ESPN's Truehoop has had a strong few weeks. They've been rolling out an excellent ad-hoc series based around rule improvements and other game enhancements to the game of basketball that could make things better for the players and the fans, titled HoopIdea. Today, Adam will share his own idea to make the game better: ending the beneficial foul.

A series of good passes leaves a player wide open for a three. He catches the ball, rises, and hits the shot. But before that can happen, the refs blow the whistle, and the ref gives his team the ball out-of-bounds. You see, a reach-in foul on the floor a second earlier had stopped the play. It hadn't stop the passer, it hadn't stopped the play, but it was a foul nonetheless. Sometimes the fouled team gets an extra free throw, but usually this kind of foul ends with a side-out and nothing else.

Later, in the same game, a big man catches the ball near the rim. He goes up, only to be pummeled. The player sighs loudly going to the free throw line. After all, he hates shooting free throws. And as two shots clank off the rim, the opposing coach applauds his player, while the announcers swoon about how good a foul that was. The fouled team loses the game by two points, two points that they could've spared had their big man not been forced to shoot pressure free throws. Do you know any other sport where breaking the rules, committing a foul actually benefits a team? Where a foul is a strategic device rather than a mistake with grave consequences? I don't. I propose that basketball shouldn't be such a sport either. What's more, the changes couldn't be easier to make.

Let's sketch out the two major situations, and how I'd tweak the rules.

• • •

Late-game fouling: The most egregious example of beneficial fouls. You see it in almost every close game. A team is losing, the opposition has the ball, the clock is running out. Instead of taking the loss, the other team fouls, allowing it to get the ball back. The other team may even hit both free throws, but a lucky three (or a lucky and-one) can bring them right back to the game. And if the winning team misses their free throws? Overtime might be around the corner. Why are we allowing the losing team to benefit from breaking the rules? I've heard people suggest three foul shots for reach-in fouls committed outside the three point line in the bonus and such, but that doesn't change the main issue: Fouls and free throws are suddenly more important than having played 47 minutes and being down 5.

Why not just allow the coach of the fouled team choose what he wants his players to do? Free throws? Fine, go ahead, your choice. An out of bounds play? Sure, and the fouled player should even choose where he wants to take it out of bounds. Would you want to play Hack-a-Dwight, or in fact, foul Dwight on shots at all if it meant the possibility of a out-of-bounds play run from the baseline? These plays are high percentage, and pretty deadly if drawn up right, you know. They don't stop the clock either, which makes the whole concept of the intentional foul as pointless as committing fouls should be.

Reach-ins to stop a sure basket: There are two obvious situations in which this happens: on the fast break (when somebody's barely ahead of the play on defense which saves the open path to the basket), and a reach-in foul that just happens to stop an easy three pointer. There are plays in which players get easy baskets after a foul is committed on the passer. The ball is stopped, the foul might just save 2 points. There are plays where a big man gets an easy putback of a miss caused by a foul. The fouled player might miss some foul shots, shots that he wouldn't have to miss have the refs let the play develop before blowing on the whistle.

Soccer has a neat solution: if a foul is committed and the fouled team keeps the ball moving, the referee usually gives advantage and lets the play flow. In hockey, when a penalty is called, play isn't stopped until the other team gains possession of the puck. But in basketball all we have is a rather loosely defined continuation rule, and nothing else. Why not let the putback happen? Why not let the fast break continue? Why let the opposition benefit from fouling? It's so easy to change the rules so that the ref can swallow his whistle and let the play unfold before he decides to stop it.

These fouls are annoying, break the flow of the game, and don't belong in basketball. It's easy to create rules that don't benefit the felon, and yet (as it stands) the NBA doesn't seem to realize that the game is way more exciting when the players are trying to make plays, instead of fouling everything that moves. How many games have been lost because of Hack-a-Big-Guys? How many points and highlights have been wasted because of off-ball touch fouls? How many times have announcers said "I like that foul"? How many fast break dunks have we missed because of almost-clear-path fouls? The truth it doesn't really matter how many times these things happen, considering the current alternative is a disruption in flow at crucial points in the game, an awkward strategic relic, and a more stilted product. I admit there are strategic end-game situations that would be essentially eliminated and in the beginning the game might flow very differently at times. But I'd argue that it's worth it to create a more entertaining, more compelling sport.

Audiences know what they expect, and that is all that they're prepared to believe in.

A good friend of mine went nuclear on my productivity the other day through a stream of Twitter links to articles on Berfrois, an extremely interesting (though dense) site that I'd never had the pleasure of browsing before. One article in particular that demanded my undivided attention was this one, outlining the Kierkegaardian perspective on the concept of theodicy. Fully unpacking the ideas at play in Aylat-Yaguri's article is somewhat beyond the scope of this blog, and frankly, beyond my depth as a thinker. I don't intend this to be a discourse on a thinker I've always found difficult to parse, and as such, there will be little more mention of Kierkegaard today. Instead, I'd like to discuss an old Aristotelian prescription parenthetically outlined in that Berfrois article.

In Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, he prescribes that poets should in all work "prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities" while excluding entirely all that in the realm of irrationality. It's been quite a while since I've read any Aristotle -- at least two years, probably more -- but I distinctly remember being impressed by that quote when I read it the first time. It distills the heart of writing a serious fictional narrative into a simple either/or statement, and manages to encapsulate the real reason many writers flounder when pushed into action with their readership's imagination. It's not that they are poor writers, or that their ideas aren't excellent -- it's that they simply never get that inherent buy-in from the reader. They can't ford the gap between the improbable and the impossible in a way that satisfies the reader. And they leave many readers wanting, knowing the story lacks that simple buy-in that improves everything. Despite the brilliance of their work, oftentimes, they simply can't bring the reader in. One of the best writers of the last decade was a basketball player. His rival? Lesser in the eyes of the populace, greater in his own mind's eye, free from the audience at hand.

Yep. We're talking about Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan, once again.

• • •

In basketball, there are three levels of possibility. The first is obvious -- the truly impossible, the things that can never be done because the rules of basketball simply don't work that way. You can't have a six point single shot (although you can have a six point possession). You can't score from the opposing baseline -- you'd need to pass it to someone first, you literally aren't allowed to shoot the ball from the opposing baseline with no time off the clock. You can't punch other players in the face, unless you want to be suspended for the rest of the game and the rest of the season. And -- perhaps most importantly -- you can't defend every possession perfectly. There will always be some ghost of a chance that the shot is made, and as a defender, you have to live with that.

Where things get a bit trickier to describe is after you leave the comforting warmth of the absolute. The impossible not because it's logistically against the rules of the game, but because it defies the viewer's prescribed notions of possibility. There are the patently possible high-percentage plays -- the simple layup because of a blown defensive assignment, a wide open corner three from a good shooter, a Steve Nash free throw. Et cetera. There are also the virtually impossible nil-percentage plays -- a Dwight Howard three point shot, a triple teamed hail mary halfcourt shot, a post-up play against a prime Tim Duncan with less than two seconds on the clock. These aren't impossible, nor are they always going to happen -- they just seem like it. If you were to assign probabilities to them, the virtually impossible would probably happen less than 5% of the time. A patently possible play would be converted over 90% of the time. In-between those two? It becomes the province of the viewer to determine how probable a play is, and whether or not it's possible at all. That's where Kobe comes in.

• • •

Consider: the Duncan Spurs achieved the improbable with some regularity over the previous decade. Duncan carried one of the worst supporting casts in the last 30 years to an incredible title run in 2003, and he did so averaging 25-16-5 on a team that averaged just short of 95 points per game and 60 rebounds per game. As well as being the team's defensive backbone, and consistently guarding some of the best big men in the game throughout the entire playoffs. The issue is, from a narrative standpoint, that Duncan never made any claims to the impossibilities of his actions. Nor did he make it a media showcase over how dominant he was, a la Shaq. Duncan simply played incredible, generation-defining basketball.

He did not seek deification for his actions or absolution for his sins. He just wanted to play the game, and in his plodding consistency, he convinced the world that his feats -- while improbable for such a small market fan -- were all patently possible and even expected for a man of his talents. Duncan is content to simply be the best at his position to have ever played the game. He's content to consistently pull off the improbable -- but well-agreed upon possible -- feats of greatness that typified some of the other all-time greats like Bill Russell, Moses Malone, and Oscar Robertson. There is no shame in that. Kobe Bryant tries to style his game after the elusive probable impossibilities that the fans eat up. Tim Duncan simply does the improbable, night in and night out, with no concern for his fans or ego. There is a fundamental difference in approach in the games of Kobe Bean Bryant and Timothy Theodore Duncan.

Understanding this is key to the heart of the true philosophic rivalry between the perennial foes.

