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. 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. What more could we provide? Today's short pieces are as follows.

• LAL vs NOH: The Battle of Bad Decisions (by Aaron McGuire)

• • •

__LAL vs NOH: A Battle of Bad Decisions
___Aaron McGuire_

We like to talk about the games-within-the-games -- the rebounding battle, the free throw battle, the turnover battle. So on and so forth. You know the type. A score of minor games within the broader game of basketball that compose the game's competitive fabric. Among the meta-games, there's one that gets understandably scant press. Not very fun to watch, nor is it something the individual agents like to highlight, even if they win it! It's often the elephant in the room, or something that gets analyzed in a vacuum by individual team blogs or analysts as an isolated incident or a silly individual problem rather than two agents locked in a cold war as they trudge forward into mutual destruction. I refer to the most curious of games-within-the-game, this time discussing the coaches at hand: the battle of bad decisions.

"Not every coach makes bad decisions," some would say. And I'd disagree. All coaches make a few clunkers every time and again, especially on bleak nights at the halfway mark of a slog of a season. Even the best coaches in the world aren't exempt from head scratching moves at inconvenient times. Take last night’s fourth quarter. As strange as the New Orleans closing salvo was to watch in real time, it was stranger still when the run dried up with about 2:00 left in the game and Monty Williams chose to ride Robin Lopez over bringing in Anthony Davis. It would be one thing if Davis had played poorly, but he'd played excellent basketball all night long. A dominant run by Davis in the third was one of the only reasons the Hornets weren't looking at a 20-30 point deficit, and he’d kept the paint on lock when he was in the game. For Williams to stick with Lopez -- playing well, but not overwhelmingly so -- over Davis was a bit of a curious ploy, and one that bit back in the final few plays when he gave up a Steve Nash layup with 4:20 to go. Impossible to tell in-the-moment, but it turned into the beginning of the end -- the layup (combined with Clark’s a few minutes later) caused the Hornets to adjust their defense to stick closer to the rim, which in turn caused Nash's defender to float a few feet off him in what would become the game-deciding dagger with 1:21 to go. It was a curious choice, especially given how well Davis had played the Los Angeles offense in the third quarter that got the Hornets back in it.

Funny enough, though, this was arguably not the worst coaching decision made last night. That one probably belongs to Mike D'Antoni's completely indefensible riding of Antawn Jamison throughout the final quarter. At least Robin Lopez was having a decent night on both ends -- Jamison shot 1-5 from three point range and made 5-9 of his twos, with a few lucky rolls to pad the numbers. The real problem was the defensive end, where Jamison served as little more than a lazy Susan in the lane, dishing up prime opportunities for the Hornets to stick him on a screen and rotate easily to the rack. It was fine at the start of the fourth quarter, when the Hornets were playing a lineup featuring Lance Thomas, Brian Roberts, and Jason Smith. His defense doesn’t hurt as much when the other team doesn’t have players who can make plays. But when Monty put in Gordon and Vasquez, and their offense started running actual plays? The layup line was a buffet of baskets. Seven baskets in the paint in the fourth quarter for the upstart Hornets, and virtually all of them came at Jamison's expense. It was a phenomenally stupid move, and when the Hornets started playing off LA's reactive paint-covering doubles to drain some open threes, D'Antoni probably should've realized it was essential that he get Jamison out of there. He didn't, but his bad decision ended up being irrelevant. It's a battle, you see, and a battle the Lakers won.

That's the thing, though -- it's a battle precisely because bad decisions always happen. They're a part of the game, and they aren't avoidable whatsoever. The key is getting a coach who makes poor decisions a bit less often than the other guy. Although D'Antoni hasn't been a success in Los Angeles yet, I think he stands a good shot at putting things together and – as they say – making fewer mistakes than the other guy, someday. Monty Williams? The young man's a coaching dynamo, but nights like last night underline the general point. You can be a phenomenal coach, but you're never perfect -- not Popovich, not Jackson, not Sloan. No matter how good you are, you'll make a few decisions on gut instinct and guile that simply don't pan out. Breaks of the game. Last night, Monty's favoring Robin Lopez ended up biting back a bit. D'Antoni's favoring of Jamison almost let another win slip away. But the Lakers gutted it out and got the victory.

