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

• UTA vs OKC: The Forgettable Utah Jazz (by Jacob Harmon)
• POR vs LAL: The Worst Outlet Ever Written (by Alex Dewey)

And yes, this does mean that the next episode of Fallout: Phil Vegas comes Friday. Alas. Read on after the jump.

• • •

UTA vs OKC: The Forgettable Utah Jazz
Jacob Harmon

There’s not much to say, constructively speaking, about the game the Thunder and Jazz played in Salt Lake City on Tuesday night. Despite being a key part of the battle for playoff seeding and first-round matchups for both teams, the affair was surprisingly low on energy and low on excitement. For the Thunder, the prize was gained ground on the San Antonio Spurs for the first 1-seed finish in franchise history. For the Jazz, the prize was gained ground in the battle with the beleaguered Lakers for the 8th seed of the playoffs.

Were I asked which team would “want it more,” I’d be inclined to assume the Jazz. The product on the floor indicated that either choice would’ve been inaccurate. The Utah bigs who dominated the interior in the previous matchup between these teams were a virtual nonfactor, and much of Oklahoma City's execution in the final minutes of the game was comprised of Kevin Durant force-feeding outlet passes to the wing, attempting to finish off a triple-double. (Note: he didn’t). With the exception of a Westbrook steal-and-jam to seal the game in the final moments, there wasn’t much to intuit from this matchup beyond the fact that these two teams simply aren’t very evenly matched. Their records reflect that. It isn’t the kind of win that changed my feel on this Thunder team one way or the other, nor do I expect it did for any Jazz fan and their team’s respective playoff aspirations.

Then again, it may just be that I’m uniquely unqualified to write about Utah, being that I’m perhaps more unfamiliar with them in their current state than I am with any other team in the league. I remember the first time I ever watched the Utah Jazz play. Not specifically, but vaguely -- it was sometime in 1997, in the Finals against the Bulls. Like most kids in the 90s, I was a Michael Jordan fan, which meant I was a quasi-Bulls fan. I couldn’t tell you much about the team beyond Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman being their best guys, but that’s a serviceable amount of knowledge when you’re seven years old. I knew even less about the Jazz; I knew Stockton was the little white guy and Karl Malone was the big guy who reminded me of a football player. That was about it. I hated them both, and by extension their team. In retrospect it seems silly. Hindsight informs us that no one ever really stood a chance of dethroning Jordan. (Ed. Note: Oh, come on -- the Jazz stood a little chance, at least!) But at the time -- to my 7-year-old hoops love -- these guys were absolute villains; the stand-in Monstars in a real life Space Jam.

Obviously, that was then. These days, I don’t think about the Jazz very often. They’re a relatively young team with an average-to-poor coach. Despite being pitched to me as “the next Thunder” by some optimistic Utah residents a year or so ago, the Jazz don’t really look to be on track for the same level of success. It’s a bit telling to me that when you say “Utah Jazz,” my first thoughts are of those Stockton/Malone teams, a talented bunch that were nonetheless thwarted by an immovable object. When I watch the Thunder suffer a bad loss this season (as they did against this Jazz team in the previous matchup), I idly worry whether 15 years down the road I’ll be thinking about the Westbrook/Durant days. "If only we hadn’t run up against LeBron James, we could’ve won it all."

On the other hand, when I see Westbrook intercept an inbound pass and hurtle the length of the court, slamming down a wild dunk in a breathtaking display of athleticism to seal the game? It feels as though he’s attempting to outrun a squad of alien ballers, beating the clock to save Looney Toon Land. And in my heart, I feel very palpable relief. Things will be, and then they won’t, and then they will again; as it was for the Jazz, and as it will be for the Thunder as well.

• • •

POR vs LAL: The Worst Outlet Ever Written
Alex Dewey

The Rose Garden's court has always brought a smile to my face. Fantastic stuff. Part of it's the crowd, part of it's the giant hurricane-eye in the center of the court that frightens and startles and evokes images of a giant floating Ngyr-Korath. That 2010 Portland team was one of my favorites; Andre Miller, Patty Mills, and Marcus Camby spearheading an incredibly likable team that got an amazing boost from the crowd... well, OK, Patty and Camby hardly "spearheaded" the team. But they were there. They were there, and that's all that mattered.

Yes, yes. I'm sure if I could hear some of the things said on the court, it would cease to be a place of wonder and awe in my eyes. Perhaps there would be vile or cultish things said by the fans that surround the court. I'm sure the Rose Garden -- when you enter it and become used to your surroundings -- is just another place. I'm sure that I could find a reason to make it feel inauthentic or wrong or both. I'm sure that I could find a way not to have fun because that's the only way I could distinguish myself from a lot of Blazers fans. That's what writers do. We look at something beautiful and we find the ugliest thing, to focus in on and show how perceptive we are. And it's wrong, and we miss the forest for the trees. You miss a lot when you don't step back and appreciate greatness.

Watching last night's game, I felt that Kobe got (... relatively speaking) cheap call after cheap call. Granted, the cheap calls went with a legitimately amazing and inspiring offensive performance that anyone can amply appreciate. Pau and Dwight looked quite good on offense despite the Lakers as a whole being a defensive free verse poem; not a lot of structure, usually lazy, and completely lacking in capital letters. The Blazers as a whole had a heck of a game, despite a swoon at the worst possible moment. Lillard -- whatever you think of his poise -- is sort of a savant at shooting. (Ed. Note: Lillard is ranked 36th out of 92 guards in the NBA in true shooting percentage. Not sayin', just sayin'.) Lillard reminds me of Kobe or Stephen Curry, in the sense that he can take any shot from any range and it will retrospectively appear to be the only possible way to make it. I'd say Gil but there's some baggage there now. (Ed. Note: Baggage filled with guns.)

It's that feeling, you know? It's that feeling that Lillard is simply a pure shooter. Shot selection and his uncomfortable rim percentage will always keep him from one that oft-puffed list of e_fficient-and-rationals_, not to mention his hilariously poised feel-for-the-game that would probably break a graph in two just by looking at it. The axes would disperse, irrelevant to his evil glare. It's not just that Lillard gets hot, it's that he's fully-formed without a conscience, resting heart rate of 3, an ice-cold heart that can get up to speed pretty quickly, all considering. He gets hot, which is to say he metabolizes entire cities with his poise and takes the heat and makes it into a 30-footer that bursts into flame. (Ed. Note: What does this paragraph mean at all even.)

All that praise for Lillard aside, writing this makes me feel sad. Because all I could think about -- perhaps because I write things -- is that it made me pretty sick to my stomach to note that Portland hosted an MVP chant for Kobe Bryant. Who do you think you are, Portland Lakers fans? Showing up to desecrate the scrappiest possible arena, featuring the scrappiest fans in the league? You know who you are, and you make me sick! -- ... unless you moved there from L.A., in which case I guess I'm alright. But cripes, this isn't Lakers-Clippers! You go to an opposing team's arena as a guest! You don't steal their arena's magic!

This makes me sick. I know sports is all about the upheaval of hallowed traditions while cheesy traditions endure forever, but come on. They swept you guys in 1977. Argument over. And that was a real super-team, a real example of the 5v5 red and white logo abstractly representing basketball, not the studio gangster 8 seed that got carried by its avatar yet again. Actually, you know what? I choose to hope (and to trick myself now into remembering to block out the pain) that the Blazers fans, savvy and worldly, helped out with that chant. Because Kobe is the Lakers' MVP. Truth be told, he's all the team they have, at the end of the day. The Blazers know, and laugh. Nic Batum is quite young, and Kobe is quite old. And some day that seesaw of time will favor them.

It's like alternating Russian dolls of ugliness and beauty and personal fouls.

Sidenote: I'm not going anywhere with this but I thought of a cool promotion for arenas when you have these big games in multi-team markets (or otherwise geographically mixed fanbases, or situations like Heat-Knicks or Lakers-anyone). Okay, so check it: included in the price of your ticket is a wristband. Alright? With me? Keep it going. If you support the home team you buy one color wristband and if you support the road team you buy the other. Then -- check it out -- on the screen they'll have some sort of GPS thing that tells the teleprompter as well as anyone with a smartphone app where the friends and enemies of the team are. I mean, this probably doesn't work for sports where riots happen, I guess. Actually this would proverbially cost more literal lives than it would metaphorically save if you introduced this in Europe for football matches. This would actually kill people. Men and women would die because of my horrible idea, is what I'm getting at. ... But think of the apps you could make!

• • •

Aaron here. I have an inconveniently placed fever... one that I stupidly made worse through my dogged insistence on watching the Spurs get pummeled by Denver last night. Hence the lack of Fallout: Phil Vegas today. I'll try to get a new episode done for Friday. In the meanwhile, please enjoy this Outlet as a peace offering. Thanks friends.

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

• IND vs CLE: The Bizarre Diamond in the Roughest of Roughs (by Aaron McGuire)
• GENERAL: Derrick Rose and Selective Empathy (by Adam Koscielak)

Read on after the jump.

• • •

IND vs CLE: The Bizarre Diamond in the Roughest of Roughs
Aaron McGuire

I'm going to make what I believe is a fair assumption. Most of our readers didn't watch last night's game between Cleveland and Indiana. Not an unreasonable stance. There was absolutely nothing on the line last night -- with a loss, the Pacers would've effectively clinched New York's hold on the 2-seed, but chances are reasonably low that Indiana pulls off the seed even with their win. After all, they're 2.5 games back with 4 to play. If they want to get the 2-spot, they'll need to beat New York in the Garden in their one remaining matchup and hope that New York drops two more games in their remaining four (@CHI, @CLE, @CHA, vs ATL) -- for a team that's rolling, that seems exceedingly unlikely. So the game meant little to the home team, other than a virtually guaranteed win.

As for Cleveland, they've reached the point in the season where wins are actively detrimental to the franchise's overall health -- one more win will effectively take Cleveland out of the running for the 4th overall pick in the 2013 NBA Draft, and they've reached the point where they need to lose out if they want to have any chance of tying the tank-happy Suns. All in all, it was a decent recipe for a garden variety blowout. You'd be excused for skipping it. But there's a reason I'm writing about the blasted game at all -- it wasn't any old garden variety blowout. The few people who tuned in were treated to what may have been the single most bizarre game of this NBA season. Really! The final score -- 99-94, Indiana -- doesn't do the night's action justice. Here are just a sample of the absurd runs and confusing peculiarities that those watching got to witness:

• On the offensive end, Tyler Zeller completely outplayed both David West and Roy Hibbert. Tyler Zeller. Tyler Zeller.

• In 17:45 span that enclosed both the start of the game and the final quarter, the Pacers outscored the Cavs 55-18.

• In the remaining 30:15 of last night's game, the Cavs outscored the Pacers 76-44. Not a typo.

• The Indiana Pacers nearly dropped a game where they shot 31 more free throws than a 24-win team.

• The Pacers won a game where they were significantly outshot from two point range, three point range, and the free throw line.

It was a strange night.

After the game, that last point slayed me. The Cleveland Cavaliers shot 46% from the floor -- the Indiana Pacers shot 41%. The Cavs shot 30% from three -- the Pacers shot 25%. The Cavs shot 86% from the line -- the Pacers shot 67%. It felt worse than that, too! The Cavs were getting easy baskets for most of the night, and actually found themselves shooting 54% entering the fourth quarter. Against the best defense in the NBA, no less. After the game, the percentages made me curious. How many times a year -- on average -- does a team outshoot their opponent from every box score-tracked area of the floor and still manage to lose the game?