• • •

I am not a probabilist. I had several wonderful professors in my undergraduate education who were, but I quickly discovered that I simply wasn't cut out for it. I don't have the mental faculties to calculate probabilities on the fly, like only the best probabilists can. I'm more of the slow and steady type of statistical thinker -- the model builder, the experimentation enthusiast, the ever-considerate analyst. But there's one excellent anecdote that sticks with me from my probability lectures. One example that my probability professor was fond of involved Shaquille O'Neal and free throws. I walked into class one day only to see a giant picture of Shaq projected on the board, and a random event simulator my professor had programmed beside the picture. I don't remember most of what he said, but a reasonable facsimile of what stuck with me follows:

"Today's lecture begins with an applied example. Shaquille O'Neal is an NBA player. He used to play for the Los Angeles Lakers. He is terrible at free throws. Absolutely awful. In 2001, in just 74 games, Shaq shot 51.3% on 972 free throws. Relative to the NBA average of 74.8% in 2001, that's abhorrent. Still, given that he's essentially shooting a coin flip for each free throw, and shooting a ridiculous 13 free throws per game, what would one expect his best performance to be?"

A brave soul pipes up. "I'd expect him to have a 75% game at some point, professor."

"Interesting. Let's run the simulator a few times. I've programmed the simulator to generate all 972 free throws over and over, giving us the longest streak of made free throws Shaq has assuming that he's truly a 51.3% free throw shooter." He ran it the first time. "In this run, he made 17 straight free throws." Again. "Now, 25 straight." Again. "Now, 15 straight." Again. "Wow. 32 straight makes from Shaq. That's certainly going to have the L.A. Times waxing poetic about his free throw stroke, won't it?"

"How does this compare to reality, though?"

"Glad you asked. Shaq's best performance in a single game was a 100% performance, where he made 13 of 13 free throws in a April 17th win against the Denver Nuggets. In fact, Shaq actually had 12 games of 75% or better free throw shooting, if you count his three in the playoffs. He also had 12 games of 33% or worse. Had he coupled two of his best games from the stripe, he could've gotten 25 straight free throws in a year where he shot 51% overall from the line. We all know the law of large numbers, here -- we know that in the long run Shaq is going to hit that 51% line. After all, we programmed the simulator that way, and he's a career 50-50 shooter. But how he gets there is neither prescriptive or predictable. In the long run, you are more and more likely to see random streaks of sustained performance dramatically better than the average. Or dramatically worse than the average. Shaq also had games of 0-11 and 5-19 in 2001 -- had he chained those together, Shaq could've MISSED 25 in a row in the same season.

"Probability is a funny, tricky mistress. You know you'll be right in the long term if you go by the numbers, but when you're looking at a granular short term in a long string of draws, you're just as likely to be right in a short term prediction as you are to be horribly wrong. That's the curse of being a probabilist. You may have the greatest probability model on the planet, and you may have the perfect probabilities of every event you aim to predict. You're still going to get things wrong, and you're still going to have completely inexplicable streaks. They aren't impossible, and though they are improbable in the long term, they're probable in the short term if you consider the fact that you're looking at a long-run game. Perhaps you can claim them to be unlikely in theory. But in practice, they'll always happen. And as you try to reassure people you know what you're doing, you need to keep this in mind, and realize that you're never going to convince everyone. You will always stop short of a truly perfect prediction. That's the peril of our art. As well as the promise, if you look hard enough."

• • •

Given the subjectivity of probability, then, and the preponderance of temporary dispersions from the long-run average, there should be little question as to why Kobe Bryant is the most popular player of the recent decade, while Duncan finds himself rarely discussed. As I noted earlier, everything between a Steve Nash free throw and a Dwight Howard three is essentially a glorified gray area of what is varying levels of possible. The greatest trick Kobe and Jordan ever played on the world was convincing the commentariat that their shots are impossibilities, but regardless of that probable makes for a true clutch player. Tim Duncan's fatal flaw as an NBA player, if there is one, is that he didn't follow Kobe and Jordan's new world order. It is now required for NBA players to convince the public that their impossible feats are -- while still impossible -- altogether probable when they're in control.

That is the art of clutch basketball, as it stands today. The concept of clutch is aesthetically a concept most akin to painting a picture. As Duncan's Spurs and the Moses Sixers demonstrated time and time again, simply being clutch isn't enough. Simply being a dynasty isn't enough. Not anymore. Bird, Jordan, and Kobe changed the game. In order to be "truly" clutch, or to dominate the ESPN narratives that make the NBA tick, you need to put on a show, and paint the picture that what you're doing is something akin to Sisyphus finally rolling his stone up the hill. It is your responsibility to not only make improbable shots, but to make the audience believe that your exemplary clutch performance is a probable and predetermined success.

Kobe's exaltation of the self and his accomplishments have driven his fans -- and, as a whole, the basketball community -- to simply accept his contradiction. We all know that it's absolutely impossible for Kobe to be as good as we imagine him to be in the clutch, and as Henry Abbott has often pointed out, the numbers indicate that he simply isn't that good. But with the story as he's told it, and the image as he's built it, we have a tough time really grasping that. We have a tough time separating the Kobe of our imaginations from the Kobe that exists in reality. Kobe has positioned himself to, like Jordan, forever straddle the divide between what we all know he'll do and what he can't possibly do. Kobe's image has been carefully developed over the years he's played. And Kobe has, more than anyone, successfully created the air of the probable impossibility around his every action.

Their careers represent the parallel poles of Aristotle's prescription. As stated, Aristotle has always preferred the narrative strength of a Bryant, Jordan, or a Bird. But as Duncan and Kobe suit up for one last mutual grasp at a overwhelming triumph of their ideals, I find myself wondering just how accurate the prescription really is. Duncan may not have sought his audience as Kobe did, but in the end, his accomplishments and philosophy towards his career left its mark on history all the same. And as they cruise towards the end of their respective careers, the prospect is slowly dawning on us. As things stand, the Spurs and Lakers are the 2 and 3 seeds in the west, respectively. How better, then, for one last rodeo to come before the new age fully replaces them? Kobe vs. Duncan, the two philosophers collide once more. The audience sees Kobe, and expects him. Duncan has always been content with idling in obscurity. And as he rallies his troops and prepares to focus once more on a winning formula, I wonder just how long he can keep churning out improbable season after improbable season before we realize that he too has been fording the impossible, vintage 1999.

He just gave us a few years to realize it. Good guy, that Duncan.

• • •

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

To be a lifelong Knicks fan is to know failure. And we're not talking about your ordinary run-of-the-mill failure, but a deep, overarching failure that is so prevalent throughout your life that you begin to question all sorts of things.

You begin to become a bit of a solipsist – perhaps you are the only real person in the world and it is impossible for you to ever know hoops happiness. Perhaps you are the subject of a grand experiment in which some deity wants to give you a Job-like tribulation to see if your dedication to the great sport of basketball never wavers in the face of adversity. It's as if some sort of malevolent god has singled you out for punishment in an eternal Basketball Hell.

Maybe the city of New York struck a deal with the sporting Devil since it seems as if the Giants and Yankees will be extremely successful as long as the Knicks never are – from the beginning of the 2000/2001 NBA season, the Yankees and Giants have combined to win more championships than the Knicks have won playoff games. Hell, the Knicks have made as many playoff appearances as their city counterparts have won titles in that timeframe. This makes the ineptitude of the Knicks that much worse for a New York sports fan - in the face of the sporting success of New York’s other two most popular teams, the Knicks’ constant failure is so bad that it doesn’t feel like it could be real.

And it's exactly that sense of surrealism that has permeated this Knicks season and Mike D’Antoni’s firing for me.

I like to consider myself plugged in to the NBA Matrix and if you’re reading this you can probably relate: we follow all the right people on Twitter, read the right blogs, and certainly know our way around Basketball Reference. Due to my love for the game and the constant checking of Twitter on my smart phone, I’m used to being "that guy" who replies to everyone who gives me NBA news in the real world with some variation of "yep, already saw it." The only time I’m not religiously perusing the latest on Twitter is when I’m busy at work or asleep and dreaming of leading my beloved Knicks to glory.

So imagine my surprise when I came back from a work meeting Wednesday morning to a co-worker, a die-hard hockey fan who couldn’t care less about the NBA, inform me that Mike D’Antoni had resigned out of the blue.

"No way," I thought, "that can’t possibly be true. I would’ve either heard something earlier or seen it already, there’s no way this is real." As he attempted to reassure me that it was indeed true as he’d seen Vinny from the Jersey Shore tweet about it, I went to check my own Twitter, which was last updated two hours previous. And that’s when I realized that it was true, and it dawned on me: I had convolutedly learned about the firing of the New York Knicks’ head coach from one of the stars of the Jersey Shore. As if this year’s annual Knicks circus couldn’t get any weirder: the completely unexpected acquisition of Tyson Chandler bringing us to a top-10 defensive efficiency, the ghost of the departed Amar’e Stoudemire, the emergence of Jeremy Lin turning our season around, and finally Melo just being Melo. Take it all together and you'll see that absolutely nothing has made sense. Why should it start making sense now? But learning about D’Antoni’s resignation from Jersey Shore’s Vinny and having this latest strangeness seem completely normal to me made me realize just how surreal these Knicks truly are.