Sometimes basketball's complexity gets the better of us, as one finds oneself trapped under the weight of expectation and analytical rigor. But sometimes it isn't really all that complicated. Two middling teams meet, and on a muggy Los Angeles night, the team that made the fewest egregious errors won. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't fun, and it epitomized the lazy mistake-ridden center of late January basketball. I even got into the bad-decision mix, realizing quickly I'd made an immensely poor choice to staying up late while sick only to watch a crummy basketball game and write an uninspired short the next day. But you know what? A win's a win, and a piece is a piece.

"I am become Lakers, consumer of pageviews."

• • •

Long ago in a distant land, Alex Arnon was watching a Kings/Suns preseason game when he became so furiously enraged at a Tyreke Evans double-teamed isolation jumper with 19 seconds on the shot clock that he hit his head, fainted, and woke up a delusional new man. To my understanding, he's now wholly ensconced in a bizarro world where some guy named Xenu created the Earth, Segways changed the very core of how people get around, and small markets make up the vast majority of NBA coverage and traffic. So just remember the motto we've provided our cracked-skull columnist: "No superstars? No problem!"

Last week we discussed the All-Star candidacy of Rajon Rondo (related: why haven't we made bionic ACLs yet? Get on it, Doctors!) and Kyrie Irving (WHOO I LOVE YOU BABY). All was made right this week when Kyrie Irving was named as an All-Star reserve. And due to Rajon Rondo's extraordinarily unfortunate injury, he should be the starting point guard for the Eastern Conference! Not even a small market backer such as myself can condone the slightest of injuries to the biggest of big market players. Doing so would be quite big market bully-esque. I refuse. Get well soon, Rondo!

You know who won't be playing in the All-Star Game this year though, no injuries required? The traitorous Joe Johnson, of course! Having played in Small Market Mecca Atlanta since 2005 ("CAW CAWWWWWW"), he was rewarded by the Gods that be with 6 straight dubiously deserved All-Star appearances from 2007 - 2012. Note how I said 2012 and not 2013. Hah! Joey J made his way to the fakest of all big markets this offseason -- Brooklyn. They're not a real big market! They just moved from small-market-at-heart New Jersey this year! They parade Jay-Z around to pretend like he's a real owner. Come on! The man barely owns 1/15th of 1 percent of the franchise, just so they can be relevant... wait, hold up, I'm being told that's worth over a million dollars. That also happens to be much, much more than what I'm worth. Blast it all. You win again, Jay-Zed.

But that's all beside the point -- Joe Johnson broke his streak of six straight All-Star Games by moving from Atlanta to Brooklyn. In fact, not a single Brooklyn Net is playing in the All-Star Game this year, even though they're 26-18 and it's well-deserved. Unless anyone was paying attention when Nets owner Bruce Ratner used eminent domain to displace hundreds of citizens in order to make over a billion dollars. There's no way that happened, right? Oh. It did? Well, dang. Speaking of which, how the heck did they use a law of Eminem's domain when Jay-Z is their part owner rapper?! There's got to be some beef there, right? Something's rotten in the state of Brooklyn, Horatio. Anyway. How about this -- we as fans need to use our power of eminent domain or whatever it's called to take back every All-Star spot ever awarded to them from the Nets and ensure that none of those poseur big marketeers ever make it in? Seems reasonable to me.

Hopefully, thanks to us, an All-Star spot will never be an (emi)Net's domain.

• • •

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

Friends, the Arnonymous (Hey, that's me! With a cool futuristic twist, too!!!) has predicted the future again. Last week in this very column I wrote that David Stern had cooked up a devilish scheme "to derail the Champacers on their quest for moral and NBA victory." Instead of sabotaging the Indiana "Champacers" in favor of one of his precious big market teams, he's gone for the Robert E. Lee route and trying to break us up from the inside. In their game against the fellow small-market superteam Utah Jazz Saturday night, the Pacers should have had the ball down 2 with 2.2 seconds left following some inbound follies on the part of the Jazz. But yegads! The referees did as Lord $tern (get it? Because... money!) told them to and screwed the Pacers out of the win at the hands of the Jazz. Emphasis on hands of the Jazz and not Jazz hands of the Utah. Vastly different stories.