The answer: not many. In the past 20 years, it's only happened 44 times, which amounts to scarcely more than two such games per year. Considering the fact that every year includes 2460 NBA games, that nets out to a 1 in 1100 chance that any given NBA game is going to be a game like that. What's more, the margin is somewhat rare as well -- the Cavs not only lost the game, they lost by two possessions! If you sort the aforementioned list by margin, you'd find that only 6 of those 44 games were won by more than two possessions. Fundamentally, that makes sense -- you aren't going to blow out a team that's comfortably outshooting you from every area of the floor. But it added another amusing layer to a game that was about 100 times more entertaining than all reasonable expectations.

As we stumble and gasp our way to the close of another long season of NBA basketball, it's worth casting an extra eye of appreciation to these unexpected gems of random chance. At some point yesterday I had a short conversation where my friend Angelo said he was going to skip last night's CLE/IND game -- and all remaining games between central division teams -- out of a sincere desire to never see the sort of plodding, grind-it-out basketball that those teams tend to play. And I still think that's a fully reasonable stance. But oftentimes the NBA sees fit to remind us of what makes it fun with these dismal, write-em-off games. And I left the night feeling lucky I got to watch it. Thanks, NBA's late season slump! The obscenely low expectations you engender made a weird game like this the highlight of the NBA's recent schedule.

... Is that a good thing?

Hm.

• • •

GENERAL: Derrick Rose and Selective Empathy

Adam Koscielak

"Holding on to his knee and down!" That's what Kevin Harlan says, in what would later become the most blatantly overused injury clip in NBA history. As the Chicago Bulls retreat looking to defend their basket against the Philadelphia 76ers, Harlan adds. "He was flying, and he came down wrong on the left foot, whether it was an ankle or a knee, I do not know." Cut to Derrick Rose cringing, as he lies in pain. I can't imagine that pain myself, combined with the realization that this is probably his last game of the very promising playoffs. His teammates surround him. Everyone knows it's not good. Chicago fans instantly fall into a state of depression. Or is it apathy? The rest of the basketball world freezes, feeling the loss of the brightest superstar. Twitter instantly speculates that it's an ACL tear. Others blame Tom Thibodeau for keeping Rose out in de facto garbage time. Some Nike rep blames Adidas for the ACL tears to Rose and Iman Shumpert, as if sneakers could save the ligaments in their knees from rupturing. In the end, however, everyone seemed to empathize with Rose's fate, a rare fan-wide show of solidarity.

Nearly a year later, Derrick Rose is playing basketball, and according to some reports, dominating at it. We can't see it firsthand though, after all, this is just a Chicago Bulls practice. Patience is wearing thin -- this here superstar has been "medically cleared" to compete for the better part of two months now. Iman Shumpert -- who suffered the same injury on the same day -- has been back in action for a while now. But Rose doesn't want to come back. What does that make him? Some compare him to Andrew Bynum, who never seemed to care about playing basketball, preferring to bowl and build computers, others point out the mental discomfort of coming back from any injury as an excuse for Rose's reluctance to come back. Then the screaming matches begin. One side will note Rose's gigantic salary, while the other notes that ACL tears are pretty hard to recover from.

This is where Rose's low-key personality seems to hurt him, really. If this was Kobe Bryant sitting out two months after a clearance to return to action, we'd be sure that something must be really wrong. If it was Andrew Bynum, we'd be sure he's "resting on company time" all over again. Rose? We don't know Rose. We know he's humble, and we know he's a warrior. But we don't know how much pain he can play through. We don't know his comfort levels. Would it be so surprising if we found out that Rose felt he needed an epic return, rather than a half-ready start in a late season snoozefest? Would it be so surprising if we found out that Rose wanted to make sure that he's not only healthy, but ready before he hops on the floor? It seems as though Rose's public persona often makes people assume that he doesn't have an ego. I can only speculate on what his motivations for sitting out are, but nobody becomes a league MVP without an ego.

In the end, whether Rose wants to return as he left, return in the right moment, or needs a few more days, weeks or months to defeat some anxiety connected with returning to the court? He should have the benefit of the doubt. For all I care, he could've decided to skip this season altogether and start anew next year. If Michael Jordan -- the greatest to ever play the game -- can go play minor league baseball for two years, why can't Derrick Rose take a few months off to adjust to life after a devastating injury? Why can we feel for Rose as the injury happens, but not when he might be suffering from the sports version of shell shock?

A topic for all of us to consider – selective empathy.

... What seemed like a simple delivery job has taken a turn for the worse. ...

"Guess who's wakin' up over here."

Phil Jackson blinked twice -- his hands were tied. He was kneeling in a graveyard on a dry, dark night. His head was pounding and his mouth was parched. Sore all over, like he'd been thrown around by a tornado for the last seventeen years. The pronounced aches of an old center's age were replaced by the more pressing aches of a man beaten to hell. He looked up, the blur in his vision fading. The confusion got worse. There was a young man in a strange suit with two weapon-clad bodyguards at his sides. The man looked at him. "Time to cash out." Phil blinked again. Is that a young Craig Sager? Before he could vocalize the thought, one of the armed guards jeered at the younger Sager. "Would you get it over with?"

"Maybe Khans kill people without lookin' em in the face, but I ain't a fink. Dig?" Phil stared blankly. OK. He's definitely talking like Craig Sager. "You've made your last delivery, kid." The man took out a silver poker chip, acting as though it would mean something to Jackson, then pocketed it. "Sorry you got twisted up in this scene. From where you're kneeling, must seem like an 18 carat run of bad luck. Truth is, the game was rigged from the start." The man who resembled Craig Sager whipped out a gun -- it had a picture of the Virgin Mary engraved into the handle. _Wait, for real? Craig Sager... kills people? With a stupidly ostentatious pistol? Is THAT where he gets the money for those suits? __Everything makes sense.___ The man pointed the gun at Phil's head. Phil opened his mouth -- partly in speech, partly in shock.

"Wait... Craig, really?" BANG. Phil Jackson's world went dark.

• • •

"You're awake. How about that?"

Phil Jackson awoke with a flash of light, sitting up in bed as though he'd been shot. (Funny story: he had.) At the chair beside him sat an old doctor, devoid of lab coat or identifying features. "Woah, easy there. Easy. You've been out cold a couple of days now. Why don't you just relax a second, get your bearings? Let's see what the damage is. What about your name? Can you tell me your name?"

"... name's Phil. Phil Jackson. You've probably heard of me."

"Can't say it's what I'd have picked for you, but if that's your name, that's your name."

"OK. First, that's a remarkably rude thing to say about a man's name. Second, stop playing dumb. I've won eleven rings. You know who I am, doc."

"I'm Doc Mitchell. Welcome to Goodsprings."

"Way to totally ignore what I just said. Look, I'm Phil Jackson. I used to coach the Lakers. Anything? The Bulls? Michael Jordan? Made a hilarious twitter account?"

"Now, I hope you don't mind, but I had to go rooting around there in your noggin to pull all the bits of lead out. I take pride in my needlework, but you'd better tell me if I left anything out of place." Doc Mitchell handed Phil a mirror. Jackson examined himself, scratching his beard. The Doctor said he'd only been out a few days, but Phil didn't know if he believed him; his beard was scraggly, like he'd been out for months on end. Otherwise, he looked about the same -- thinner, certainly, and (strangely enough) a bit younger. But he wasn't too worse for the wear. The Doctor did good work. That said, there was still the matter of Mitchell's responses -- the Doctor seemed to have little to no recognition of anything Phil was telling him, and his utter disregard for everything Phil said both bothered and intrigued him. He nodded, as though to approve of his surgeon's work. The doctor smiled. "Well, I got most everything right. No sense keeping you in bed anymore. Let's see if we can get you on your feet."

The doctor wrested Phil up from the bed, causing Jackson to wobble precariously at his bedside. "Are you SURE I was only out a few days?" After a few false starts, Phil finally got the hang of his legs. He quickly noticed that his gait -- once a bit awkward -- was now extremely regularized, each step virtually exactly like the one before. He had three speeds with no in-between: a slow walk, a brisk jog, and a breakneck sprint. After he jogged around Doc Mitchell's home a few times, toying with his new speed and his strangely regular gait, he realized that the doctor had been talking to him the entire time. Mitchell was pointing him towards an exceedingly odd contraption, a next-level version of one of those quarter machines you'd "test your strength" at in the 80s. Phil stepped up and put his hand on the lever.

His general confusion at the situation didn't abate with the strange machine -- if anything, it got more pronounced. As Phil adjusted the numbers, he could feel the edges of their impact on his frame as a whole -- as an experiment, he pushed Strength all the way to ten and felt his biceps ripple and bulge in a way they hadn't done since his New York days. As he raised his Charisma, he felt a calming trust fall over his countenance, as though he was becoming a new-age Ghandi. After playing around with the machine, Jackson settled on a set of numbers he felt allotted him the most reasonable facsimile of his day-to-day attitudes and skills: slightly lowered strength and agility, befitting his general age, but a high dose of luck and intelligence to counteract that. A touch of extra Charisma, Endurance, and Perception finished his work, allowing Jackson to step back and admire the statistics whose meaning he couldn't really understand.

As Phil turned off the machine, Doc Mitchell beckoned him into the next room, where there was a couch and a chair. He intimated that he was going to do a personality test -- Phil stared at him quizzically, made to refuse, then decided that it wasn't worth the effort. None of this makes any sense, but maybe if I play along I'll get out of here a little bit faster. Jackson sat down across from the doctor, who shuffled a few papers and took up his clipboard. "OK, Phil. I'm gonna say a word. Say the first thing that comes to mind. Let's start with... dog."

"Shep Smith."

"Night."

"Player Piano."

"Shelter."

"A one-armed bandit."

Doc Mitchell stared at him a few seconds, confused. "... Interesting. Now I've got a few pictures. Tell me what you think of when you see each one, Phil."

"Obviously that's the Larry O'Brien trophy... if you turned upside down and blew it up."

"The Triangle offense has gone horribly wrong."

"My 2009 championship ring placed upon an immaculate bed of velvet."

Phil Jackson sat, contented. The doctor nodded, jotted down a few notes, and then stared at Phil. Time seems to stop momentarily as a screen pops up, a screen that only Phil could see -- it had upon it a variety of skills and abilities. His screen explained that the skills came from his personality test, and that they show him to be skilled at energy weapons, explosives, and speech. After mulling it over for a minute, Jackson accepted the premise of the proficiencies. Energy Weapons is probably a thinly veiled critique of Sun Yue and Trevor Ariza, but I'll take it. Explosives makes a lot of sense -- I mean, Christ, I coached Ron Artest for two years, didn't I? As for speech, I'm not really sure about that. Doc must have a sense of humor. Maybe he HAS been listening to me. Whoops.

Phil nods, causing the screen to vanish and another to appear -- this one explains that Phil has a choice between a series of "perks", with the "Wild Wasteland" already selected. He scrolls through the screen, but it gets stuck on "skilled" -- the screen explains that Jackson will get two more skill points per level at the expense of 10% of all experience points going forward. Phil stares at the screen, completely at a loss as to what that means. He shrugs, accepts, and the screens leave him. The doctor escorts him out of the house, giving him "back" a bunch of personal effects that had been on Phil when he was brought into the doctor's office. Phil was surprised at the depth of his inventory -- he had (for whatever reason) a lot of bottle caps, a ton of guns, and a bunch of different variations on the concept of armor. After letting Phil pick out his clothing and put on his hat and his glasses, Doc Mitchell opened his door and sent him off, staring at his patient with a strangely vacant expression as Phil took his first steps forward into the Mojave Wasteland.