Granted, if the Knicks were this surreal and good, like the Bulls circa the Rodman days, I wouldn’t care one bit. But, as long as I can remember, they haven’t been. Sure, I own a 1974 Knicks world champions t-shirt, but who knows if that actually happened? After all, maybe this reality is just an artificial construct created upon my birth, to keep the door of hope ajar. Who knows? Yes, yes, it's implausible and arrogant for me to think that the world has me as its focal point. But that’s exactly my point – these are the kinds of delusions that being a lifelong Knicks fan gives you.

For my entire lifetime, the Knicks have either been heartachingly bad – missing the play-offs in a dilapidated Eastern conference 6 years in a row - or heartbreakingly good – making it to game 7 of the 1994 finals against Olajuwon’s Rockets, only to lose by 6 because John Starks shot 2/18 (including 0/11 from three point land). There’s also the lockout-shortened 1998/1999 season in which they barely edged out the Charlotte Hornets for the 8th seed by one game, became the first – and only, thus far – 8th seed to make it to the finals, and ended up getting embarrassed by the San Antonio Spurs in 5 games.

This pattern repeated itself last year after Carmelo Anthony got traded to the Knicks for a king’s ransom, helped the Knicks make the play-offs for the first time in a New York eternity, and were subsequently swept by their most bitter rivals, the Boston Celtics. Was it worth it to give the Nuggets the aforementioned ransom at a record of 28-26 in order to finish the remainder of the season 14-14 and get swept in the play-offs? Donnie Walsh, the Knicks GM at the time, said no, but he was overruled by Knicks owner James Dolan. And it's this same James Dolan who seems always at the source of so many "this can’t be real" thoughts in regards to Knicks moves and who is the only common thread in the past 13 or so years of surrealism. While everyone else in the organization has come and gone from coaches to GMs to players, Dolan has been the one person who has always been there through thin and thinner. What's that, you ask? Why is James Dolan the one ever-present person? Oh, well, it's because he's his father’s son. That's it. Like I said, this can’t be real, right?

• • •

Let’s run down the surreal ineptitude of James Dolan. Upon taking over the Knickerbockers in 1999, he has made an inordinate amount of common-sense-defying moves, the first of which was giving Allan Houston a 6-year contract worth $100 million… when no one else had even come close to offering him more than $75 million. The result? Houston retired after just four seasons in 2005 due to a chronic knee injury with $40 million remaining on his contract that still counted against the salary cap. Houston currently serves as assistant general manager for the Knicks. The next move Dolan made was to appoint Isiah Thomas team president of basketball operations and general manager. You probably know the next part: Isiah's decision-making ended up being so bad that the Knicks ended the 2005/2006 season with the highest payroll in the league… along with the second worst record. Just think about that. It shouldn’t even be possible. It still doesn’t feel real. To make matters worse, at the conclusion of that season, Dolan fired head coach Larry Brown who had been signed to a 5-year $50 million contract the previous year. After the Knicks had to buy him out, Larry Brown ended up with $28 million for coaching the Knicks for one year. And this wasn’t an isolated incident either: the two coaches preceding Larry Brown - Don Chaney and Lenny Wilkens, to wit - were both bought out and remained on the Knicks’ payroll for years after their firing.

The team with the largest payroll and the largest fan base (based on media market) posted nine consecutive losing seasons from 2001/2002 through 2009/2010 under the leadership of James Dolan. It’s not just the Knicks either – the New York Rangers, a team also owned by James Dolan’s Madison Square Garden company, hadn’t made the play-offs from 1998 through 2005 despite also having one of the NHL’s highest payrolls. It’s hard for me to believe that such an astounding level of incompetence is possible but in the case of James Dolan I’ve started to become convinced that nothing is beyond his incapability.

Remember the malevolent God I referenced earlier who presides over Basketball Hell? In my nightmares, that man is James Dolan. In my reality, that man is still James Dolan. I have a hard time accepting this plane of reality as actual reality. Apparently Mike D’Antoni had a hard time accepting James Dolan in his reality as well and chose to resign.

You see, Mike D’Antoni is oft described as being an incredibly stubborn man. What many people don’t realize, however, is that there’s two sides to stubbornness – isn’t being stubborn truly just fighting for what you believe in? D’Antoni believes in a sort of basketball nirvana, a system dominated by spacing and ball movement, a system directly at odds with the way Carmelo Anthony likes to play basketball. And so when D’Antoni approached Dolan with a proposition to trade Carmelo for Deron Williams and was rejected, he chose to resign rather than put up with an owner too enamored with a selfish me-first superstar to realize that his lack of effort is getting in the way of winning.

I still don’t know how I feel about this – on one hand, it makes way too much sense for the Knicks to have Deron to run D’Antoni’s system with Amar’e and Tyson Chandler as it’d be just too perfect for us. Yet on the other hand, Melo, Amar’e, and Tyson seem to be an indomitable frontcourt on paper… if Melo (and, to a lesser extent, Amar’e) tried. But they didn’t try, and offensive genius Mike D’Antoni was replaced by defensive stalwart Mike Woodson much too abruptly. In a 24/7 sports media where the narrative is always some form of "who is responsible for this?", I don’t know whether to blame Melo for playing without any form of enthusiasm and forcing the coach out, blame D’Antoni for not getting the most out of this group, or blame Dolan for, well, just being Dolan.

What I do know is that as of this writing, the Knicks have rattled off a four game winning streak in Mike Woodson’s first four games as head coach, all the while defeating their opponents by an average of slightly over 22 points a game and never scoring under triple digits. Honestly, this doesn’t surprise me in the least even through it defies what you’d expect to happen (in my case, I thought we’d have to grind out 84-80 games for a while). It is, after all, the New York Knickerbockers, the team that breaks your heart over and over again until you think you can’t take it anymore only for them to do their damnedest to reel you back in for a prime heart-crushing moment.

But this time, I know this. I’ve learned from my mistakes and I know that the Knicks under James Dolan exist only as a vehicle that runs off the fuel of shattered hopes. I’ve learned that nothing will ever make sense with this Knicks team, that the pieces will never fit perfectly together, and that no matter who is on the floor, the Knicks logo emblazoned on the front of their uniform will always have a way of making them come up short while making me question what I did to deserve it. We all know that I did nothing to provoke this of course, that there’s no such deity that exists to torment you in your own special basketball reality. James Dolan doesn’t actually preside over Basketball Hell, a mystical place where little demons with little Isiah Thomas masks torture you with a three-pronged pitchfork built from the heads of Eddy Curry, Renaldo Balkman, and Allan Houston. It’s all a figment of my imagination gone wild, a result of my brain trying to cope with heartbreak after heartbreak.

But, logical or not, the questions will always be in the back of my head: what if this life isn’t real? What transgressions did I make against the basketball Gods in a past life to be punished like this? Is this Basketball Hell – a place where no matter how good your team is they’ll never fail to disappoint you?

“Nah, that’d be crazy,” I’ll think in an effort to keep myself grounded, “There’s no such thing as Basketball Hell. And plus, if there was, we all know that it’d be saved for the Cavs fans.”

I spent a lot of time this weekend wondering why, exactly, March Madness captivates the nation. It's not an easy question, especially when you consider people like me. Context: I really don't like college basketball. Earnestly, honestly don't. Partly it's because I went to Duke. I didn't have the greatest undergraduate experience in the world, and my distaste for my school's administration and the overlying social schema of the university significantly tempered my enthusiasm for the basketball team. As did my general dislike of Coach Krzyzewski's style of coaching and Duke's occasionally-deserved poor reputation. Outside of Duke, I'm not really a fan of any college teams, and as I just outlined, my Duke fan credentials may be among the weakest out of any sports I actively follow.

And in terms of the actual play quality, March Madness (as with all college basketball) is lacking. There are a myriad of problems with the college game. There's the distastefully long shot clock, the uninteresting offensive strategies, the low talent level, the unnecessarily gimmicky contracted three point line, and the overall low intensity level compared to the best NBA games. The only thing that the college game really has over an NBA game is the crowd effect, but really, that doesn't at all impact how fun to watch a college game is, except perhaps in the last few minutes. Despite all this? I love the first four days of the NCAA tournament. I really do enjoy it. I find it captivating, and I can look past the college game's obvious flaws. If only for four days. But... why?

After some rumination, I think I've solved the puzzle.

• • •

Consider the concept of the bandwagon as applied to sports. Most people hate it. There are a rare few who accept being called a bandwagon fan, and it's used as a pejorative in casual sports talk. "Those damn bandwagon fans." ... "You became a Heat fan after they got LeBron? Bandwagoner." ... "You root for the Steelers, the Yankees, the Lakers, and Duke? I... what?" In sports, among hardcore fans, the bandwagon is synonymous with the negative. In my case, I actually met the person in the 3rd statement on the night Duke won the 2010 championship. It actually ended my night early, and had I not ran into a girl I was crushing on, I would've proceeded to wander all the way back to my dorm as I wondered when I started rooting for the same team as that guy. Yeesh. Suffice to say, the bandwagon is not a positive thing.

