myself as that anymore, as I've lived a lot in the last few years, but I'm well aware that if I tried to do a Joycean mind dump today, it'd probably be almost as boring. My delusions are gone.

But if you want to employ a Joycean mind-dump successfully, there are one or two things you need. You don't need writing talent, really -- you can be an awful writer and still succeed at it, if you follow these two prescriptions. First, you need to be interesting by your very nature. You need to be a person who seeks out interesting experiences. Second, you need to be smart enough to have too much on your mind to properly organize. Joyce is engaging precisely because he combines an inordinately large depth of experience with an inordinately large capacity for random facts and subject-matter knowledge that most people simply don't have. Ulysses wouldn't be interesting if Joyce hadn't spent his life seeking out experiences. And it wouldn't be interesting if he wasn't incredibly smart. Because he's both, it works. I don't think I'll ever be able to approach Joyce's level of experience with the human condition, nor do I think I'll ever be smart enough to unconsciously frame it if I did.

So, all that said, I'd like to talk about Stephon Marbury.

• • •

I think Stephon Marbury is among the most fascinating people of the last decade. Influential, important, indomitable... no. None of those apply to him, when you're talking on the order of "best of a decade." But fascinating? That's his person, in a nutshell. I don't say that lightly, either. I find Barack Obama absolutely fascinating. Grigori Perelman is the most fascinating person of the last decade, for me -- the ascetic genius is a common thread, but rarely is it a genius of his level and rarely is it combined with his self-awareness for the state of his field. Tiger Woods, Vladimir Putin, George Bush -- all these are examples of fascinating famous people, and they're the people I think of when I consider Stephon Marbury. Not because he's as important as any of these people, or as smart. But because, again -- he's a fascinating person. Marbury has made his mistakes. I don't think he or anyone else would claim otherwise. The way he plays the game of basketball rubs most people the wrong way, and there's a good reason for that. It's a relatively soulless way to play the game. As one can glean from Darcy Frey's "The Last Shot", the base of Marbury's frustrating shoot-first game comes from his youth. When he was young, his father constantly emphasized that he was never going to get noticed if he didn't put up numbers. Defense, teamwork, making those around you better -- that's not Steph's general approach to basketball, though those aren't necessarily things he doesn't do. They're just things he wasn't raised to do.

Stephon Marbury was raised to score. He was raised to make the pass only if he knows it's a high percentage assist -- he instinctively doesn't do hockey passes. He is the polar opposite of the San Antonio Spurs, or any present conception of how to play basketball "the right way." He doesn't play the right way, he plays the Marbury way. But unlike Antoine Walker, Darko Milicic, or other volume scoring picture-me-giving-a-pass-I-say-never players that played the NBA in the most self-absorbed way they could, Marbury coupled his generally selfish playing style with one of the least selfish hearts in the league. He's donated millions of his salary earnings to disaster relief -- and notably donated more of his salary (around $500,000) to victims of Hurricane Katrina than quite literally any other basketball player in the world (with #2 overall being Kobe Bryant at $100,000). He donated $1,000,000 to victims of a recent tsunami -- after his playing days are over, of course, and after he's spent much of his fortune. He and his brother established a charitable foundation in 1996, the year he was drafted. Before he had most of his NBA money. It's a charity that has continued its work in New York well after Marbury left for far eastern pastures.

And then there's his sneaker company, one of the coolest things a basketball star has ever done. The entire point of the Starbury line is to offer clothes and basketball shoes that people like Stephon Marbury could afford. So far as I've always understood him, one of the things that makes Marbury so intriguing is that he remembers his roots enough that he bases his entire post-basketball career on his shoe empire. Which was, in turn, built entirely with the goal of fixing a problem for people like a young Stephon Marbury. In the same way some have surmised that the NBA response to the Trayvon Martin killing was especially stark because players could imagine themselves in Trayvon's shoes, so too were Marbury's shoes are an effort to change the game for the person that Stephon could have been. He was not successful, entirely, but he's certainly made it easier for people of lesser means to get passable ballin' shoes. Hell, my next pair of sneaks is going to be my 2nd pair of Starburies. No, he didn't break the Nike/Adidas monopoly, but he put a few cracks in it. That's worthy of everyone's praise, even if the fact that he did it in no way connects with the facts of how he plays the game.

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So, to the point. Stephon Marbury is a champion.

Last week, Marbury's Beijing Ducks won the CBA title. They were extreme underdogs in every respect of the word. Not least of which because Marbury has won a title his way. That is, he scored an ungodly number of points, took a ton of shots (not all of them good), and took statistical ownership of his team. Regardless, Marbury still managed to lead an underdog group from the best CBA equivalent of the Clippers (big market, historically bad team) all the way to the CBA finals, then upended the champs. It was a 4-1 series that stands as some of the best basketball I've seen from the CBA (a league that's not NBA-quality, but with its own distinct game and certainly one of the better non-NBA leagues in the world). I haven't gotten a chance to watch all of it, and I may never seek it out. But I've seen clips, and I tried to watch most of the concluding game 5. It was some great basketball. Marbury was being defended tough, but he kept shooting. He set up his teammates for easy scores, as he's wont to do, but eschewed the hockey pass. His teammates didn't really care. He rebounded tough for a guard, and scored well (if not always efficiently). He won a title the same way Allen Iverson got to the finals in 2001 -- he played his game without apology or conscience. His teammates bought in. And they won, in dominant fashion. It's a shocking reversal of what we all thought was true.

Trying to piece together the disparate threads of Marbury's life is a fool's errand. You can't do it, at least not in a satisfying way. Marbury is as contradictory as any interesting person is. The way he played in the NBA is in no way connected to the depth of his charity. He's all at once among the most self-aware player in recent NBA history and the most outlandishly disconnected one. He's the man who made half-decent basketball shoes affordable to kids like him and the man who broadcast untold hours of his life screaming at online trolls on UStream for all to see. He's the man who many profess to have all figured out and the man who nobody really knows. He's one of the players that killed the 2000s Knicks and he's still one of the greatest pros ever produced by the cruel streets of Coney Island. He's a foolish man whose UStream broadcast laid bare the contents of his deepest impulses and a fantastic entertainer whose broadcasts may sincerely be the closest thing we've got to an accessible, global Joycean mind-dump in decades (and no, Vollman doesn't count to me). He's a saint, he's a sinner. He's a loser, he's a winner.

And at the end of the day, all the contradictions boil down to one thing. Stephon Marbury. As of today, the champion of the world -- or at least the Chinese Basketball Association, and the most famous player in China today. Put everything together and one thing is certain. I may forget how good of a basketball player Dwyane Wade is, someday. I may lose my knowledge of just how good Tony Parker's handle is. I may have to squint as I try to remember Dwight Howard's defensive dominance, or Samuel Dalembert's humanity, or Grant Hill's quiet excellence. I may outgrow the NBA, someday, and lose my passion for the sport -- and I may with it lose my subject matter knowledge and my capacity to analyze plays and intelligently pick apart the statistics of the sport I love. But I can promise myself one thing that I'll always know to be true.

I will never forget Stephon Marbury. Not ever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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