• • •

As Phil Jackson stepped into the barren Mojave, deja vu came over him. The world was familiar but unsettlingly different. Most of the houses in Goodsprings were boarded up, with a few of them completely obliterated. The mailboxes were all dusty with disuse and neglect, and nobody seemed to be bothered when Phil opened a few to examine the contents. Most of them had a strange assortment of junk -- one had a baseball glove, another a toy truck, another a flatiron. Occasionally, one would have a stack of money or a bunch of bottle caps. He pocketed the bottle caps, sensing in them some element of importance. He made his way up the hill behind the town, eventually stopping at the first place he remembered being -- the middle of the cemetery, right at the dug-up grave where he'd been shot.

Before he could examine the gravesite, Phil took out a machete and took on some obscenely disgusting creatures that were buzzing about -- giant toddler-sized flying roaches. Having quickly dispatched them, he sheathed his weapon and approached the gravesite, intently examining the area in hopes for one of those perfect moments where he'd suddenly remember everything that happened.

... yeah, no, that was a stupid idea.

Phil sighed, looking around. He closed his eyes and tried to think. Other than his general career as a basketball coach and as the world's most confusing motivational speaker, he couldn't really remember much of anything before he woke up with his hands tied at the gravesite. He supposed, on further examination, that such a response was to be expected -- his head still smarted a bit from the smack upside the head he'd taken at some point before this all began. That certainly wasn't going away for a while.

That said, he didn't necessarily need to know all that much more to know what he had to do. He vaguely remembered that the town of Goodsprings was in Nevada -- he'd visited Goodsprings long ago, with pals and peyote. He also vaguely remembered that it was reasonably close to Las Vegas, the only place on Earth that Craig Sager could escape into a crowd. In fact... that silver thing that Sager had flipped appeared to be a poker chip. So he's in Vegas. Impressed by his deductive reasoning, Jackson turned tail and headed for the town saloon -- perhaps they'd have a better idea of where he could find a car and make his way to Vegas. Perhaps if he was lucky, they'd even supply him some Absinthe!

As he entered the saloon, he noticed a lady leaving the saloon with an enormous, imposing dog. She was dressed in leather armor and bore a large varmint rifle, wistfully reminding Phil of Jeanie's short stint as the queen of a rogue biker gang. God, I miss Jeanie. I wonder where she is... He waved the lady down, explaining his situation to her. Her name was Sunny Smiles. As with Doc Mitchell, she had little to no idea who he was and hadn't seemed to have ever heard of "basketball" before. She laughed at the idea of a car, disturbing Phil -- how am I going to get to Vegas without one? Sunny was good people, though -- she offered to take Phil out to practice his shooting. As Phil hadn't shot a rifle in years, he accepted the offer.

They ran towards the town water supply, Sunny barking targeting orders and Phil trying to get everything straight in his head. Don't aim at the other person, kneel to steady your stance, "press V for VATS" ... wait, how do I press V? What does that even mean? Phil made to ask Sunny, but she shushed him -- they were crouched, now, sneaking up on a trio of giant geckos eating the piping at a well. Phil thought the flying roaches at the cemetary were big, but he was absolutely speechless at the size of the geckos -- they were 3-4 feet tall, with two rows of sharp, gnashing teeth and ghastly blackened claws. Their eyes were empty and soulless, and they looked like they'd tear anyone who met them to shreds. Jackson bit his lip and leaned over to Sunny.

"Are we... uh... are we sure we have to kill them?"

Sunny stared at him disapprovingly.

"OK, OK, fine."

Sunny shrugged, taking out her rifle. She aimed with her tongue out -- Jordan style! -- and pulled the trigger, letting off a perfectly aimed bead that caught one of the geckos straight in the face. The Gecko let out a piercing cry, causing all three of them to stop what they were doing and rush towards Phil and the gang. Phil crouched, aiming his gun carefully. He pulled the trigger and a similarly well-aimed shot hit another Gecko in the head -- it stumbled backwards. Phil shot again -- the Gecko's head exploded in a satisfying crack. Sunny and Phil continued, killing the lot of them without even needing to reload. The shooting over, Phil placed the rifle on the holster that adorned his back. Sunny punched him in the shoulder. "Good shootin', Phil!" Nothin to be scared of with these Geckos, you hear?"

"Yeah, yeah." Jackson shrugged, pretending he hadn't been mortified out of his wits just seconds earlier. Phil accompanied Sunny to another two wells, eliminating the Gecko problem and parting ways with a small payment for his services. The payment was in bottle caps, which confused Phil greatly, but not enough to ask any more questions.

Phil sat down to get his bearings, considering his options. It was almost night -- he'd been told he could sleep in one of the Goodsprings houses. Before he could decide, he was beckoned by a strange man by the name of Barton Thorn -- apparently, he needed Phil's help. "Mister, my girlfriend's trapped up on the old radio tower -- the geckos have trapped her up there. Please, mister, you have to save her!"

"The name's Phil Jackson. I won some rings. You've probably heard of me."

"Yeah, me too. I could really use some onion rings right now."

Phil stared.

• • •

DOES PHIL JACKSON HAVE THE SYMPATHY IN HIS HEART TO HELP BARTON THORN'S GIRLFRIEND?

... OR DOES HE HAVE NO TIME TO SUFFER FOOLS?

Decide in the comments below, or on twitter -- mention Phil Vegas to @gothicginobili or use the hashtag #PhilVegas for all responses. Leave any format-type concerns/thoughts in the comments as well. This is, as you must have noticed, decidedly a work in progress.

Remember our cracked-skull columnist, Alex Arnon? He hit his head a while back, fainted, and woke up a delusional man with tidings of a world where small markets ruled all comers. Over the past month, Arnon has been dealing with "personal matters", a thinly veiled cover-up for Arnon's voyage through the Serengeti to produce his new TV pilot for the local access channel: "What Blue Wildebeast Wants to Be A Millionaire?" (I tried to tell him it wouldn't work, especially with a total production budget of $3.54, but Arnon is a freakishly determined young man who doesn't need my sass.) Regardless. He's been kidnapped by a rampaging horde of zebras and is being ransomed off for drugs and money, even though zebras don't have the opposable thumbs necessary to do drugs or the credit score to spend the money. Until I can patch together a resolution to the situation, I'll be taking the reins to our Small Market Monday feature. Just let me knock myself in the head with this small market butter churner and I'll be right with you.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Gaze upon them, young small marketeers. Once, this team was the league's holy-of-holies. The team that the modern league juts out and features more than any other. The team with a market bigger than its britches and stars upon stars upon stars. But stars can't match grit and heart and guile -- not like you see in teams like the 29-48 Washington Wizards or the 24-52 Cleveland Cavaliers. No, this team of star power and free agent shuffling isn't a lock to win anything.

I refer, of course, to the Miami Heat.

"What!" you say, exclaiming in shock. "But Aaron, didn't they just win a flippity-gibbit of games... in a row?" Yes, readers, I looked it up -- they did indeed. But when I turned on my nationally televised grit-n-grind matchup between the plucky Charlotte Bobcats and the flagging Miami Heat, I couldn't help but feel bad for the boys in the gross-looking black and red jerseys. Sure, they had LeBron and Wade -- once. But they're gone now. And Chris Bosh can't play the entire game! Just look at some of the lineups Coach Spolestra was forced to play now that the team has lost their two stars!

• Norris Cole / James Jones / Shane Battier / Rashard Lewis / Chris Anderson (Outscored CHA by 4)
• Mario Chalmers / James Jones / Mike Miller / Rashard Lewis / Joel Anthony (Outscored CHA by 1)
• Norris Cole / James Jones / Shane Battier / Rashard Lewis / Chris Anderson (Outscored CHA by 5)

Look at those lineups! Isn't that wild? Somehow, Miami's D-Team gutted out a win against the good ol' Bobcats -- it was tough, but the Bobcats took pity on those hilarious lineups and decided to lay off the gas a bit. But we all know who's going to be laughing in the end. Just goes to show you, really... there's no such thing as a shortcut to a championship. You need to play terrible basketball for enough seasons in a row to luck your way into a franchise-changing superstar, potentially playing poorly enough that you alienate one of the NBA's best fanbases and force your team to move to a different location where the team will blossom into a perennial contender and cast the ire of the fanbase scorned, strengthening the resolve of the players that had little to no control over the move in general! That's how you get a ring in the NBA, not with this "free agency" stuff. Because if LeBron James and Dwyane Wade are "free" to "agent" for the Miami Heat, they're also "free" to "not-agent." And this is clearly -- CLEARLY -- what they have chosen to do. Good luck getting past the Eastern Conference Finals without your stars, Miami!

... wait, the Knicks are the 2nd best team in the east? OK, maybe they'll still get past the ECF. STILL THOUGH.

• • •

The State of The Small Market Union (Sponsored by The Memphis School of Modern Dance)

The state of the union is strong, folks -- like it always is, and always will be. We currently have FIVE solid small market playoff matchups to look forward to as the regular season winds to a close and the playoffs begin to play-off. In the West, the two topline matchups are small market mainstays -- San Antonio and Oklahoma City will be facing off against some combination of Utah, Los Angeles, Golden State, and Houston. Hooray! Elsewhere in the West, the Memphis Grizzlies look to be facing off against the Los Angeles Clippers in the first round, searching for redemption from their discouraging playoff loss against the Clippers this past season. In the East, there are quite a few more large markets at play -- only two small market mainstays are in the East's playoff picture, and it's entirely possible they'll meet in the first round! Those matchups, as we stand: ATL/IND & MIL/MIA. Go team!

• • •

Minnesota Air Traffic Control presents the "Raven in a Jet Engine!" Ricky Rubio MVP Watch

Goodbye, handsome Chandler Parsons. Hello, handsome Ricky Rubio! And just in time, too -- Rubio's last week has been a veritable Typhlosion of small market heroics. His overall averages over that timeframe? Twelve points, four rebounds, ten assists, four steals, and four turnovers per game. Nice, right? Nice! But to simply glide over the statistics is to glide over what makes Ricky the truest small market hero of them all -- in the past week, Ricky Rubio has gone 7 of 33 on two point shots. That's 21%! Look at this man, this beautiful man. Here he is, seeing his big men struggling to get rebounds. His heart! -- ... she aches. But Rubio is not a chump. He's a lover. He's a fighter. He's the kind of a player who misses 26 of his 33 two point shots just to help his friends catch a break. Whattaguy. Easily this week's Small Market MVP. Easily.

• • •

Small Market Mondays Game of the Night: LOUISVILLE vs MICHIGAN

There aren't any NBA games on Monday, because David Stern doesn't want to one-up March Madness. That's totally fine for us over here at Small Market Mondays -- there are few things more Small Market than a game in the Georgia Dome between a team from Louisville, Kentucky and a team from Ann Arbor, Michigan. AND you're telling me the shot clock is 11 seconds longer, AND you're telling me there are a maximum of three real NBA players in the game, AND the three point line is incomprehensibly close... even though the kids can barely hit it? It's everything I've always dreamed of, friends. SIGN ME UP.

Other quick-hits for great small-market matchups in the coming week:

• Cleveland Cavaliers at Indiana Pacers (TUE, 4/9): The Pacers are probably going to wipe the floor with the Cavaliers, but it's always nice to see Kyrie Irving playing unnecessary basketball games at the end of a season when it's actually in Cleveland's best interest to close the season on an incredible losing streak. Everything's great!

• Charlotte Bobcats at Detroit Pistons (FRI, 4/12): It's a wonder this one isn't on Pay-Per-View. Two teams with absolutely nothing left to play for are in essence shelving their young players and putting out rosters that barely resemble NBA teams. Gonna be great! Grit! Hustle! Grind!