Which is not to say the theory of the bandwagon is a bad thing -- if you break from the prescriptions of fandom and the unstated mores of sports, there's a lot of comforting aspects about a bandwagon. Humans are inherently social creatures. In sports, the bond formed by one's rooting interests is strong -- meeting a fellow Indians fan at the airport is an immediate topic of discussion. Meeting a guy with a Kyrie t-shirt at a bar makes my day, and often even my week. Meeting fellow fans of your team is great. By rooting for a team with the largest bandwagon, you maximize the chances of having these bonds with random people. You have a higher probability of being able to find people to watch games with. You have a larger group of people to interact with on a fan-to-fan basis, and (given the general qualities that form a bandwagon) you probably have a significantly higher chance than most of "your team" winning a title and following an entertaining (read: winning) team in most sports. If the idea of being a bandwagon fan wasn't so stigmatized among the "real" fans, we'd probably all realize the odd logic of it from a social perspective.

Except we already do. We just don't admit it to ourselves, yet.

Enter the NCAA tournament. March Madness is an event that essentially demands a bandwagon. Have you ever heard of a sports fan who enjoys the tournament, but only watches games rooting for their team's rooting interests? Sure, I watch the tournament and hope for Duke to do well, but hell if I root for any other team based on my actual rooting interest. I root for close games, fun matchups, and the manna of everyone who watches the tournament: upsets from the underdog! Sure, you may know nothing whatsoever about the team you're rooting for. Hell, until Norfolk State beat Missouri this year, I had absolutely no idea that the school is in Virginia. In fact, it's only an hour or so from where I live, which is a good thing to know in terms of finding basketball in my non-NBA blessed area. But again: I knew nothing about Norfolk State beyond the number next to their name. That was it.

Did that prevent me from screaming my support? Not in the slightest. That's a bandwagon, though a thinly veiled one -- it's a bandwagon for the underdog. At any given moment, you can walk into a room of 20 people watching a game and expect that 19 of them -- like you -- know virtually nothing about the teams playing and are rooting for nothing more than the higher seed to pull the upset. When Ali Farokhmanesh canned his gigantic three pointer in 2010 to eliminate Kansas (a team that I still maintain was the best college team that year, by a rather large margin), there were scarce few around the nation who weren't cheering. "That's what March Madness is all about", they tell us. And they're right. March Madness is a chance for every sports fan in America to throw away the natural predisposition against the bandwagon and experience all the benefits of a bandwagon -- rooting without the pain of losses, the omnipresent bond of a common rooting interest, and the higher probability of being happy with the outcome -- without any of the stigma.

In this sense, March Madness allows sports fans to step out of their self-imposed shell. It allows us to -- for a week or two -- forget all that fandom teaches us about how wrong bandwagons are and participate in them whole hog. We can experience the feeling of rooting with abandon for teams we know virtually nothing about. We can feel that social bond felt by bandwagon fans who can walk into a bar and know that 9/10 casual fans will -- like them -- be happy to see their team's success. We can see and feel all these things, and we can do it without feeling the isolation that bandwagon fans feel when confronted with the hardcore obsessives in every sport. That's what March Madness does for me. And at the end of the day -- low quality basketball accepted -- there's something to be said about having that experience once a year. Pretention be damned. It's fun, harmless, and interesting in small doses. Emphasis on the "small", though. Because if I see another UConn-Butler game, I just might go postal.

After Aaron's four observations yesterday, we got a collection of our other writers together to talk shop about some of the other trades. Join Adam, Alex, and Alex the Second as they discuss the Rockets, the Spurs, and the Wizards. Along with a bonus discussion about the Nets. Which technically makes this a 3-on-4, but we won't tell anyone if you don't!

• • •

1. How did the Rockets get Marcus Camby and a late-first rounder for Jordan Hill and a late-second rounder? How in God's name did the Blazers still end up doing pretty well?

Alex Arnon: It’s easy – Daryl Morey. Sure, you have to account for the fact that the Rockets also gave up Hasheem Thabeet and Jonny Flynn but this isn’t 2009 any more – as a sidenote, my favorite part of this trade is that during the 2008/2009 NCAA basketball season I lived in Eugene, Oregon surrounded by Blazers fans and if I was to see the Blazers’ 2012 roster of Oden, Flynn, and Thabeet I’d have instantly declared a Rip City dynasty. Instantly. In the end, Houston gave up nothing (and as a Knicks fan, in the case of Jordan Hill, less than nothing) to acquire the ghost of Marcus Camby and move up from their mid-2^nd round pick to the Lakers’ late-1^st round pick in a supposedly loaded draft. I don’t really see what Marcus Camby can do for the Rockets outside of giving them a veteran presence and an expiring contract, but you certainly can’t complain about moving up in the draft and knowing Morey, there’s someone he definitely has his eye on.

As for the Blazers, I’ll keep it simple – they did well because they’re officially now in full-blown tank mode. In this league it’s impossible to succeed as a perennial middling .500 team and they know this. They need more talent to replace the all-NBA training room squad of Brandon Roy and Greg Oden and they’re hoping to do it with their lottery pick this year alongside the pick they acquired from the Nets in the Gerald Wallace trade.

Adam Koscielak: Well, there was more to that, I mean, Hasheem Thabeet and Jonny Flynn, man. But seriously, Daryl Morey is a wizard. And not in the bad, Andray Blatche way. Hill was underachieving and lost in a depth chart, Thabeet and Flynn are less useful than most undrafted players at their position at this point (Zabian Dowdell will always be in my heart). Morey worked the phones, found what he wanted and got it. Unfortunately for him, he also pissed Kobe off by prying Derek Fisher away. Beware of the Mamba, Houston, he's going to be hunting for ya now. As for the Blazers, this was NBA 2k12-esque. I have a suspicion that the mythical Blazers GM is actually the NBA 2k12 trade finder. The flip side however is this; the Blazers were essentially rewarded for choosing to turn their team around into a shitty one. This happened on a night that the Suns sans Steve Nash and Grant Hill beat the Clippers. Makes you wonder why the league is discouraging hard work. Either way, Rip City just turned into RIP City. Now you can fully expect LaMarcus Aldridge to go down with a mild case of the tank flu.

Alex Dewey: The Marcus Camby trade was a rental, as he's a UFA after this season, so this trade made more sense than I'd initially given it credit for from the Blazers' end. Still, even though getting anything for a future UFA is better than getting nothing in FA (as we saw play out with Dwight), you'd think the price for a rental would be more than pennies on the dollar. Same with Ramon Sessions, but in that case, even the Cavs got a 2012 first-rounder and a potential leap for the 2013 draft. The Blazers got a second-rounder and two 2009 sub-prospects. In exchange, they sent a supremely talented, experienced rebound-and-block center to a Rockets team that now has a vague, nontrivial chance of contention. It's just one season, but the price seems rather low to go from, say, 4.5 to 7.5 expected playoff games in one stroke.

• • •

2. Who won the Warriors-Spurs trade? Warriors, Spurs, both or neither?

Note: Richard Jefferson, TJ Ford (retired), and a protected first-round draft pick to Warriors
__Stephen Jackson to Spurs.

Alex Arnon: The Spurs, easily. If you took a look at each of their 2010/2011 season stats, Stack Jack put up a PER of 14.64 while RJ put up a 12.42. Taking a look at their contracts, they’re receiving nearly the same exact amount of money through this season and 2012/2013. But while Jackson’s contract expires that year, Jefferson has a player option for 2013/2014 that you know he’s going to take. So it’s 2-0 in the Spurs’ favor thus far with the knockout blow coming in the form of Tim Duncan calling him “the ultimate teammate.” They’ve gotten back one of the pieces of their dynasty and a player they all love. While they are certainly questions about Stephen Jackson’s mental stability, I’ll just leave you with this Tony Parker quote: “He was crazy, but it was a good crazy with us.”

Adam Koscielak: Win-Win. The Warriors apparently content with getting Bogut decided that they can take a little extra salary for a first rounder, while the Spurs managed to get Captain Jack relatively cheap. There are question marks here (Can Pop coach Jack?), but if Jack decides he's all in, San Antonio just acquired a very dangerous scorer. If he doesn't, hey, that just means more Kawhi Leonard for you and me.

Alex Dewey: At Pounding the Rock there's a great discussion that summarizes where many of us Spurs fans find ourselves: we have relentless trust in the Spurs' braintrust, endless acknowledgement that RJ was never going to be "that guy," acknowledgement that S-Jax is the ultimate teammate and someone that steps up to the plate when necessary. But we also have fear that this is the Richard Jefferson situation all over again, where another kind of middling, mediocre statistical player gets an in with the front office purely because of character and attitude and Popovich has to figure out how to reconcile S-Jax's limitations with a borderline-contending team, only to lose a season trying to find a role for S-Jax, and again the well-meaning faith in the front office turns out misplaced. Still, it's hard to argue that S-Jax isn't exactly what the Spurs need in terms of attitude, and it's a laudable attempt by the Spurs to keep the window open.