Anyways, it sucked. But don't be mad at our small market brethren Jazz! Don't fall prey to Stern's devilish ploy by devolving into a civil war between ourselves! Just remember that he is and will always be our true enemy. Only someone as scheming as he could draw this plan up. Stern is without question the gold standard of evil. Thus, it's only right that his successor is named after silver...

• • •

Sammy's Sack Racing Presents: "The King Of The League!" Jimmer Fredette MVP Watch

Sigh. This is it. The end of the reign of The Jimmer. 5-16 over the past 3 games and 32.9% shooting for the month of January is unacceptable for someone who should be shooting AT LEAST 66.6% to prove that he can out-duel Mr. Stern. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. Stay tuned for next week when we unveil our newest MVP candidate.

• • •

Small Market Mondays Game of the Night

Our search for the next MVP candidate just so happens to bring us to... our next MVP candidate. That's right, you guessed it, we're heading the least sinningest (AKA happiest) place on Earth, Salt Lake City! The Houston Rockets and Chandler Parsons will be taking on the Utah Jazz and Gordon Hayward. Not in a game of basketball, though, but in a much more important game - the game to win the hearts of pre-teen girls around the nation:

Just look at those smiles. Those perfectly coiffed boy band haircuts. Those crystal clear blue eyes, the kind you get lost swimming in for hours. Chandler's rough Texas scruff and Gordon's holy Utah cleanliness. These two men are the role models of the future - they've proved that you don't need the unholy carnal desires your loins thrust upon you but rather you just need to go out there and have fun with your buds! Stop thinking about thrusting loins! They sure as heck don't! Heck, Gordon's parents almost didn't let him play professional basketball because they felt that their son was "not yet spiritually ready to handle the temptations of the NBA". If you don't want your sons to be them and your daughters to date them then you've failed yourself as a small marketeer. And if you won't allow them to steal your own heart then you should probably be out there stealing residences from the nice citizens of Brooklyn instead.

God bless you, Chandler and Gordon. God. Bless. You.

(This segment paid for by the Albuquerque Abstinence Awareness Association - where men should be role models, not pole models.)

 

Aaron and I had the following conversation on November 2nd. The Lakers were 0-2 (going on 0-3) as we had the conversation. Mike Brown hadn't been fired. While Nash's leg was already broken, we didn't know that when we were talking (recall that didn't come out until a few days after the Portland game Nash was injured in). Whatever the case, so much was going on with the Lakers, and I didn't know what to make of the stories that kept pouring in. I especially didn't know what to make of this particular conversation. So I didn't seize the moment, as Aaron suggested.

To my astonishment, it's January 25th (nearly three months after this conversation!) and I've had to make only minor edits, all for grammar/spelling, semantic clarification, cussin', and brevity. I can't make you believe we really had this conversation. All I can do is present it for your amusement (and horror, considering how disturbingly prophetic some sections of the conversation are in retrospect). Also, I am revealing to the world that I thought the Clippers would win about 43 games and the Warriors would get 35 wins, so... yeah. Nostradamus I am not. But the rest? That's gravy! Get that oil, son! GET THAT OIL!

• • •

Alex: A thought for your consideration: The Lakers are not conceivably an unstoppable team, because even in their best iteration, they are eminently and fundamentally flawed. That said, they could be scary good. Still, I'd like to see that actually happen, instead of just taking for granted that they'll get there. I mean, plenty of teams could be scary good (remember the Knicks!)... but health can do a lot to that "could" in a hurry, as can redundancy and uncreative coaching.