• Milwaukee Bucks at Charlotte Bobcats (SAT, 4/13): If you thought Charlotte was FLAT on Friday, wait until you see how FLAT they are on a back-to-back at home against what passes for a playoff team in the Eastern Conference! [Ed. Note: FLAT is an acronym standing for "Fantastic Largesse! (... and Also Tenacious!)"]

See you next week, Small Marketeers! Stay frosty.

Hey, folks. In our stable of rippling thoroughbred writers, we've managed to accumulate four writers whose names begin with "A." It's hard to fashion a feature out of the first letter of someone's name, though. We've also managed to accumulate two San Antonio Spurs fans and one Oklahoma City Thunder fan. Fitting with that, after every Thunder/Spurs game for the rest of eternity, the powers that be at Gothic Ginobili ... er, me ... will throw our three SAS/OKC rooting authors in the sarlaac pit to talk about the game and the matchup, all while being slowly digested by the most confusing creature George Lucas ever imagined. Today's broader topic: the April 4th, 2013 matchup in the Oklahoma City Thunderdome.

First question isn't a question. It's just a quote and a statement. "Home-court advantage mattered more last year because the Spurs were on a 20-game win streak." That was an actual thing Reggie Miller said on live television. No moral.

Alex Dewey: I agree with that. It makes perfect sense to me.

Jacob Harmon: What is he even saying there?

Alex Dewey: Oh, wait. Hold on. I'm that guy from Memento, I forgot.

Aaron McGuire: I have absolutely no idea. I mostly just noted it down it so we could gawk at it. What could he possibly be saying? What could that possibly mean?

Jacob Harmon: Who did it matter more to? The Spurs? The Thunder? I... I don't know.

Aaron McGuire: Is it... like... "the Spurs were on a 20 game winning streak therefore home court was... less important... because... they were 20-0 in the streak, and they won everywhere. The Thunder didn't care about home court advantage because the Spurs were 20-0 during the streak but 0-4 afterwards. Professional analyst, Reggie Miller, reporting for duty."

Jacob Harmon: Did you hear him say "Tim Duncan looking for the foul on the block by Tim Duncan"? Reggie's observations come from a place outside time and space, man.

Aaron McGuire: Fair.

Alex Dewey: Look, Aaron. You're being such a jerk about this. I'll have you know, Reggie was using an advanced maximum likelihood estimator with some factor analysis. He reasoned backwards from the 20-game winning streak and noticed that 10 of those came in the playoffs and 10 came in the regular season, therefore, home court was not the dominant factor in the Spurs winning streak.

Aaron McGuire: Haha, look at Dewey, with his nerd-rat pocket square statistics.

Alex Dewey: Real talk, though -- was Reggie Miller smoking a tailpipe blunt filled with neurotoxins on-air?

Aaron McGuire: That seems unlikely. Anyway, one last thing that has to be noted before we stop talking about Reggie. "MOMMY HAS SOMETHING FOR DADDY TO DO" has to rank among the worst dunk calls in the history of the sport, doesn't it? It just... it didn't make sense in the moment, and even afterwards, there was a lot of innuendo and sketchiness in that commercial in general.

Jacob Harmon: I felt the gutter thing was really meta. The innuendo is that this kid's mom is about to take Kevin Durant to town, then it turns out she just wants him to do chores. But he's cleaning the gutters, the implication being that the viewer's head is in the gutter for thinking that there was a sexual connotation to the "mommy has something for daddy to do" line. Was this obvious, or am I a genius?

Aaron McGuire: I thought something roughly similar when I first saw the commercial, but I never stated it as eloquently. Respect. Still, I'm struggling to think of any dunk calls that would be worse than that in terms of being creepy and out of place. Best I can think of are some don't-you-dare ones, like "BOOM GOES THE BOMB" in OKC or "THE JET PLANE HAS CRASHED INTO THE BUILDING" if Jason Terry hits a game-winning three in New York. Just these horribly offensive wastes of nature. That's how that dunk call struck me, albeit in a much less offensive-to-my-core-nature way. Come on, Reggie. Pull it together. Anyway. NEXT QUESTION, FOLKS.

• • •

Actual basketball analysis this time. Name one thing you saw in this game that isn't going to happen if these two teams meet again.

Jacob Harmon: I don't predict Derek Fisher being the Thunder's third-leading scorer again. Ever, really, but certainly not in a playoff series. That was insane. And I don't expect the Spurs offense to be so disjointed if either Manu or Parker gets back to a decent facsimile of their full form.

Alex Dewey: Tony Parker isn't missing three straight chippies again. Alternatively, the Thunder letting the Spurs back in it while the Spurs are playing that terribly.

Aaron McGuire: Mine's more of an anti-Spurs omen, unfortunately, but it has to be said. The Spurs are never ever going to shoot more free throws than OKC in OKC. Ever again. Period.The Spurs defense did a great job of defending without fouling, I felt, but the Thunder are built to go to the line. They're programmed to go to the line. And even when your team schemes them perfectly? They still go to the line. They're eldritch. That's simply not going to happen, and it's unfortunate for San Antonio that they were able to execute their defensive game plan really well and still come up so short.

Alex Dewey: True point.

Jacob Harmon: I'd agree with that. I don't remember the last time OKC spent so little time at the line.

Aaron McGuire: There's a good reason you don't remember it. The last time the Thunder shot 13 or fewer free throws was in a game against the Bulls... on January 4th, 2010.

Jacob Harmon: AHAHAHA JESUS

Aaron McGuire: And that one was on the road. Their last home game where they shot 13 or fewer free throws was April 10th, 2009. All this is to say I feel like I can be reasonably confident that the Thunder won't be shooting 13 or fewer free throws in the playoffs any time soon, even if the Spurs continue to defend them so well. Will they face a Spurs team with a 1-6 Tony Parker? Not in the playoffs this year, because if Tony's playing that badly, the Spurs won't make the conference finals. But the Spurs are going to have to live with the fact that the Thunder will inevitably be at the line more than they were tonight. And their offense really needs to step up to match that. Anyway. Next question.

• • •

Name one thing you hadn't thought of going into the game that could definitely swing a playoff game.

Aaron McGuire: Tony Parker getting injured, or Kawhi Leonard having a breakout series.

Jacob Harmon: Besides the obvious things, like "no Tony or Manu" or "Fisher getting hot from three"... I'd go with Kawhi giving KD some real problems. That surprised me.

Alex Dewey: I was thinking the opposite thing, actually -- that Kevin Durant could kill the Spurs offense if he keyed in defensively against Kawhi Leonard. Kawhi isn't a distributor like Manu or Tony, but he's grown to become a vital part of the Spurs offense. Doesn't mean he's not a heck of a lot smaller than Durant, and despite Kawhi's amazing game, there were times when Durant's length seemed to bother him a bit and it stagnated the Spurs offense.

Aaron McGuire: That might get fixed when Tony gets back, but it's a good point.

Alex Dewey: True.

Aaron McGuire: It didn't swing this game, but in a game where Fisher doesn't make 6 of 8 shots, it could've swung it -- Kevin Martin looked straight-up terrible against the Spurs. He's way less versatile than Harden is, and if this is the kind of ball he's going to play in the playoffs, he'll be worse than useless.

Jacob Harmon: I'm with you on that. He's been the biggest question mark all season and that hasn't changed. He's efficient as all get-out, but like... he's been incredibly inconsistent. Some people are saying it's because Westbrook and Durant don't get him the ball, but it's really not. He just looks completely lost half the time, even when he gets his.

Alex Dewey: Yeah. Dude doesn't have the offensive creativity or athleticism of a James Harden. Makes me think he'd be potentially dominated in a series against any team with a wealth of perimeter stoppers.

Aaron McGuire: Doesn't need to be a stopper. Just someone who gets close and puts fear in his eyes. Anyway. Net result is you have this player who's incredibly efficient, but whose teams rarely make the playoffs and who -- at least now -- is so far down the food chain that teams don't put an excess of energy into scouting him like they do with Oklahoma City's big three. In a playoff series, though? The other teams key in on everything. And that may make him way less useful.

Alex Dewey: I've been saying this since October! Remember Magic Bonner?

Aaron McGuire: Yes.

Jacob Harmon: Ibaka is the X-Factor. I worry more about those games where nobody looks for him than all the ones people gripe about where Martin gets left out. He's more important on offense AND defense. We've lost so many games where Ibaka leaks out, gets to his spots, sneaks open, puts his hands out for an open jumper he's automatic with... and just gets ignored. Completely and totally ignored. And his rebounding is inconsistent. It can be the difference between a dominant performance and a surprise upset.

Aaron McGuire: That inconsistency is huge. During OKC's big run to pull away in the first half, Ibaka had something like 6 rebounds. But during all of the Spurs runs, Kawhi Leonard would box him out and snag rebounds over him. It was a tale of two teams when Ibaka's rebounding was on and off. Ibaka shouldn't have trouble rebounding over Kawhi Leonard, much as I love the kid. He outweighs him by Ten Mo Williamses, the traditional unit of weight in the NBA. Next question.

• • •

Russell Westbrook has never missed a game in his NBA career. Please advise.

Alex Dewey: ...

Jacob Harmon: Russell Westbrook is a cyborg.

Aaron McGuire: Russell Westborg? Also, let's be clear -- without Westbrook, the Thunder lose this game badly. He dominated it.

Jacob Harmon: A lot of people think that fact is brought up constantly. I don't think it's mentioned enough.

Alex Dewey: ...

Aaron McGuire: It really isn't. No other elite point guard does that. Shouldn't he get a pass, sometimes, for having a bad game where he makes the court? Elite point guards seem to average, like, 70 games per season. Tops. He's always there. Isn't a 50% Westbrook better than one of those nights when Deron Williams leaves the work to New Jersey's third string, or Kyrie Irving leaves the work to Cleveland's anything-but-him string? It's HUGE.

Jacob Harmon: Exactly! How in God's name do you play at his level -- and specifically, the way he plays -- and NEVER miss a game or get hurt? It's not like he doesn't take hits. He takes falls that would put mortals in stretchers.

Alex Dewey: Well, uh... I um... I bet he misses a ton of games at... making... shots? I can't even believe the premise of the question. You're lying. This is a ruse. It's a troll you've cooperated on to expose my ignorance. There's no way Westbrook hasn't missed any games. That's impossible. Next question.

Jacob Harmon: No, it's true. Not in high school, not in college, not in the NBA. He's a robot.

Aaron McGuire: Dewey, click on this and look at his games played by season. I dare you.

Alex Dewey: ... DAMN, homie. Please advise. I scared. I'm shook.

Jacob Harmon: Honest fact and possible emotion admission from an off-the-reservation Thunder fan: I've felt like Westbrook has dominated this Thunder team this season. I find myself feeling he's "the guy" offensively more than Kevin Durant, nearly every night.

Aaron McGuire: While I instinctively disagree because I'm not Westbrook's biggest proponent, and I haven't seen every Thunder game this season... I can't disagree completely. I'm one of the leading proponents of the "LeBron isn't auto-MVP" argument in Durant's favor, but there have DEFINITELY been games that I've felt that Westbrook has been the more important star when you watch the Thunder get into their sets and move the ball. Durant's efficiency has come coupled with a drop in usage. Westbrook's has stayed flat. Westbrook handles the ball more and Durant's major flaw remains that he's arguably the worst elite scorer in the league at simply getting open to receive a pass. It's frustrating.

Alex Dewey: That's one reason that the Durant-for-MVP case never felt quite right to me.