• • •

Adam Koscielak: You could make a sitcom scene out of Prokhorov's day, really. Imagine Deron Williams as his girlfriend on her anniversary, Dwight Howard's skills as an expensive gift, and Dwight himself as a salesman. Just imagine Dwight calling Prokhorov and telling him that his gift won't be there, only to flip flop a few times in the next few scenes, until finally, pressed for time before the anniversary, the rich Russian buys a crappy bouquet called Gerald. The disappointed girlfriend then decides to leave to her equally rich, but a bit more caring high school sweetheart. End episode.

Alex Arnon: The Nets’ situation somehow reminds me of the 1996 Tickle Me Elmo frenzy. Billie King is the parent who promised their child that they’d get them a brand new Tickle Me Elmo toy for Christmas that they could name Dwight without knowing that it was sold out. Having gone to every store trying to find one after hearing mixed messages on whether or not it was in stock and coming out empty-handed on the night of Christmas Eve, Billie King finally decided to compromise and bought his kid a small Oscar the Grouch plush that he had named Gerald.

Alex Dewey: Great metapho- Wait, that was 1996? What the hell? Tickle-Me-Elmo was 16 years ago? Wow. I don't even know what to say.

This was an atrocious day of basketball in a lot of ways. The NCAA tournament had one of the least engaging first days it's had in the last 10 years, absolutely devoid of drama or underdog victories -- in today's action, only a single upset occurred (courtesy of 12th seeded VCU, a team I support and enjoy given that I currently live in Richmond). That was also quite literally the only compelling game, with a decent last few minutes for those who sat through a relatively boring first and a quiet second. Otherwise? Terrible tournament action, and barely worth the hype. Up until about mid-morning, it appeared the NBA's trade deadline would be as boring. Luckily for us, that didn't quite happen. Tomorrow we'll be featuring a 3-on-3 style post with Adam, Dewey, and one of our new writers going over some of the results. This is my contribution to the discussion, in the format of four reactions I had to the deals at hand. Hope they inspire some thoughts.

• • •

1. The Bucks and the Warriors both got what they wanted.

This is somewhat odd to say, because I don't totally agree with what the Bucks wanted. But I do think that this is the rare type of trade that's mutually beneficial and takes no advantage of poor GM tendencies on either side. For the Warriors, they're going all-in on a last ditch attempt to clinch a top-7 pick and keep Utah from getting their protected pick in a loaded draft. They traded two rotation players -- one of whom played almost 40 minutes per game and was ostensibly their offensive mainstay -- for a player whose season is over and a player whose contributions this season have been marginal at best (and whom they immediately flipped for a player that duplicates the production of Dorrel Wright). They're considering holding Curry out the entire rest of the year, essentially leaving their fate in the hands of Nate Robinson, an in-and-out David Lee, and a disgruntled team that has almost entirely checked out. They may not get a top seven pick, but it won't be for lack of trying.

As for the future? Murky, but I can't say I'm too down on it. The Warriors -- if they succeed in keeping their pick -- will enter the court next year with an intriguing five-man rotation of Curry, Thompson, Lee, Bogut, and a lottery pick (Kidd Gilchrist, anyone?). Bogut was the best player in the deal given his defensive impact on a team's overall composition and his ability to play big minutes -- his offense has been lacking since the gruesome arm injury, but his defense more than makes up for it. Especially when put next to an offensively talented lineup with Curry, Klay, and Lee. They paid a bit of a price to do it, parting with a young all-defense bench man in Udoh and their talented (albeit cancerous) scorer in Monta. All the while taking on the Bucks' worst contract. But they've built a team well designed to tank the rest of this season and come back next season with a much higher ceiling. It's actual progress towards a contending franchise, in other words, something that the Warriors have been virtually allergic to in the last decade. I can't knock that.

As for the Bucks? They want the playoffs this year, and the revenue that entails. They want to rebuild the franchise's image in Milwaukee by making the playoffs and putting together an exciting team. With Ilyasova, Jennings, and Monta? They have that. It's an oddly composed bunch, and it has a high probability of blowing up. But they replaced two players that weren't going to be playing for the rest of the season with a talented scorer and a talented backup big man. The Bucks are -- as we sit -- in the 8th spot in the East. They may have just strengthened their team enough to punch their ticket. As for expanding the team from here? We'll see. They have a ceiling right now as a middling eastern team. That's not fantastic, but if they can just get healthy and get there, perhaps then they'll have the ability to trade up with their extra cap space and start really contending. Until then, a trade where they freed loads of cap space and acquired two young, talented players will have to do. Not bad.

• • •

2. The Cavaliers were jobbed, and Cavs fans are being ridiculous.

Look. I understand the general logic that the supporters of the trade tend to peddle -- Cleveland had to hit the cap floor, and the deal was about getting something for Sessions. Anything. But taking on Walton? Walton's contract isn't just bad, it's toxic money for a player who is worse than nothing. Ramon Sessions was not a good fit for this year's Cleveland team, and Cavs fans were endlessly frustrated with his penchant for freezing out Kyrie and refusing to give up the ball. I realize that. But he was in no way a low-value commodity. If you look at the Laker trade logically, the Cavs paid almost $7 million dollars (Luke's salary when you add the trade kicker that makes it even higher) in dead weight non-expiring salary to acquire the 25th pick in the 2012 draft. Because to the Lakers, the pick is how much it would've cost them to peddle Luke onto any team in the league, even disregarding sending the Lakers any salary at all. They wanted -- and needed -- to get Luke off their books. The draft pick wasn't for Sessions. It was to do the Lakers a favor and take their worst contract. Then, after having done that, the Cavs traded Ramon Sessions for the rights to swap the Heat's 2013 pick with the Lakers' 2013 pick. Think about it that way, and you begin to see how odd of a trade it was.

In the long term, this isn't the worst deal in the world for the Cavs. But the idea that the Cavs couldn't have done anything with that money is absurdly short-sighted. Teams regularly send picks over to other teams to take bad contracts -- with the Cavs' monster cap space, Chris Grant could've pulled off some cost-cutting acquisitions for other owners to ensure they stay under the tax. Several second rounders, possibly some late firsts, etc. And while he still can, Luke's awful contract going to seriously endanger the Cavs' ability to ensure a clean book going forward if Grant does the sort of cap rentals that can net the Cavs picks. Ramon Sessions was far, far more valuable than a pick swap in 2013. No matter what your opinion of his game is. At the very least, to make this trade even remotely fair, Grant could've drawn in Andrew Goudelock or Devin Ebanks instead of Kapono. Just some sort of young and marginally talented player for the Cavs to take a flyer on. Instead, the Cavs get two busted contractual husks and paid almost $10 million dollars to acquire a terrible draft pick. Was it worth it? Could they have put more pressure on the Lakers and done better, getting Goudelock or Ebanks instead of Kapono? Or refused to take Walton altogether and forced the Lakers to use their TPE? Of that I have no doubt.

And for that reason, I can't really say I have any reaction to this trade beyond a gross taste in my mouth and some residual annoyance from being repeatedly told on Twitter that Boosh (from I Go Hard Now) and I were not real Cavs fans for being quite low on the overall trade. Really, guys. It wasn't a good trade. It wasn't a strictly atrocious trade, but there's no way you could call it a good one.

• • •

3. The Thunder were -- outside of the Nets -- the biggest deadline losers.

I'll try to keep this short, as I didn't mean for these to be quite this long. But I'm of the strong opinion that besides the Nets (whose awful deadline is mostly due to Dwight's decision rather than any mistakes of their own volition), there isn't a team in the league who had a worse trade deadline than the Thunder. Why? Simply put, the West looks a lot stronger right now, and the Rockets -- a team the Thunder have already lost to twice and a team that seems to be forming an odd rivalry with the Thunder -- immensely strengthened their team and increased their chances of getting to the playoffs in the 8th seed. Much like the Grizzlies of last year were to the #1 seed Spurs, the Rockets getting the 8th seed would be the worst-case-scenario situation for the Thunder. The Rockets love playing them, always get up for the games, and just added two key pieces that will pay dividends in the playoffs, at least for one year. The Rockets really do remind me of last year's Grizzlies, and that should scare the Thunder.

Beyond that, the Lakers returned to strong contender status. The Spurs didn't strictly improve, but they didn't really get worse either. The Grizzlies are a scant few days from Z-Bo's return. The Clippers just got Nick Young for absolutely nothing. Beyond the Thunder (who did nothing), the Mavs (who emphatically did nothing), and the Nuggets (who got a tad worse), everyone looks just a wee bit better. The West looks significantly more formidable now, and although the Thunder spent the early season lapping everyone, if nothing else the playing field looks to be a bit more fraught with peril come playoff time. That's bad news for a team that will enter the playoffs as the odds-on favorite in any year, but it goes double for a year where we'll be seeing back-to-backs in the first two rounds and added randomness in the playoffs. Watch out, Oklahoma City.