Aaron: Fair. This is my thought: I think the Lakers could be pretty great, and I see why the consensus is there. But making the leap from "could" to "will" requires a lot of factors to turn up in their favor, and not all are guaranteed to do so. In my assessment:

• Dwight Howard has to get healthy. His defense looks atrocious and the back problem looms hard, because he can't seem to move laterally anymore or cover as wide an area of the court.

• Pau Gasol needs to be able to defend perimeter guys in at least a remotely passable manner, as they're going to face good perimeter big men in every round of the playoffs. Frankly, if Pau continues to allow 8-8 on midrange to any half-decent big man he guards, they're going to be awful.

• Steve Nash needs to be able to play ~30+ minutes per game in the playoffs. This is essential, and an underrated necessity for them. The backup options are so unbelievably bad that anything less leaves them with this gaping flesh wound for 10-15 minutes of the game, and leaves them too vulnerable offensively to respond. It's this huge internal hole the starters will always have to dig out of

• They need to be in good health and not at all exhausted come playoff time — these are old guys and this is not a given, and exhaustion will sap an old man game more than anything, heh.

• And finally, in a 7-game series? They need Steve Nash's performance variance either at a very low level around an average mean or at a very high level that errs on the high side.

Now, the thing with these? They all could happen, and even if only 2 or 3 happen, they'll still be a decent team. (Aaron Note: Yeah, nobody really could've seen NONE of them happening coming.) But the other thing is that it's an extraordinarily large assumption to just assume they'll all happen without a hitch. It's basically as big an inherent assumption as a Spurs fan saying: "Yeah, by the playoffs Tiago Splitter will be producing double-doubles nightly, we'll trade Blair/Neal for Anderson Varejao, Tim Duncan will only play 24 MPG of 25-15 ball in the regular season but 40 MPG in the playoffs, Tony Parker will average 30 points per game without breaking a sweat, and Kawhi Leonard will be the 2nd-best SF in the league by May." But one of the sets of team assumptions is today's "conventional wisdom", while the other is (rightfully) completely insane.

Alex: Yeah, I hear that. That kind of analysis actually favors the Spurs, Thunder, and Heat above anyone, playing the odds.

Sure, Dwyane Wade has to be healthy for the Heat to be favored. Sure, Manu has to be healthy for the Spurs to be favored in the West. Sure, Kevin Martin has to turn back the clock about two years and shoot the lights out. Additionally, the Spurs have to shore up their defense come playoff time, the Heat need to get LeBron more rest, and the Thunder need Ibaka to make a big leap. In some sense, though... that's it. If they all those two things and have reasonable health, they're dangerous title contenders. These two things are by no means given for any team, of course, and the Grizzlies actually come out really good according to this perspective of uncertainty, too.

But what I don't like about the Lakers' chances is that Pau has looked really old so far. Unlike Duncan, there's no big precedent for him having a comeback year. And there's no masterful interior defense to bank on. If Dwight was healthy, he'd provide that, but man... he has to be 100%. They're only going to go as far as Dwight can take them, I think. Sure, they could carry him being less-than-ideal for one series, but I doubt they're going to be able to compensate for an 80% Dwight all the way to Kobe's 6th. Not with their other burning questions. Either they cut back his minutes or his performance, and with their roster? That's a choice they can't afford to make.

Aaron: Yeah. They need Dwight at 100%. That's an absolute. Need Nash at a very high level, too.

__Alex: __Also, you have to wonder. Of course, we all know that Dwight has been an iron man before this back injury. That's a really good sign. On the other hand? He's never had to get healthy before. Take Paul Pierce. That guy's had injuries since he came into the league, it seems, and because of that he's learned to ride them out to an extent. Pierce has learned what it takes to get healthy off a big injury, or as healthy as you need to be to play. Because of his excellent health, Dwight (ironically) has never had to learn that compensation mechanism. Not to this extent. Instead, Dwight is going to try and learn on the fly. Also, I mean... let's be clear, Dwight's injury is sort of unprecedented as a situation. We don't know where it's going. Just as a sanity check, I realize this might be a rationalization on my part... I mean, okay, his pre-injury health has been surreal.