Jacob Harmon: Possible sacrilege -- I've had a lot of trouble getting really enthused about Durant's efficiency feat this season. It's a really eye-test sort of thing to say, but I've felt he's been really unreliable this year. Scoring to the handle. ESPECIALLY the handle. I expect him to lose the ball every time he puts it down. Maybe that's just an emotional thing -- he hit a ton of huge shots last season that could be serendipitous. But I've trusted Westbrook more this year. And I understand saying this makes me very weird.

Aaron McGuire: This year's Thunder team demonstrates a funny truth about the usage/efficiency tradeoff. When a crazy-nuts scoring talent like Kevin Durant lowers his usage and has a subsequent increase in efficiency, people want him to use the ball more with the idea that he'll continue shooting the same way rather than revert to his prior form. Westbrook maintaining his usage ends up looking like he's cheating the fans, even though Durant returning to his former usage would probably lead to a return to his old efficiency. It's a catch-22 for Westbrook.

Jacob Harmon: Otherwise known as the ever-popular "if Westbrook would pass more, Durant could score infinite points per game" theory.

Alex Dewey: It's ironic because that theory is low-key opposite of the discourse 10 years prior. The narrative has shifted from Jordan to LeBron as the basketball ideal, except for crunch time and who hits the "big" shots. Probably an overstatement, but still -- we lionize Durant's 50-40-90 over the equally insane feat of playing every game ever and shooting like his life depended on it with slightly worse efficiency. I wonder if he'll always be relegated to that Dirk status of needing a perfect complement in order to have a chance at a title at all, now that Harden is gone.

Jacob Harmon: ...

Aaron McGuire: ...

Alex Dewey: Well OK that wa--...

Aaron McGuire: That's a Sean Elliot-level overstatement. OKC's point differential this year is nearly +10. They're winning games -- on average -- by blowout margins. This team is really really good. They have more than just a "chance" at a title. That's a clown statement, bro. Come on.

Alex Dewey: Yeah, that was the textual equivalent of a shot that felt bad coming off my hands.

Jacob Harmon: Yeah. Numbers-wise, the Thunder are a great team. There are just questions. There are always questions.

Alex Dewey: OK, fair. My main point was that Westbrook -- contrary to the prevailing view -- actually IS that perfect complement. He uses the possessions Durant can't get open for. He elevates Durant and fills in his weaknesses, and visa versa.

• • •

"If the Thunder lose the first round, _______ will be responsible for it." and "If the Spurs lose in the first round, _____ will be responsible for it."

Alex Dewey: Two questions, one answer. Rockets.

Aaron McGuire: Note -- doesn't have to be a team. Can be a player.

Jacob Harmon: The first round matchup I most want to see as a Thunder fan is Houston, but I don't think they've got a snowball's chance in hell of winning it. So that's out. Assuming the 8th seed is the Lakers, which I do? I mean... crap, man. I don't know.

Aaron McGuire: My answers would be Ibaka/Martin and Tony Parker, respectively. I can see scenarios playing out where Ibaka gets flustered by a rejuvenated Howard/Gasol pairing or overwhelmed playing center against Asik in an absolute worst case scenario. Or, as we discussed earlier, simply ignored despite being one of OKC's biggest matchup advantages against any of the low-seed teams. Martin... we talked about. I think him fading would hurt the Thunder a lot more than most people think -- he's important to them. As for Parker, when he has a "bad Tony" game, the Spurs can get beaten by anyone. Regardless of who else is on the court. He makes the Spurs offense coherent. The days of perfect pinpoint offensive execution are long gone -- the Spurs haven't looked like that since December, and I doubt it's coming back this season. They need Parker playing well to bring naught more than a vestige of order to the offense now that their Duncan/Splitter defense has evolved into an elite crew. Without him? Life's tough.

Jacob Harmon: Absolutely no doubt that Ibaka can't handle a rejuvenated Gasol/Howard. Thing is, I don't see any rejuvenation in their future. Between him, Perkins, and Collison? They haven't had much trouble all season. I don't think anyone should be scared of the Lakers. This question is tough for me, because I don't think either team CAN lose in the first round. But I'd consider picking the Rockets to steal a few games, simply because of Harden.

Aaron McGuire: The Rockets are credible nightmare fuel simply due to their overreliance on threes. They could get swept if they have a bad series from behind the arc, but get hot for a few games? They'll steal more than their fair share and they'll make it a hard fought series. Period.

Alex Dewey: Same with the Warriors.

Aaron McGuire: I think they're a worse team than the Rockets, but fair point. Anyways. One last thing...

• • •

_Alex Dewey _made this image tonight. Respond.

Jacob Harmon: What is this. Why am I looking at Matt Moore. What.

Alex Dewey: Yep.

Aaron McGuire: Dewey why.

Alex Dewey: Yep.

Aaron McGuire: Also, one tertiary question -- why in God's name do you use "puu.sh" for everything?

Alex Dewey: It's really cool, you just press CTRL-SHIFT-F4 and it lets you take a screenshot and then you puu.sh it to the server.

Jacob Harmon: Unh. Puu.sh it. Puu.sh it good.

Alex Dewey: Puu.sh it real good now.

Aaron McGuire: ... Forget I asked. Readers, these are my writers.

This part of the NBA season sucks.

No, really. It's awful. For the fans, players, media... everyone. Beat up and burnt out NBA teams with little left to play for don't make good television. They don't make compelling analysis, either -- at this point, most teams have cast their gaze to the barren playoffs, lying in wait as the games that REALLY matter beckon them forward. Players rest, teams tank, and the NBA product becomes trite and uninteresting.

Of course, this isn't news. People have known about the NBA's general March miasma for a while. Here at Gothic Ginobili, we've been lagging a bit. Partly due to our writers being astonishingly busy, partly due to the general lag in the NBA lately. I've always been a strong advocate of the idea that you should fix a period of lagging content and lacking inspiration by going completely off the wall and trying the weirdest idea that comes into your head. After all, I hired Dewey. So I took a few ideas into the back shed and came up with what I believe to be one of the alternatingly worst/best ideas I've ever scribed. Please join me in extending a warm welcome to GG's newest feature -- Fallout: Phil Vegas.

• • •

Let's start with the basics. In its simplest form, Fallout: Phil Vegas is going to involve a playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas. For those of you who aren't familiar with the game, here's your summary. The game centers around a post-apocalyptic world where the world's been utterly ravaged by nuclear war and taken over by several disparate ruling factions. You play the role of the Courier, tasked with delivering an unreasonably important item to an unreasonably important faction leader. Throughout the game you fight various radiation-mutated beasts in the Mojave Wasteland, gaining levels and experience as you find progressively more ridiculous weapons and armor. You eventually have to choose which faction to align with out of four entirely different choices. Fun times. This won't be any old vanilla playthrough of the game, though, and it won't be formatted in the same trite "let's play!" format that's common among video game playthroughs. That's too simple for me. The main conceit behind this particular playthrough of the game is three-fold.

First, the Courier -- the game's main character -- is familiar to our readers. It's Phil Jackson. This is what he looks like:

Classy, Phil.

Second, I won't be taping the run and putting it on YouTube. I'll be playing the game, taking screenshots, and writing a story using the screenshots and the in-game dialogue as one side of a two-sided conversation. The second side -- Phil Jackson's thoughts, hopes, and dreams -- will be handled through text. Ever hear the old thought experiment about how Twilight was only produced so that someday Kanye West would someday be hired to play the role of one of the vampires without ever being given the script or the slightest idea what was going on? That's the goal here, with good ol' Phil. While the events of the game take root, Jackson serves as the completely confused (and fittingly bemused) straight man. "What am I doing here? What's going on? WHY ARE THESE GECKOS SO HUGE?!?"

The third side, as you may have surmised, is that there will be a certain amount of reader interaction. We'll be using a newly established @gothicginobili twitter account, the comment sections, and email. At the end of each post we'll have a set of reader-choice "next moves" for our bespectacled protagonist, and as I play through the game, I'll post the occasional question to Twitter asking readers to pick between several possible decision points. I'm not entirely sure how much reader interaction we'll be modeling into the playthrough -- I may realize early on that it's better to keep things surprising and axe the "reader choice" part of the deal. But I'd like to try it out, if nothing else; I'm not an experienced gamer whatsoever, and I'm positive we have readers with awesome ideas that could burnish this segment greatly.

Regardless. This whole idea could crash and burn on arrival. I realize that. It still seems really silly to me, but in a good way -- it's like a fun little throwback to the #RedDocRedemption saga where I played through Red Dead Redemption and vocalized my non-gamer confusion at everything that ever happened. That said, it's a strange series. It's weird, it's stupid, and although I'm trying to simplify it as much as possible, I can already tell it's going to be a bit complicated. I've started working on a rough order-of-operations for the game and some of the big "decision points" I can float out to you readers. I'm going to try to post one Fallout: Phil Vegas post every Tuesday and Thursday from now until the game ends or the overall segment becomes loathed by our readers. I see you, folks.

Until then, check back at Gothic Ginobili every Tuesday and Thursday to gradually answer the question that everyone's always wondered.

If Phil Jackson was tasked with saving the world in a post-apocalyptic Nevada... what would he do?

• • •

EPISODE INDEX

EPISODE #1: "A Run of Bad Luck" -- Phil Jackson wakes up in the Mojave Wasteland, shot in the head and confused about everything. Phil picks his stats, learns to shoot, and gets his bearings.

Last night's contest between the Dallas Mavericks and the Los Angeles Lakers pitted against one another two disappointing teams fighting for their rapidly fading dreams. On one side, you had L.A.'s wayward title aspirants -- once ballyhooed as the greatest collection of talent since the 1996 Chicago Bulls, the end result seems to have erred on the side of the 2011 Boston Red Sox. Lots of glitter, lack of grit. Lots of glamor, lack of glory. Et cetera, et cetera. The Lakers entered the season with a singular dream: that of a dominant title-winning season, coupling a return to glory for Kobe and Pau with a late-career sparkle for Steve Nash and the first of many for their mercurial center.

Now, of course, they're scrambling to make the playoffs.

As for the Mavericks? Dominance was never in the cards for this Dallas team. They started the season without their centerpiece and featured a cobbled together roster of ancients and refuse, one of the greatest challenges of Carlisle's career as a coach. The goal wasn't a title, even if that would've been wonderful. The goal was to keep an even keel and show the world that the Mavericks don't back down. The goal was a playoff team. And not just that, perhaps, but a strong one that pushes a higher seed and provides the basis for Dirk's future. The tertiary lights behind a future title team. Home court? Inconceivable. But stealing home court? Perceptible, with Dirk's quintessence and possible throwback years from the likes of Carter, Brand, and Marion.

Alas, it was not to be. The Mavericks entered the year without Dirk Nowitzki, which wasn't their death knell; all things considered, their opening schedule was astonishingly easy and gave them the chance to tread water. And they did tread, standing at a respectable 7-9 at the dawn of December. Originally, we thought Dirk would be back then. A return just as the schedule started to get rough. But that didn't happen. Dirk's rehab took just a few weeks too long, and his original on-court manifestation was balky at best and depressing at worst. The Mavericks were 12-15 when Dirk returned, but Dirk wasn't quite Dirk yet -- he returned to the court in a 38-point loss to his team's bitter rivals, and the Mavericks lost 8 of the first 9 games Dirk played in. Thirteen wins to twenty three losses. Ten games under 0.500 -- it was a dismal record, one that Dirk Nowitzki had never seen before this season. The dream appeared to be dead. The playoffs were a distant, bitter memory in a season gone completely awry.