• • •

4. Prepare for some awful basketball, folks.

Finally, the capper to the post. Prepare for a lot of really, really bad games. One unfortunate consequence of the constant firesales is that there are now at least 5 teams aboard the tanking bandwagon. For the rest of the season, Portland and Golden State are going to be trying for picks as early as they can get. The Cavs are desperately trying to avoid Kyrie's attempt to play them all the way out of the lottery. The Warriors probably need to go 5-22 if they'd like to ensure they keep their pick -- if they do this, they'll essentially be throwing every game on the road and playing like one of the worst teams in the history of the NBA for the remainder of the season.

This has a cascading effect. When teams play tanking teams, they don't tend to try very hard, and coaches tend to rest their players. So don't be particularly surprised if not only are the tanking teams incredibly excruciating watches, their opponents are atrocious as well. And don't be particularly surprised if the miasma -- already hanging over this season's head -- spreads to more as the fatigue grows worse and more teams start tanking for Anthony Davis after his predictably long and beastly tournament run.

It's a rough life, I suppose. At least the lockout's over...?

All of which, I think, is as it should be. Why should we ask Kobe to change? It seems manifestly clear to me that he’s not nearly as interested in winning as he is being perceived as somebody who is only interested in winning; he understand that immortality is really about perception. To which I say: Good. Bravo. Encore. Because there’s room in the league for this. Jackson Pollock produced very few accurate bowls of fruit. There’s room in the league for somebody whose ultimate goal is to use basketball, because it makes the basketball more compelling.

--Danny Nowell, Kobe Doesn’t Care About Winning, and That’s Okay

Interesting, Mr. Nowell. Please consider with me the grand triumvirate of the Western Conference, retired in 2022:

• In 2022, Steve Nash heads up Canadian basketball and several charity groups. The archetypal representative of Canadian Basketball, Nash may not have gotten a ring, but he'd had a long, illustrious career worthy of the Hall of Fame. Today, he teaches children how to run a pick and roll at a basketball camp. His characteristic high cheekbones are now set in middle age by grayer hair and slower knees, such that he looks like a latter-day D'Antoni. The familiar squeak of his sneakers across the gym makes a bird's rising staccato - a sound somewhere in the center of the triangle whose points are laughter, support, and affirmation - a wordless, worldly half-chuckle punctuated by dribbles and education.

• In 2022, Tim Duncan is tubing and waterskiing with his family. It's a bit ridiculous to see a seven-footer ride a jet-ski designed for a child, but it's relatively safe and Duncan demonstrates that it is quite possible. Steering with his feet, Duncan's standing navigation on the tiny jet-ski is not only possible but also amusingly precarious. Craftily avoiding the inevitable tumble before a small wave, Duncan sits down and signals his family's boat to stop for a bit to wait for him to catch his breath. He switches jet-skis, this time drinking the can of soda he'd won from the endlessly amusing bet. Absolutely nobody knows that he does this with his time.

• In 2022, Dirk Nowitzki demonstrates his encyclopedic knowledge of jazz and Kraftwerk to his stunned mentor Holger Geschwinder as they re-invent the musical phrase the same way they - in past years - had reinvented the basketball shot. Mad scientists on the shores of the Elbe, their songs are as much about the calculus of variation and the pressure of their hands upon the keyboards as about the workings of the soul, but - with the Teutonic eventuality of the verb completing a sentence - the soul does enter into the equation at last. As night draws forth, allowing for rest, they go their separate ways in the reflected moonlight on the Elbe at Dresden, absconding silently with keyboards and keytars in hand, laughing through peaceful paths that wind through adjacent forests, sounds of perfect music rattling through their ears.

The gist of Nowell's fine piece is that Kobe's re-appropriation of basketball for his own ends - whether or not those ends are conducive to winning - is inherently compelling in the mythology of the NBA. I agree that Kobe is quite compelling - the winner who set his own terms. But the constant attempts to fuse perception and reality - the staged rituals, the laughably predictable media bickering, etc. - have always fallen flat with me.

• • •

More than any of that, after all, I want to think of where Kobe will be in ten years. Because if Nowell is right, then he is inextricably tied up with his own hyped-up narrative. Yes, Kobe is the "Black Mamba" - an offensive genius hell-bent on touches and individual dominance - and all that entails, but Kobe is also the Black Mamba Media Narrative and the Black Mamba Media Narrative Media Narrative, etc. Kobe is what you think of Kobe, because Kobe places so much import on public perception and legacy (to blaspheme a little bit in Nowell's way, even more than he cares about winning). Kobe is so tied up with his brand and his own legacy and his own narrative that we get shivers of cultural decay when Chris Paul and LeBron go into the shallow end of that same pool. What Kobe does with his own branding is as ruthless and high-volume and irrational as his late game and as efficient as his overall game.

So what does Kobe do when that's all over, in 2022? Does he make Commissioner Silver an offer to buy the Toronto Raptors for the soon-to-be-obvious purpose of slowing down their pace so that they average less for a season than his fabled 81-point masterstroke? Does he linger in the league with two broken ankles and no feeling in his hands, just to play an ancient 15 mpg, gunning for 40,000 points and an ultimate respect for his game by a public with its still-unyielding, sentimental respect for Jordan? Does he even like basketball anymore? Does he show humility to the rookies less than half his age, or does he show a legendary fire - now with the qualifier "cranky" - that inspires them to work harder? Does he even care about the rookies, anymore, or does he tell them - with the rueful pessimism of the too-experienced - their exact ceiling and maximum career duration, just to get them thinking about their own impending demise? Does he try in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to end history with himself, making random dirty hits on semi-stars, knowing that his targets probably wouldn't retailiate, but who might provoke a season-cancelling brawl that spirals out into the end of the league and of basketball? Does he act as a sincere, role-playing mentor? I doubt that one most of all, even as I find his continued presence in the league plausible. But above all, I don't know, in the best possible way.

No, I don't know what Kobe in 2022 looks like, but it's a hell of a lot more interesting to think about than to focus on a Kobe that - like so many dismal dictators and demagogues - wants to use his talents for irritatingly selfish, megalomaniacal purposes. While that's part of the equation, it's just one variable in the input and output of Kobe's personality, a variable you could lose and still get most of the details right. Kobe is not Kobe without wounds and slights and the self-serving narratives that must run in his head and that must perpetually spill over into the collective minds of this league and his fans, with the media happening to catch a few strategically-placed drops.

Nowell has a great point that Kobe belongs precisely because he is different from (and morally challenging and compelling in his difference from) the rest of the league (and the rest of us) in his sheer irrationality and his unwavering confidence. I couldn't agree more, and yet it's not just efficiency and winning that mark the difference: Unlike fictional characters like Don Draper that are as limited and as well-conceived and as conflicted as his writers and actor Jon Hamm can provide, Kobe's limits and expressions are precisely those of life, and one day he will have to face death and retirement and sorrow and irrelevance and the shell of a legendary body, without the promise of another day to recast his legacy. I look at the glistening, masked, and gauzy mortality that may endure as the immortal memory of Kobe Bryant and wonder where he'll be in 2022, when perhaps for the crude statistical logic of media attention he is finally left alone with his legacy as his only comfort.

As part of a oddly connected three part Gothic Ginobili set of Jordan-related posts, we present the opening salvo; a muse on Jordan's greatness by Alex Arnon, one of our newest contributors. Alex is a New York Knicks fan living in Vegas. He's an excellent writer and a better person. Go follow him on twitter at @alex_arnon. Then come back to read this post, because it's a good one.

It's been not but a few hours since LeBron James and the Heat had their nine-game winning streak broken. Already the media, bloggissists, and basketball Twitterati are beating the drum of their favorite narrative – you know, the one that says LeBron James just isn’t “clutch”. Never mind that no one can truly define clutch or when it occurs (last quarter? last minute? last 24 seconds?), people just know it when they see it – and they see that it’s a trait LeBron just doesn’t have. But what people don’t seem to see, and perhaps don’t want to see, is that it might not be not LeBron’s fault that we don’t think he’s clutch. Maybe it’s ours.

• • •

Few will disagree that Michael Jordan was the greatest basketball player of all time. The aspiring basketball players of this generation - almost without exception - pretended to be MJ making a championship-winning buzzer beater while growing up. With all his undeniable talent and constant branding, Jordan has become our archetypical basketball superstar – if you want to be the best basketball player, you want to be Like Mike, and naturally the two best players to come after Jordan have endured constant comparisons to Jordan. Kobe Bryant has reveled in the Jordan comparisons, basically becoming MJ 2.0 (or 0.8 depending on how you want to look at it). And ever since LeBron was deemed The Chosen One in high school, we threw the same exact expectations onto LeBron’s logic-defying shoulders.

But who were we to decide LeBron's fate? The same thing that made Michael Jordan MJ makes Kobe the Black Mamba - this ceaseless, maniacal, and almost sociopathic drive to be the very best by any means possible. And in this rush to proclaim LeBron James the next Michael Jordan, we all just kind of assumed LeBron had the same killer instinct without stopping to think that maybe, just maybe, not everybody wants to be (or should be) Like Mike. What if LeBron doesn’t? Should we hold it against him? As someone who has held a grudge since the day of “The Decision,” I can finally say no. Yes, I felt let down and maybe even a bit betrayed by his unprecedented choice not to become the alpha dog, but a part of a trio of stars. But now that we can think about it rationally with hindsight, isn’t it all a bit selfish of us to feel let down by LeBron's choice?