Aaron: Eldritch.

__Alex: Demonic, even. Still, how often do players just _get___ healthy with a bad back while playing 40+ minutes over the course of an NBA season? If you didn't answer 100%, well, that's exactly the problem. That's exactly my point.

Aaron: Yep.

Alex: Anyway. Who cares about the Lakers, man? RJ's line is 0-1-0-0-0 on one shot, no TOVs and a -11, in seven minutes. That's just blessed. Heh, I like the Warriors, but I can't shake the feeling that they're also not that... good... [Alex's note: Hey, I'm doing really well in predictions thus far in this conversation. I'm still human, though. All too human.]

Aaron: ... Alright. Let me respond fully to that last Laker point. The Pierce/Dwight comparison is very interesting, because it's true — this is the first major game-changing injury he's had to deal with, and he looks significantly compromised.

Alex: The comparison that comes to mind for me is David Robinson. Remember how Simmons described his first game? Even more of an athletic freak than Dwight, even more impressive physique. Of course... he was never totally the same after that injury.

Aaron: That is not a good comparison. Come on.

Alex: Admiral was around 30.

Aaron: Heh, but Dwight is 27. Like, hmm... That's not... okay, I admit, that's not THAT different, and I'm wondering how many minutes David Robinson had played at that point. Since you often get a better sense of true cardinal age from minutes played in the NBA rather than years spent on this earth. Actually, I'm looking it up now. I'm curious. Which year did he suffer it, again? I was five years old or something.

Alex: Well, it was late 1996, I believe. Like, very early in the season, so D-Rob would've been 31.

Aaron: __Okay, at the time Dwight suffered the injury, he had played __22,550 regular season minutes and 2,246 playoff minutes. At the time David Robinson suffered his injury... Okay... now... wow. Uh. You might flip out, so sit down if you are inexplicably standing up while reading this window

Alex: Okay. :swallows coffee:

Aaron: At the time David Robinson suffered his injury, he had played 21,353 minutes in the regular season and 2,084 playoff minutes.

Alex: :spits out coffee:

__Aaron: __So, even though it seems ridiculous on its face, that's a phenomenal comparison if you take the baseline that David Robinson wasn't ever quite the same dominant D-Rob after that. Also, funny story: After that injury, Robinson never played over 34 MPG in a full season again. He played:

• 34 mpg in 98
• 32 in 99
• 32 in 00
• 30 in 01
• 30 in 02
• 26 in 03

Alex: I think it's very clear that David Robinson was cloned and crossed with something unpleasant to make Dwight Howard. Huh... let me check his MPG before injury, hmm.

Aaron: Way ahead of you. It was 36+ every season.

Alex: Oh man, this is... this is eldritch.

Aaron: 37, 38, 38, 39, 41, 38, 37 for D-Rob.
And... 33, 37, 37, 38, 36, 35, 35, 37, 38 for D-Wight (upon our houses).

Alex: Wow, do you see what I'm seeing (I don't know if it right-adjusts your Trillian window, but it does for mine)? See, if you take that first two years off (Dwight's rookie/soph seasons, I guess) they line up just about exactly. Same number of seasons, almost the same number of minutes per season. Naturally.

00, 00, 37, 38, 38, 39, 41, 38, 37 for D-Rob.
33, 37, 37, 38, 36, 35, 35, 37, 38 for Dwight.

Aaron: Anyway, the most jarring thing about this is that prior to the back injury, David Robinson missed 12 games one year, 2 games another, and 1 another. Dwight missed 4 one year, 3 another. So, Dwight a bit less, but that's phenomenally comparable. They were both preternaturally healthy big guys who suffered big back injuries.

Alex: This is honestly... a huge story. Wow.

Aaron: D-Rob was older, but in terms of minutes played, Dwight actually was more experienced. So yeah, it's pretty insane. And yeah, given tht the conventional wisdom indicates that Dwight will be back to superhuman form in 3 or 4 weeks, this is a pretty big piece. Or, rather, a short piece with a big idea. If you promise to tamp down the crazy metaphors to try and make it more public-consumption level... You know what, Alex? "u can hav this 1, heh. This is 4 U, DewLord McSame. this is UR momnt. Ur time. Ur lyfe."