But a funny thing happened on the way to obsolescence. The Mavericks -- those downtrodden, downbeat Mavericks -- finally began to win again. It was slow at first. An overtime win against the Kings, a four game streak, a three game streak. Nothing world-breaking, nothing astonishing. In a season of 15-game win streaks and 55 win five seeds, nothing that moved the radar. But, life support or not, the dream wasn't quite dead yet. All of the sudden, after going ten games under 0.500, the Mavericks were 22-13... with four heartbreaking losses by 3 points or less in the stretch. They were virtually tied for the 9-spot. They were knocking at the door. Dirk was magnificent, although the team had no idea how to get him the ball. The defense was shaky, but Marion and Brand did just enough to pull out the wins. Players were in-and-out, but Carlisle was putting together a rotation again. The door was open, and in one fateful night, they had the opportunity to wrest it ajar and pronounce their arrival to the world.

The final margin -- that grisly 20-point margin -- looks rough. But it wasn't quite as rough as one would think. This wasn't a laugher. It goes down in the record books as a 20-point blowout, and the Mavericks season may go down in the record books as a generally awful sub-0.500 affair. But that understates the torment for the fans and the team and the general public. This uneven, unlucky season was much more painful than a garden variety blowout.

Consider the turn of events that decided the game. With 4:20 left to play, the Mavericks were within 7 points. Dirk Nowitzki had just entered the game, and Dwight Howard was headed to the line. And Dwight missed both! But Earl Clark, everyone's least likely Laker mainstay at the start of the season, corralled the offensive rebound and dished to Pau Gasol for an easy two. Suddenly, it was a ten point game. Carlisle drew up a play for a Nowitzki three. Clank. The Mavericks foul Dwight Howard, praying for the seemingly inevitable misses. He makes 1-of-2, but Dirk misses another three. Another Howard foul, which is again the right move -- probabilistically, Howard should miss 1-of-2, and it should remain a game. But he doesn't give away the points -- this time he makes them both. The Mavericks rush their next possession and end it with an awkward Vince Carter two. Clank. Another Howard foul, another 2-for-2 trip. Nowitzki gets fouled himself, but probability mocks these Mavericks -- Dirk goes 0-for-2, as Howard makes another 1-for-2 on the next possession. And then, to cap things off, Kobe Bryant drains a pretty two pointer with 1:46 left to play. The once-surmountable lead is now 19 points strong, and the game is over.

There will be no miracles. There will be no comebacks. These merry, plucky, bearded Mavericks trudge to the bench as Sacre, Dentmon, and Morrow take the court to play out the string. And as a proud Dirk Nowitzki and the remnants of one of the league's most impressive champions watch their season slip away in a single game, everyone's left wondering what might have been. Without Dirk's injury, do these Mavericks -- they of a 22-14 record with a healthy Dirk, I might remind -- challenge for the 5 seed? These Mavericks were beset by bad luck from the get-go, and over the course of the season, they've lost a startling 12 games by five points or less. For comparison, Golden State lost only 4 such games. Houston? Only 7. Sometimes, the chips don't fall. You don't hit your straight. You're one roll short.

On a warm spring night in the City of Angels, two dreams met on the field of battle. One left bolstered -- the other, defeated. The Los Angeles Lakers still have their unlikely title shot -- their flagging, fading, sputtering title shot. It's a shadow of expectations, certainly, but the expectations were too high to begin with. They've come accustomed to their new reality, and they're persevering in the face of adversity. But they're also one more thing, perhaps more important than anything else. They're lucky, once again.

The Mavericks are not. And as we bid adieu to the 2013 Dallas Mavericks, we happen upon their eulogy.

"You were alright, but you just weren't lucky."

The following story is entirely fictional. Any resemblance to persons or situations real or fake is entirely coincidental, and entirely awesome.

Fumbling an ice tray to the ground in the Warriors' break room, the thought struck me: Richard Jefferson must have been frustrated. As Richard is most interesting when frustrated, and as I have an uncanny gift for frustrating him, I smelled opportunity. I unexpectedly tapped Richard on the shoulder with my ice-cold hands and asked (in a deliberately annoying, lilting inflection) "How are you today, R-Jay?"

Though startled, Richard's response immediately convinced me that the end of days was at hand. The first thing I noticed was that Richard's eyes had a cartoonish glint to them, and even his teeth and nails seemed whiter. His skin was childish and immaculate as always, punctuated only by the occasional bump on the noggin received in the course of things. But today there were not even bumps, there were not even doubts: Richard exuded an uncharacteristic confidence as he turned to face me, wiped the proverbial dirt off his shoulder, and drowned out all the haters of the world. To my shock, there was even enthusiasm in his voice as he began one of his stream-of-entirely-reasonable-consciousness rants. "I'm actually doing just fine, John. How are you doing? How are your studies. You are an adolescent, and you know, that means that you must study in school much of the day. I hope you are learning things of import. I was a youngster, too, back in the Reagan Administration..." Jefferson trailed off amicably and smiled with the glee of precisely-aimed self-deprecation that nevertheless left him potent and confident.

I felt like the Grinch when Whoville didn't get all pissed off after someone stole their bikes.

"Why are you okay, RJ? You messed up with the ice tray and then I startled you with my hand. That's not right, RJ."

Richard kept at it. "Haha, whoa, John. You sound mad! Just a little bit, but I can taste it. 'U mad, bro?' I think that, you know, that's what the kids are saying these days, heh."

"Frig." I said clumsily, before receding my eyes at the seemingly reversed roles. I was mad, I thought. I am a basketball journalist that oozes confidence (my holy mantra being "smooth, suave, and sophisticated"), and I have watched Richard with fastidious amusement for four years of his absurdly reasonable demeanor while he unfortunately attempts to play a sport. And now, for once, he is unequivocally happy, and all I can do is stumble over my words in bafflement. So I tried to get an explanation. "I mean, what happened, Richard, did you get an extension? Did Mark Jackson say you were starting? Or maybe not playing at all? I'm never sure what you actually want, heh. Did, like, you find out you're a prodigy at a sport that you're *not* declining at? Did you get three 50-50 balls in a row for the first time in your life? Are you in love?" I asked everything I could think of, each one strangely insulting in its own way.

Richard laughed at all of these suggestions. "No, no, no, and no. None of that happened. You know, I'm still a pretty bad basketball player, all considering," Richard shrugged, still with confidence, "and I'm too reasonable to try other sports that might find me injured, and hence nullify my contract. I mean, definitely I'm still on the downswing. I didn't win any 50-50 balls ("Not even one, Richard?" I thought better than to interject), and I'm not in love. I'm not starting but I will be playing, but not much. Just like before. But," and Richard smiled once again, "I did have quite the recent experience."

"What in God's name happened, Richard? What in God's green Earth happened to provoke this? You know as well as I do that you should not be so happy." and Richard averred this with a shrug.

"Do you really want to know?" Richard asked with an amused look of genuine curiosity. "I mean, I'm not even a front-page player anymore. I won't really get any hits for your blog."

"RJ, I know nothing about what this story is but I will publish it, live, in real time. Just tell me. Please," I begged pathetically, somewhat to my own surprise. Like a dog, I recalled from Kafka.

"Are you sure?" and now Richard Jefferson was mocking me and I wasn't sure how to respond, except to note from the tenor of his voice the only possible explanation.

"Richard Jefferson, did you win at something, finally?"

At this Richard smiled silently.

"You might say that, John," and he began to tell the story.

~ Six Weeks Earlier ~

"People in L.A. take the weather for granted, John. I grew up in Arizona, you know. And being from San Antonio is a little better but you might get periods where you need to have several gallons of water every day just to not die when you're in Arizona. Then I played in New Jersey all those years, and it's just as bad in its own way. When there aren't any hurricanes kicking down your door, that's only because it's winter, where every day is its little own adventure in bleak, premature darkness. And the smell, dear God. Milwaukee, San Antonio, Oakland... we don't take anything for granted in this life, except that life is awful half the time. At least per the weather, heh. But, you know, I bought a place in San Diego a few years ago, and they just don't get it. Those places are paradises when it comes to the weather, pretty much year-round. They get rain a few days in June and they call it "June Gloom" like God is, you know, frowning on them by giving them an ounce of precipitation. They're totally entitled. But I guess I would be the same way too if I'd lived there my whole life."

"I get it, Richard. Weather is pretty nice there." I said, trying to shoehorn Richard's interminable rambling into something with a little more pop.

"Okay, John," Richard paused his fugue to note my insistence. "But let me just say this: So it's February and I'm in L.A. on business. And it's one of those days where every place in the world, tropical islands and all, is just a sea of snow and darkness but for a satellite splotch over Southern California. It's one of those, you know, bright, perfect-weather days where "Today was a good day" is lilting out of every convertible, slowed somehow. And people seemed to really appreciate it. The cars, you know, seemed to move slower even, and there weren't any traffic jams. So I was walking along, just soaking up the sun on the red-orange Earth and pavement with the most wonderfully baked sidewalks, and I get to my meeting in the most handsome suit, briefcase and shades. No one took this day for granted who felt the sun. I'm six foot six and once I was seven. Sun gods were invented in antiquity to explain how perfect the day is."

"... Okay, Richard. Is that all you got to say about the weather?"

"Yeah, that's about all I got about the weather, man. I'm setting the stage. See, I got into the building I was going to and entered the boardroom. And, lengthwise across a cheap, tiny, you know, old, varnish-smelling boardroom table? There sat Clippers owner Donald Sterling, slightly sheathed by the shadow of a lampshade. The room was hot and small and he looked surly, talking to someone else on a phone from 1993."

"Wait, you were meeting with Sterling? Why?"

"Well, you'll probably figure it out when I tell you the other guy in the room. But whatever the case, Sterling's first words were 'Turn up the heat a few degrees, Richard, or I'll turn it up myself.'

"It was sweltering, John. That room was hot as a sauna and smelled like a greenhouse made of wood and just painted over and never ventilated. It was a boardroom and it was stifling. So I say that to Sterling, and he says, 'I don't like people to be happy during negotiation.' I was honestly really confused by this, and just took my seat. And so Sterling smiles, and says, 'Forget about it, Richard.' And then he picks up this remote, and turns the heat up himself."

"Oh, wow." I said, not really sure how to respond to that.

"Yeah, I know, right? But whatever the case, I sit down, and as soon as I do, Sterling hangs up the phone (not a word to the other person) and starts asking me all these questions. Personal, impersonal, insulting, it doesn't matter, just hundreds of questions. It's like you when you need a piece that afternoon, John, but without that basic respect and privacy you naturally give your fellow human beings."

I coughed nervously.

"Most importantly, though, Sterling was asking these questions for absolutely no reason. You interview people because you need a story. Sterling... the reason he was asking so many questions, I'm convinced, was to wear me down mentally and establish his power. It was an interrogation where the interrogator had no discernible utility for any of my information ."

"That's a bit of a stretch, Richard. It's Donald Sterling, not Darth Vader."

"Well, get this... after twenty minutes of nothing but him asking me questions, I asked him a question. I was nervous, so all I could think to ask him the capital of New York. Wanted to see if he knew it was Albany, you know? It doesn't matter what I asked because he flipped out and said, 'Richard, who do you think you are? How dare you ask questions of me.' After that he asked me no more questions, and we got on with the matter at hand, and he never referred back to any of the questions. Like it never even happened."

"Whoa."

"Yeah. I cussed a little in my head and opened my undersized briefcase, sweating in my suit."

"Richard Jefferson, always cussin'. When will he ever learn?" I taunted gently.

Richard suddenly grew animated. "John, you need to stop that. You need to stop disrespecting me. I mean it. I'm so sick of this." Richard actually dropped the ice tray again, not with clumsiness but with malice_._

"I was just joking..." What had come over him?