I’ve honestly begun feeling a bit sorry for LeBron recently. Yes, it seems a bit odd to feel sorry for a multi-millionaire athlete getting paid just to play the sport he loves and be famous, but at the end of the day LeBron is human just like any one of us. He has the same emotions we do and it’s why he deliberately made himself the villain of last year’s NBA season. Look: he'd spent his whole career trying to fit in and be who we wanted him to be and not who he truly was. The result was a cognitive dissonance that goes a long way to explaining that unsettling “at the end of the day, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today” quote after the Finals. I think LeBron was just tired of being forced into the mold we had created for him, tired of being a square peg constantly rammed into a circular hole. LeBron truly didn’t want to be the bad guy or finisher but saw our collective expectations for him to be the killer and not the facilitator, and tried to act like it. But in this -- as so often when someone tries so hard to be something they’re not -- LeBron failed miserably.

Consider that LeBron is the first superstar of what is starting to be recognized as the AAU generation – instead of only meeting against the best players in their county/regional/state finals, the AAU organization allows for the best players from each region to form a super-team that can compete nationally, something MJ and Kobe never had the liberty of doing. And perhaps LeBron still carries this mindset: Maybe he doesn’t want to destroy the other superstars as Michael and Kobe did growing up so much as team up with them to play basketball for fun just as he did as a teenager. When you watch the documentary about his early playing career, More Than A Game, it’s hard not to be awestruck by just how happy LeBron looks to be surrounded by – and winning with – his friends. That’s not to say that LeBron doesn’t care about winning championships and being the best player that ever was, but those two things take a back seat to just enjoying himself and being the best teammate he can possibly be. It’s only natural that it was a difficult transformation for him to go from a team-oriented, fun-first guy to the selfish expectations of a post-MJ superstar-centric 2003 NBA dominated by guys like Allen Iverson, Tracy McGrady, and Kobe Bryant.

• • •

By all accounts, this is the season that LeBron has finally started maturing off the court and it seems to have fundamentally changed his personality – or else he’s showing us his real one from his high school days. He realizes that he’s not truly the villain. He realizes that “The Decision” wasn’t the best PR move. He's starting to have more fun during the post-game festivities. He says things like, “I’ve gotten away from the ‘hate’ stuff. I played with that last year and it wasn’t me.” That sounds like acceptance. LeBron is finally understanding that he doesn’t have to be the reincarnation of Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson, but the first iteration (and most likely the last) of LeBron James. With that understanding comes a weight off of his chest - in his mind, he no longer has to match the feats of anyone else but only has to enjoy himself on the court. And to enjoy himself, he’s not going to be the guy taking the buzzer beater.

Not that LeBron is egregiously lacking at the buzzer-beater. In fact, as the folks at Liberty Ballers showed in their excellent recent piece, LeBron is actually more clutch than Kobe in 7 out of the 8 different types of clutchness they measured. But I think a lot of the narrative discord comes from the fact that Kobe’s clutch shots are simply much better looking than LeBron’s, leaving a much better impression. By and large Kobe’s game winners are artistic jump shots that swish right into the net as time expires, creating a perfect highlight clip to be shown incessantly on SportsCenter the next day. On ther other hand, LeBron usually opts against taking jump shots and instead barrels down the lane, hoping to either create enough contact to get sent to the line or get enough space past his man to lay it in with a few seconds on the clock. It's not to say that LeBron is incapable of making the jump shots (game 2 of the 2009 ECF comes to mind), but that the majority of his clutch shots aren’t pretty jumpers like Kobe. If you were to ask basketball fans about the clutchest shot in NBA history, you’d most likely get one of the famous Michael Jordan buzzer-beaters – all of which are jump shots that look just like Kobe’s. Kobe’s shots, while no more or less clutch than LeBron’s, simply better fit our preconceived notion of what a clutch shot looks like. This is by Kobe's design.

LeBron doesn't actually lack clutch, but it feels wrong in the shadow of MJ for him to let his clutchness hinge on Udonis Haslem hitting a 50% midrange shot. It's feels wrong (for even less reason, considering Kobe's struggles in the clutch) that LeBron expects his coach to draw up a play that plays to the strengths and skillsets of his players, and defers to that play accordingly. But in a larger sense - to hear him explain it - “It’s just the way I’ve always played the game.” To LeBron, that moment isn’t about being clutch or unclutch, it is about just playing the game of basketball the way he likes to play it – getting teammates involved and having fun. As he said on February 25, “I’m back to just loving the game and playing at a high level, playing for my teammates and letting my game speak.” When’s the last time you ever heard Kobe or Michael say that?

So when you turn on ESPN or read the paper or visit your favorite blog today and hear that incessant clangor about how LeBron James isn't clutch in a game where he went 8/9 from the field in the 4th quarter, realize that it just isn’t true. It’s not that he isn’t clutch. He is. It’s that he doesn’t want to be clutch unless he has to be, something we never realized was possible after being conditioned by MJ into thinking making the last shot is what makes a player great. In the shadow of Jordan, we came to expect all our stars to be like Mike, complete with ice cold veins and a fierce competiveness. These were the expectations for LeBron, but now he’s become his own type of player – a player that can completely dominate a game, but wants just as much to get his teammates involved to have some fun.

And after a generation of “me-first, gotta get mine” superstars, maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all.

• • •

Who would honestly appreciate a "superfan" on a personal level? Let's say you're related to someone who calls himself the biggest fan of your team who has ever lived. Let's pretend he has a solid case, and is unreasonably obsessed with your team. Do you find yourself proud of the depth of his hobby? Or perhaps just sketched out by the general air of creepiness that pervades the most obsessive of fans? For my money, I've always thought that I'd probably be rather unimpressed if I was related to a superfan -- I'd certainly appreciate their ability to enjoy life and throw themselves full hog into their pet hobbies, but I don't think I'd be able to get past the obsessive tendencies and the other things they could be doing with their money. I don't think I'd really like a superfan in real life, if I had to spend too much time around them. On a personal level.

And that's sort of the key. As a concept rather than a person, I don't think you'd find a single sports fan who doesn't harbor a tincture of respect for the hardiest of diehards. We may -- and we often do -- laugh at other team's superfans. We don't understand why they do what they do. But at our team's games, somewhere in our cold and barren hearts, we find it in ourselves to root for the crazy person on the jumbotron who's painted their face with the logo and is wearing enough official team merchandise to feed a poor Ethiopian family for a months. We see them dancing on the screen and we feel the kinship wrought of what may very well be the only singular thing that connects us. When we see the superfan, we know we root for the same guys. They galvanize us into a semi-patriotic fury that only dies down when we've left the stadium and had some time to reflect on how absolutely silly sports is. But for that moment, the superfan is the MVP of the arena, and the MVP in the hearts of many fans.

And then you've got the Clippers!

• • •

Having read the Clippers' statement, I can partially see where they're coming from. The Clippers feel that Clipper Darrell's persona is ripping off the Clipper brand. That's not altogether wrong. They feel that Clipper Darrell does not represent their organization, and that in his manner of dress and presentation, he was allowing ambiguity that made people think he did. That's fair. They do not want people who aren't under their employ to be profiting off their brand, and they don't like having someone out there with the Clipper name that they can't really control. It all theoretically makes a ton of sense, and all seems rather par for the course. They even offered him a free season ticket (something they haven't to my knowledge offered him on a regular basis -- he's had a technically reserved seat, and it's had the same occasional upgrades most long-time season ticketholders are rewarded with after 10+ years. But like any season ticket holder, it appears he's paid for it.) if he'd cease and desist. They've done things by the book, finally. Right?

Well, no. There are three main points at which the perfectly logical case I presented absolutely falls apart. First, Darrell has been doing this for over a decade. If the Clippers really wanted him to quit it, why didn't they do something about it years ago? Why let it get to this point at all? The Clippers have never been opposed to having a fan drive around Los Angeles promoting the Clipper name in his quasi-insane, quasi-brilliant Clippermobile whose modifications cost $14,000 and 3 months of hard work on Darrell's part. The free publicity Darrell brings the franchise has a certain inherent advertising value that -- when there's no other positive aspects present to build up fan interest in a cellar-dwelling staple -- helps keep casual fans happy and occasionally drives a nice little human interest story that drums up a few ticket sales. The Clippers understood that, and had no problem cashing in on it when times were bad. The idea that they can now tell him to throw the car -- and the persona -- away because he's making a few more dollars on it is somewhat shocking. They reaped the benefits for the last few years, now he doesn't get to make a few bucks?

Which leads me to my second point, and the one that really infuriates me. Please look at this picture.