Nothing, it turned out. Richard's smile returned "Haha, sorry. You know, just thinking about that encounter makes me a bit upset. I still remember some of the viler questions he asked. He would press for answers like the Terminator. His evil spirit had exceptional tenacity."

"Man, maybe he is Darth Vader! Damn!"

"Anyway. I'm in this room, and we're ready to get down to business, you know, completely demoralized, when in front of me, at my place at the table drops a large packet of paper with a red stamp across it marked "VOID". Drops and slides in every direction, it hadn't been stapled. Every page is marked "VOID". A voice from behind says in a crisp, deep, indulgent voice, 'Your move, Donald.'"

"... What?"

"The other party to the meeting had arrived, John. He was decked out in pin stripes, seven feet tall. Completely ignored me, moving with power and elegance, like he didn't need to breathe. Indescribable. He kept walking around the room and dropping papers all across the room, each page, I could see, individually marked "VOID"."

"Who... who could that possibly be?"

"The other person in the room? Kevin Garnett."

"WHAT? How could this--? But--? There's, uh... No way, RJ!" I took a tumble in utter bafflement. I might have hurt myself but for grabbing and gaining purchase on the mop that I never keep more than arm's length away.

Richard chuckled, but acknowledged that it was pretty shocking. "I know, right? So you can imagine my confusion, even after everything I've seen in the league. KG was the other participant in the meeting. They didn't tell me about him. I was at least ready, somehow, for Sterling."

"Yeah."

"I mean, the placement of people in the room is straightforward and logical. I mean, there's Donald Sterling, who owns a decent contender looking for a step up, and Kevin Garnett, a superstar on a non-contender looking for another title. KG wants that ring, John, no matter how much he talks about loyalty, and Donald wants that ring, to vindicate his pesky, miserly existence."

"Right," I said, for what Richard spoke was the straightforward, reasonable truth.

"So let me just set the scene again for your consideration, Donald Sterling has turned the heat up unbearably and has just finished interrogating me. He has utter contempt for me, and probably everything that lives and thrives on this entire planet, except what is his. And then there's Kevin Garnett, with equal measure the scorn, and double the loyalty, and he's delivering "VOID"ed contracts like he is a newsboy from the Great Depression."

"I almost can't picture that."

"It was like a sensory overload, no kidding. They barely spoke, and because of that it was almost like being trapped in a circus, eyes glued open by curiosity and fear. At some point I reasoned to myself that I wasn't totally safe in this meeting, and that I had to count myself lucky if I escaped unscathed."

"Man."

"It was like watching a dinosaur-who-is-a-person fight a bird-who-is-a-person, but with icy glares and gestures alone." Even though KG was the only one up, they appeared to be circling one another. And, on the table, after awhile of this, KG swept all the papers off the table, smiled, and dropped a no-trade clause between them."

"The trump card. All the voided contracts were trades that KG had rejected and personally stamped 'VOID'. Right, Richard?"

"Absolutely right. Look, the Celtics and Clippers had been having talks since December and had pretty much run the gamut of possible trades. They both wanted to make a trade, but KG wasn't an idiot. He wasn't going to screw himself over just to make the trade balance work. Sacrifice, yes. But not debasement, not taking a trade on the chin like a punch. Not debasement which is more than sacrifice, and having been traded three times before, I totally get that. And Sterling was in, though, obviously, on the other side of, that same boat." Richard laughed at his own strange sentence, "It was a perfectly reasonable situation, is what I'm saying."

"I get that." I said, but then suddenly came to the forefront of my mind something I could not in a million years understand, "But why in God's name were you there, too, Richard?"

"That's an entirely reasonable question. In fact, the answer is riddled with bureaucracy at every level, so I'll spare you. Long story short, there's a player arbitration system for situations like this, and I was the only guy in the program's history that had ever opted in to volunteer," Richard said with annoyance, "So I basically have this extra no-pay job, where I go around arbitrating all these sorts of disputes, but I also don't have any power whatsoever and I only get three hours' notice."

"Wow, really?"

"Yeah, and, I mean, it's usually pretty easy to figure out. A guy is holding out for money, I tell him to restructure. A team is trying to avoid signing its second-round pick, you know, I make a quick Excel worksheet Stern and Silver gave me, and show the team the cost-benefit chart. That usually solves it. But sometimes you just have one of those ridiculously intractable situations. Not often, but it happens. You have to orchestrate some kind of compromise. And that's where the story really picks up, John."

TO BE CONTINUED...

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

• LAL vs GSW: Exceptional Follies, Exceptional Fields (by Alex Dewey)
• GENERAL: Our March Madness (by Adam Koscielak)

Read on after the jump.

• • •

LAL vs GSW: Exceptional Follies, Exceptional Fields
Alex Dewey

If you had to inject truth serum into every editor and reader I've ever had and asked them to honestly describe what it's like to edit or read my work, I bet I'd know what they'd say. (Well, okay, what they'd say after the long, probably unbridgeable part where you explain to them why you're injecting them with truth serum for such an incomprehensibly minor question.) They wouldn't hold back. Incomprehensible, mercurial, technically gifted, slipshod and inconsistent with time and structure, combative at times, original, petty, absurd, fixated, unfocused, enigmatic, self-deprecating, and "attentive-but-somehow-mercurial". [ED. NOTE: Yeah, pretty much.] I know this because in their most unvarnished moments, they compare me to Stephen Jackson or Boris Diaw, usually. That's about the long and short of it. I am so focused on getting something expressed and well-articulated out of my head that I miss whether that thing has any sort of relevance to others.

Fun stuff. Keeping that in mind, let me talk about what the Lakers and Warriors did for me earlier this week.

The Lakers strike me as sort of a medieval morality play, an archetypal comic villain that they've somehow inhabited to teach us the value of youth, of hard work, and of never resting on one's accomplishments. The Lakers are there to teach us that everything will eventually be lost, but all the faster and all the more quickly without the essential and fastidious approach to life that abides others and our endless obligations. When they miss another transition not because of slowness but because they've practiced being slow? When they look every night like the visitors to Denver or Utah on a back-to-back? When Dwight can't figure out how to calibrate his less-than-100% mode to the grind of the regular season? When Metta World Peace decides (humorously, he seems to actively decide, every time) to create his own offense because he suddenly finds himself with the rock, and because, as if oblivious to the massive amount of specialization and scouting that has been done to get him to this place that says "cannot create especially well", despite all the marginal advantages he lacks, and knows he lacks, and knows his opponents know he lacks, he still goes forth and tries to conquer the basket like he's a conquistador...

... Anyway. The moment any of that happens, and the game in the inevitable course of which all of that happens? That moment and that game is validating, it is joyful, and it seems somehow like a ridiculous-but-apt historical marker for a team we'll remember with some pity and laughter ten years down the line. "Were you there when the Lakers weren't even all that bad, just inexplicably and superlatively mediocre, unsustainable considering the quality of their talent but also their historical, partially-institutional ability to attract talent?" our children and young watchers will ask. I will nod, throwing back shots to try and get over the fact that I actually taught my children to speak like that. And, later still, we'll be able to say, "Yes. It was great. It was just the best. Watching Jrue Holiday put the exclamation point on them on Staples Sunday is, in retrospect, the high point of my life."

The Warriors were equally fun in an equally exceptional way. When those with the high-quality interactive visual data -- with the missile technology and all that -- when they get around to creating an immaculate schema for the sport, delineating when you must drive, when you must go for the 2-for-1, when and where and and how often per game you must high-five in order to maximize your teammates' interactivity... When they get this far, in less than 5 years? When Morey lays down these rules as the Second Naismith of prophecy and lore? Whenever that happens, Morey and his quasi-holy rule-makers will have to include some sort of exception for Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry at Oracle. Simply have to. The shot selection and the heat checks that inexplicably go in defy description. In the best games of their lives, when the shots are going in without reason, defensive/facilitator role players will shoot possessed of an uncanny and unbefitting confidence. They seem to shrug at the comic absurdity of their own rarefied spectacle. My favorite example of this is when legendary point guard and non-shooter Andre Miller said "screw it" and went for 3 in his only (or even close to) 50-point game at the age of 35. Of course the three went in, and shrugging, Miller must have known it.

But Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry have created a force field around themselves in which everyone on their team (and sometimes on their opponents!) can feel exactly that confident, all the time. Jarrett Jack, a talented guard, can truly feel like Chris Paul or Jamal Crawford every night. The green light is on always for all parties at the intersection, and the traffic accidents have increased, but it hasn't been anarchy, but a new sort of efficiency and order that is built on the supernatural shot release of Stephen Curry and the interesting talents of Klay Thompson. Call it the Klay-Curry Buckets Exemption: Congratulations, your team barely has to worry about shot selection. As long as you're getting back on defense, may you find buckets from every location.

Of course, even despite all of this, Richard Jefferson still is not allowed to shoot. Not ever.

• • •

GENERAL: Our March MadnessAdam Koscielak

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

"March Madness is the most exciting playoff system in the world."

Chances are, you just stopped me. [ED. NOTE: Yep. Column over. Goodbye, folks.] There's a lot of truth to it. Every team gets a shot, every team can pull off a lucky game. That's why Gonzaga lost while Florida Gulf Coast is soaring. We love underdog stories, and March Madness gives every underdog a real shot -- and even if the real underdogs generally fall short of the championship, their wins always stay in the lore. Me? I dislike college basketball immensely due to 35 second shot clocks, the terrible officiating that makes me appreciate Joey Crawford, and the overall lack of quality talent aside from the few NBA worthy prospects. Despite this, I find myself entranced with brackets and the stories from the alley-ooping FGCU to Marshall Henderson giving us a showing of what I would call "Kobe Unchained." It's fascinating.

Yet, when I think of March, I don't think about college basketball. I don't think about the hope of warmer weather either. After all, this is when the NBA goes into the most intense part of the playoff race. The match-ups are solidified, and sometimes this is where champions are decided. Imagine that in 2011, the Memphis Grizzlies and New Orleans Hornets switch seeding. They were in a tie at the end of the season after all. Perhaps the Spurs never get upset, playing against a balky Chris Paul and a West-less Hornets. If they advance from the first round, would they have continued to the finals and upset Miami using the same playbook Dallas did? Or perhaps last season -- what if we swap the Nuggets and Clippers? After all, they were separated by a mere 2 games. How would the Grizzlies' season look if they weren't upset by the Clippers? You get the point. As much as the regular season seems stale at times -- particularly when we're down to the fourth round of games with a certain team -- I can't help but notice how often the importance of it is downplayed. Eventually, when the novelty of watching rebuilt teams, shocking collapses and stunning breakouts wears off, the people that don't watch the teams engaged in big battles for the lower seeds are left yearning for the excitement of the playoffs. Or so it has been in seasons past. Let me give you an example.

Last season, two teams were fighting for the final playoff spot with three games left in the regular season. On one side, the Utah Jazz, on the other, the Phoenix Suns, in what turned out to be Steve Nash's final season in Phoenix. The Suns needed to win two out of three games to advance. Or win the game against the Jazz, lose the other two and hope that the Jazz lose in Portland. Whatever the case, the Suns first faced the Denver Nuggets. They lost, also losing an important cog in Channing Frye to a dislocated shoulder. And then came the Jazz game, do or die. Marcin Gortat lost his scoring touch that night, from the perspective of time, it would seem that this game would define his Nash-less season as well. Steve Nash tried, but couldn't carry the team. The Utah Jazz clinched their playoff spot. Al Jefferson cried. And nobody really cared outside of the two teams involved and Spurs fans who at least didn't have to deal with the possibility of an insanely motivated Steve Nash.

A year later, the Jazz are once again in a battle for the eight seed with Steve Nash. This time, however, Steve Nash is in purple and gold, alongside Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol. Nearly everyone said that this team would be a championship contender. (Except for Aaron who knew what's up.) [ED. NOTE: My sense of spatial logic is shot, so I don't usually know what's up at all. What IS up, really?] Nearly everyone loves or hates them, as well. Whatever happens in that battle, it's going to get very loud. The conventional drama between mid-market teams and their fans is now a full out war between Lakers fans and the rest of the world. It's drama amplified, and it's a great boost to a generally stale part of the NBA season for the casual crowd.

So, let me say this now; Brackets are fun. So are underdogs, and single-elimination tournaments. But the NCAA Tournament is like a good action flick. Compact, filled with fun and a few good quotes... but it's easily forgettable, unless you really like one of the actors in it. The NBA season, on the other hand? That's like a good book, with multiple characters and sub-plots. It has a few boring parts you have to sift through, sure, and it seems like it's longer than Lord of the Rings. But in the end, the gratification for the big-time fans is infinitely larger, as you come to appreciate how every character, every sub-plot in the story can potentially change it's ending. And never is that amazing complexity highlighted more than in the midst of the stretch run, the March Madness of every NBA fan.

Remember our cracked-skull columnist, Alex Arnon? He hit his head a while back, fainted, and woke up a delusional man with tidings of a world where small markets ruled all comers. Over the past month, Arnon has been dealing with "personal matters", a thinly veiled cover-up for Arnon's voyage through the serengetti to produce his new TV pilot for the local access channel: "What Blue Wildebeast Wants to Be A Millionaire?" (I tried to tell him it wouldn't work, especially with a total production budget of $3.54, but Arnon is a freakishly determined young man who doesn't need my sass.) Regardless. He's been kidnapped by a rampaging horde of zebras and is being ransomed off for drugs and money, even though zebras don't have the opposable thumbs necessary to do drugs or the credit score to spend the money. Until I can patch together a resolution to the situation, I'll be taking the reins to our Small Market Monday feature. Just let me knock myself in the head with this small market butter churner and I'll be right with you.

Hello, friends! Welcome to the comeback edition of Gothic Ginobili's mainstay Monday feature, Small Market Mondays. Today, I'd like to talk about the NBA's big race that everyone is talking about. It's what some people call "the second standings." I know it's what I look at first when I see a big slate of standings. Some strange people spend the late season examining playoff position. Others look at the race for pole position in the lottery. But the real NBA aficionados know that there's only one race that matters. That race?

Why, the race for the 14th pick, of course!

All throughout history, the 14th pick has been an absolute sweet spot for teams looking to snag the lowest priced barely-rotation young player who is technically still a lottery pick. And the announcers won't ever let you forget it, either! You want to forget that Marcus Morris, Earl Clark, and Anthony Randolph were all technically lottery picks? Too bad! Every single time those players visit the franchise that drafted them, they'll be inexplicably referred to as "lottery picks." Every time, for the duration of their entire career. For a small market team with scarce funds in the coffer and a need for a convenient scapegoat, there isn't a better pick in the game. It's great! It doesn't matter that every pick from 10-20 is roughly as valuable as one-another -- picks 10-14 pick have the additional cachet of being lottery picks, and 14 has the additional cachet of being the last one! When they inevitably fail to draft anything remotely approaching an NBA starter, the management can point to their cheap-yet-poor draft selection and cast a wool over the eyes of their adoring fans to hide from their terrible free agent strategies. It's brilliant! As the race stands today, here are the main competitors for that elusive last lottery pick:

• THE FAVORITE: The Utah Jazz! Led by the "stormin' Mormon" Jimmer Fredette, these Utah Cowpokes ain't a sight for sore eyes! [ED. NOTE: Fredette isn't on the Jazz. Also: they aren't a sight for sore eyes BECAUSE THEY'RE A TERRIBLE BASKETBALL TEAM. Also: why am I leaving an editor's note for myself?] They wrangle the snakes and keep the lid on the butter-churnin' mayhem over at the Ener-Gee-Whiz Solution Farms-n-stuff (or, as some call it, "EnergySolutions Arena"). They're the overwhelming favorite to check into their summer vacations with the 14th pick in tow.

• THE SNAKE IN THE BUSHES: The Los Angeles Lakers! True to form, the Lakers are trying to play spoiler to Utah's race for the 14th pick. It wouldn't be a real NBA race if there wasn't a big-market snake here to try and take away the small-market spoils now, would it? The Lakers are currently 2 games out from the #14 pick, but if they're terrible enough down the stretch, they could clutch victory from the jaws of defeat and pull out the requisite mediocrity needed to rip it out of Utah's hands. Oh the humanity! Fun fact, though -- even if they DO steal it from the Jazz, they won't actually get the pick. The Phoenix Suns own the Lakers' pick if it falls in the lottery. Take THAT, large markets!

• THE UNDERDOG FORGET-ME-NOT: The Dallas Mavericks! Some might consider them the favorites, given that they entered today tied with the Jazz at a record of 34-36. But I don't! They're a better team than the Jazz, sporting a slightly better point differential and a far better roster at this stage of the game. Unfortunately, their closing schedule is quite a bit harder than Utah's. They're one to keep an eye on, but they're an unlikely winner for the 14-spot when all's said and done.

Fun times! We'll be keeping you posted on 14th pick news over the next few weeks of Small Market Monday action. Keep an eye out!

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The State of The Small Market Union (Sponsored by The Memphis School of Modern Dance)

As they always do, small markets are dominating the NBA standings right now. In the east, small-market Indiana currently sits atop the leaderboard of teams-that-aren't-Miami, known in some circles as the NBA's "sacrificial lambs." Not much sacrificial about THESE lambs, folks! ... you know, unless you're referring to the likelihood that the Eastern Conference Playoffs are a brutal slaughter where Miami obliterates three terrible teams in a row by margins heretofore unseen by man. Because that's probably going to happen. Wait, THAT'S what that phrase means? Oh, blast it, I always thought people were literally talking about human sacrifice. Leave it to McGuire to mistake jokes for reality. Classic. Looks like I'm gonna need to call my lawyer.

In the western conference, we have a veritable small-market choke-hold on the top two seeds of the playoffs from Oklahoma City and San Antonio, two small townships whose collective population could fit in a 1,951,725 person thimble. I'm... I'm really not sure what sort of a factory would actually produce that thimble, and that's actually a terrifying thought, but that's a question for another time. Meanwhile, the race for the 3rd seed is a classic big-medium-small showdown between small-market Memphis, medium-market Denver, and big-market Los Angeles. Currently Denver is up one game on Memphis and a half a game on Los Angeles, with Memphis sporting the hardest remaining schedule and Los Angeles locked into a top-4 seed by dint of playing in one of the worst divisions in the game. Here's hoping the Grizzlies tough it out, yeah?

Also, it really makes sense that the Pacific is struggling so much. You can't have that much legalized big-market California chronic without it eventually ruining basketball. We all know Ice Cube's immortal words that are only tangentially related to this situation, after all! "It's ironic, Joe had the brew and Gavin's chronic / Seattle stole the SuperSonics." Really insightful young man, that Ice Cube. That wasn't the only time he predicted something well in advance. Just look at a few unreleased lyrics from Ice Cube's rarely-heard underground followup to "It Was A Good Day", aptly titled "It Was Not A Very Good Day":

Did you know, that in the future

Billy Mays will die someday and it will tear out my sutures

Also Steve Irwin will get stabbed by some fool stingray

Also Chuck Hagel will get confirmed for Defense Sec-Re-Tarr-Eee but not without casulat-ays

OK what am I even doing this is beyond terrible why can't I write anything anymore

what is happening to me

help me

why

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Sperry's Space Stuff presents: "Rocketing To The Top!" Chandler Parsons MVP Watch

I'm torn. The general point of this feature is to highlight the REAL MVPs, the players who "understand their limitations" by covering up their inherent MVP stylings and stop shooting the ball in order to give their teammates something to be proud of. That's what Glorious Small-Market Generalissimo Alex Arnon would've wanted, I think. Chandler Parsons -- although originally a brilliant choice for this award -- may have reached an uncomfortable point in his career. That point? He's too good to be a small-market MVP. Parsons is currently averaging 18-4-3 over the month of March, shooting 50-45-76 on 13 shots a game. That's ridiculous! Parsons fits all of the other criterion for this award well. He's dashing, he's funny, and he's currently making less than one-tenth the Gross Domestic Product of the island nation of Tuvalu (their GDP is $37 million, so, he's making less than $3.7 million). But he's losing track of the name of the game, and he's performing too good to be the real small-market MVP. That brings me to you, readers. Who should be featured in the season-ending spate of incoming small-market MVPs? Criterion include, as I just mentioned...

• His salary must be less than $3.7 million (that is, less than one-tenth of Tuvalu's GDP.)
• He plays in one of the 10 smallest markets in the league (define small yourself -- it's fungible).
• His stats must indicate a player deferring much of his talent for the good of the team (except for rebounds, hustle, and assists).

Help us out, readers! Leave ideas in the comments below.

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Small Market Mondays Game of the Night: MEMPHIS AT WASHINGTON

This particular match-up on the trusty Washington gridiron pits against one another two teams that are small market mainstays for different reasons. For Memphis, they're a small market the traditional way -- they're a team in a hilariously small market. Memphis isn't quite as small as San Antonio or Oklahoma City, but don't mistake that distinction for large-market wares. The city's main attraction is a daily tradition colloquially known as the "Peabody Ducks" -- every morning, five ducks march into the fountain in the Peabody Hotel to the sound of John Philip Sousa's King Cotton March. Then, every evening, the ceremony is reversed and the ducks march back to their rooftop home. I thought attraction was ridiculous enough that it had to be completely made up, but it's not. It's been going on since the 1930s. Let me drop the airs for a second, here: if "ducks marching in a hotel" ranks as one of your town's primary attractions, you're a small-market hero to me.

As for Washington, they're small-market by attrition. The District of Columbia is a pretty large market, if you're only looking at size -- but the team's been so comically bad for so long that they've just sort of transformed into an NBA small-market team. Thanks, world! Welcome to the big-time, Washington. This game should be pretty fun, given that the Wizards are 20-16 with John Wall in the lineup and the Grizzlies are fighting for their 3rd-seed lives. Be sure to check it out. Also: if my first sentence was accurate, they'll be playing a basketball game in a football stadium, which makes this a definite must-watch. HOW WILL THEY DO IT?

Other quick-hits for great small-market matchups in the coming week:

• Minnesota at Detroit (TUE, 3/26): This was the 2nd place choice of the small-market hero who picked -- out of all 30 teams -- a Minnesota/Atlanta matchup as his "must watch" matchup in the befuddling new NBA commercial. Who WOULDN'T want to see the battle of the Greg's, Monroe vs Stiemsma? A must-watch for sure.

• Los Angeles Lakers at Milwaukee (THU, 3/28): An important game for Utah's pursuit of the elusive 14th pick. If the Lakers can dig deep and find it in the depths of their blackened hearts to lose this game in their customary inexplicable/hilarious manner, Utah's hold on the 14th pick could become quite a bit more tenuous.

• Charlotte at Philadelphia (SAT, 3/30): Look, the question here isn't "why would you watch this game?" The REAL question is "why in the world WOULDN'T you watch this game?" See, I heard that if you get aggressive and flip the premise of the question, you can get people to ignore the fact that you have absolutely no argument. It worked, right?

See you next week, Small Marketeers! Keep your ducks in a row.