Are you seriously going to tell me that this shirt makes him money? REALLY? How many people honestly own this shirt? How many people would WANT to own this shirt? This is Ringo Starr MSPaint artwork with less taste. If Darrell wanted to make money, he probably would need to actually be providing merchandise that isn't absolutely atrocious. He'd also most likely need to be charging more than the absolute minimum for the shirts -- back in college I was on a dorm council that had to find a T-Shirt vendor that would sell individual dorm shirts. I quickly discovered that $15.00 a pop was about the best you could do if you intended to make a profit -- most vendors would take enough off the top that charging below around $13 dollars would generally mean you'd actually be subsidizing your tenants' shirts. He's charging $9.99 for this crummy, atrocious shirt -- which is still too much, but it's a fair sight under what he'd need to be charging to make selling T-Shirts profitable. Which leads to the question of how Darrell is making money at all. If he's making more than $100-$200 a month, I'd be shocked -- and this isn't money that the Clippers would be otherwise getting, because anyone who's obsessed with Darrell enough to buy his merchandise or hire him to speak at an event surely already spends more than enough on the Clippers. They aren't just going to replace "Clipper Darrell expenses" with "more Clippers gear." He's not INFRINGING on their profits, and even if he was, the scale of his profits is so absurdly small that it's the equivalent of losing a few quarters under your seat cushion and having your crazy uncle search the couch and take the money. Are you going to order him to leave the house and get mad at him for it? Probably not, because in the long run, a few cents in the couch is absolutely nothing compared to the money you make in a year. The general tenor of the Clippers' note indicates he has some kind of insane sponsorship deal -- that's fine, I suppose, and it's reasonable for the Clips to want to stop that. Or they could've gotten him to give them a cut, instead. Or... really, anything but what they did.

Which brings me to the third reason why I can't buy the logical case. Did you actually read that press release? I may be off the mark, but I think it may be the pettiest press release I have ever read in my life. This is an entire organization -- a hundred plus people -- literally releasing a screed questioning whether one of their biggest fans is "actually a fan." Clipper Darrell turned down a job offer from Mark Cuban to do the exact same thing for the Mavericks, while the Mavs were in the midst of deep playoff contention. Were he not a true fan, it would stand to reason that he'd take a job with unprecedented inside access and a wealthy, supportive owner doing something for a salary that he currently does while paying out the nose. You could make that leap. You could also find someone -- anyone -- to read your press releases before you send them out, just to make certain it doesn't come across as the most arrogant and farcical letter since Gilbert's post-decision screed. Actually, this is worse. At least Gilbert's screed was focused on someone in his stratosphere of wealth. This is the Clippers' organization picking on a random fan because -- god forbid -- the fan stuck with the franchise so long he became inextricably connected to the franchise and is making a few hundred a month selling awful T-Shirts at a small profit, doing charity events that make your franchise look better, and being silly and embarrassing for money. That's all.

• • •

It's often said that the most meaningful fiction is that which imitates life. In the case of the Clippers, it's the opposite, and it's more like life imitating farce. We could make all the jokes we want about Dan Gilbert for his letter, and he deserves them. But this bush league Clipper response to one of their most loyal fans is beyond farce, and beyond all the worst stereotypes and expectations we could've had for the franchise. It's all the worst stereotypes about the Clippers distilled into one easy to digest package. It's as if Sterling knows we forget he's an awful person. He realizes that the team is good enough he actually has to actively remind us of his flawed priorities and why the Clippers have been so dismal for the last decade. And while I may be overreacting, I don't really think of this as solely a reflection on Darrell. As I started the post with, if I knew Darrell in real life, I probably wouldn't like him that much. But it's the principle of the matter. It's how they went about it. And more than anything, it's the utterly incoherent standards by which they came to this decision now, of all times. The Clippers aren't a joke at this point. They're a premeditated farce that happens to be good at basketball.

If this is any indication, that's all Sterling really wants to be.

AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Ryan Remiorz

Let’s face it, the All-Star game has never been particularly enjoyable. Hell, my dad has always thought of it as a solid representation of how he felt about basketball. And he would say so:

“3 and a half quarters of boring back and forth action, and sometimes an intense last 6 minutes,” he'd say, quickly adding that he enjoyed playing the sport. He just hated watching it. He loves hockey, but he's not a one-sport guy: he loves watching the NFL and CFL. As an extra dish to his beloved hockey, that is.

Let's talk about hockey. It’s not surprising that my dad, a guy who went through his 20s watching Wayne Gretzky and the Oilers in Edmonton, (while playing the sport whenever he had free time) had plenty of pretty good reasons to watch it. And yet, hockey - usually a relatively more exciting and unpredictable game - at one point managed to have an even less passionate All-Star Game than the NBA's. The whole experience of watching the NHL All-Star Game was tantamount to watching the lockout leagues — soulless, careless, pointless.

So, the NHL realized something that we'd all known pretty damn well — it’s all about the Weekend. On its face the All-Star Weekend is no great innovation: the NBA has its All-Star Weekend, with all the excitement that comes with jumping over Korean cars, Charles Barkley choosing Allen Iverson with the 1st pick in an All-time Fantasy Draft. And yet, in recent years, the NBA has lost the All-Star battle to the NHL. How did that happen?

It’s simple, really. The NHL made everyone have fun. I mean, I bet Dwight had fun when playing point guard, but I’m not sure the guys on the bench were particularly happy about wasting their time like that. Sure, they played 10 minutes in the All-Star Game's version of Ultimate Scrubtime™, but that's probably not as fun as taking a rest from a grueling schedule, lockout or no lockout. Of course, opting out would be at least an faux pas, if not a spit in the face of the blue-white-red Jerry West silhouette.

We can do so much better. I know this for a fact: I’m writing this right after a fun packed NHL All-Star Weekend. With the rather disgraceful exception of Alex Ovechkin, the NHL's elites put some magic into the All-Star Game. Brendan Shanahan - the man behind the new format, NHL whipmaster general and former player - knew exactly what buttons to push to get people into the fun: Make it a bit more personal, affect their ego, and make everything a fight.

It all starts with the fantasy draft. Players choose players, ending the artificial East-West fight in one stroke and giving the fans answers to all sorts of competitively interesting questions. Questions like: “What if the Sedin Twins played separately?" They got their answer. Some of the players received confirmation of their greatness and others ended up getting picked last: It's hard to argue with the unblinking honesty, and it's even harder not to respond. Consider Phil Kessel, who after being left alone, like the last kid to be picked in gym class (and believe me, I know that feeling), he was mocked, forced down the throat of one of the team captains, all while Alex Oveckhin took pictures of Kessel’s walk of shame while showcasing his beautiful, nearly toothless grin. Kessel came back with a career year. Yeah, it's over-the-top to imagine LeBron taking photos of a lonely Joe Johnson last year. But wouldn't the hierarchy the draft brings to the table give the game a rougher edge right from the start? Wouldn't that kill the "no defense" dunk-fest first quarters in their tracks?

The innovations wasn’t limited to the game itself: The Skills competition all counted as one goal in the game, and only the All-Stars (and rookies assigned to both teams by the league at random) could participate in the competitions. Without the tacked-on gravitas of "home-field advantage in the World Series" or the channel-changing "random HORSE events that go nowhere," the Weekend all seemed more connected, and it all felt like it mattered competitively. The whole Weekend was a great tribute to hockey’s team game nature, something that the NBA fails to promote regularly with basketball*, electing to focus on the stars.

*No, those idiotic BBVA "if his teammate didn't get those rebounds, he wouldn't be the best passer" they play constantly on League Pass broadcasts don't count.

I’m not saying that David Stern should follow his former protege Gary Bettman exactly. That would be damn near impossible to do. But Stern should learn a lesson from hockey: These All-Star Games need storylines to work, and Blake Griffin jumping over a friggin KIA just won’t do.

Wouldn’t you love to see 2-on-2 or 1-on-1 games? Or a new skills challenge format? Or a fantasy draft*? And finally, wouldn’t you like to see a Dunk Contest exclusively between All-Star players, as chosen by their captains? Would LeBron have an excuse to run away to this time? Oh, the dunks wouldn’t be as meticulously prepared if the players were only informed about the contest a day or two beforehand, but, on the other hand it would probably make the contest come back to its spontaneous roots. No more props, no more jumping over people. Just raw, beautiful dunkage.

*This would also allow the NBA to avoid the embarrassing “We’re out of people we could put in here...” situation that's always a threat with the East back-ups.

Come on, we all dislike most of these events as they are, and you can sense that the players don't want to be there: Tell me that a few of the usually disinterested players wouldn't enjoy some of these changes. Wouldn't Kobe sure get excited about facing LeBron or Paul Pierce in a deadly one-on-one battle, with a Westrose/Rosebrook twins (And I’m referencing their abilities here) battle on deck? Teammates battling against each other publicly? Wouldn't that be great? I’m sure the players would get a kick out of it, and we'd feel the tension and enjoyment back home, too. We're basketball fans and these are the situations we live for as fans.

The NBA usually seems to get it. But on one of their marquee events they waste the opportunity and the NHL totally laps them. It's time the NBA based its All-Star Game and Weekend on the bit of wisdom that has helped basketball grow in the past and that makes it great today:

Storylines make sports.