Alex: What?

Aaron: ... just... uh... make a piece out of the stat. Thanks.

• • •

Thus concludes the cautionary tale.

Everyone seems to be doing it, right? We've reached the rough halfway point of the 2013 season and I -- Editor in Chief, Viscount of Nottinghamshire, Aaron McGuire (the Man in Esquire) -- have decided to kick off our mid-year award picks. Armed with just the acronyms of the NBA's six mainstay awards, I quickly discovered that I had absolutely no idea what any of those acronyms meant. After briefly considering looking them up, I decided instead to make up awards off the top of my head and hope they roughly matched actual awards that existed. They're close, right? Tell me they're close. TELL ME THEY'RE CLOSE.

MVP -- Most Valuable Pelican
The much-ballyhooed MVP award is awarded yearly to the most valuable Pelican in the entire league. The process of choosing this award was made significantly easier when the Hornets changed their name to the Pelicans. Thanks, New Orleans!
	1. Greivis Vasquez 2. Anthony Davis 3. Eric Gordon 4. Ryan Anderson 5. Brian Roberts	Aaron McGuire: I'm tempted to go with Anthony Davis, because he's their best player so far and their most important big. But I can't. He's missed too many games. So I'll go with a pick I never would've seen coming a year ago -- their steady hand at the point, Greivis Vasquez. The man has accumulated the 2nd most assists in the NBA to date and he's producing markedly more efficient offense than he ever has in his life. He's played in every game, with virtually no depth behind him, which mitigates the difference in quality between him and Davis. He's doing phenomenal work, here.
	1. Anthony Davis 2. Ryan Anderson 3. Eric Gordon 4. Greivis Vasquez 5. Brian Roberts	Alex Dewey: Anthony Davis. Brian Roberts is the narrative pick, Greivis Vasquez is the "relative to expectations" pick, Ryan Anderson is the most productive (whatever that means), Eric Gordon is the "best player on the best team", and Anthony Davis is the best player. So Anthony Davis. Bonus points to Austin Rivers and Roger Mason Jr. for causing opposing coaches to burn their eyes out (or have a mysterious illness just before the game), which gives an opening for Monty to dominate the coaching battle.
	1. Ryan Anderson 2. Greivis Vasquez 3. Eric Gordon 4. Anthony Davis 5. Robin Lopez	Adam Koscielak: If not for the injuries, it would've been between Eric Gordon and Anthony Davis. But I'll have to say Ryan Anderson. The man brings them a stable presence from deep, rebounds well enough, and spreads the floor enough to make Robin Lopez look competent every once in a while. Making Robin Lopez look good for even a second warrants an award, I think.

Hit the jump for more awards, including ROTY, 6MOTY, COTY, DPOY, and MIP.

• • •

ROTY: Reagent of the Year
Remember your high school chemistry? Me neither! But according to my years-old AP Chem notes, a reagent is a substance added to a system to produce a chemical reaction. That makes sense! This widely loved award is awarded to the player who's had the most positive catalytic impact on their new team. Traditionally it's awarded to rookies. I don't get it!
	1. Jason Kidd 2. Jamal Crawford 3. Andre Drummond 4. Jarrett Jack 5. Jacque Vaughn	Aaron McGuire: While I love what Jamal Crawford has done with the Clippers -- and didn't expect it at all -- I can't really say anyone but Jason Kidd in good conscience. Most people have conveniently forgotten that the Knicks were predicted to be a 5-8 seed team in the preseason. Tyson Chandler's defense has been somewhat disappointing, and they've dealt with some pretty big injuries. But the Knicks have stayed afloat (and done better than that!) behind an astonishingly unexpected renaissance from a man who's had about 5 of them already. Kidd has completely changed the complexion of an already-good Knicks offense, and if it wasn't for his versatility, I'm really not sure where these defensively awful Knicks would be right now.
	1. Jarrett Jack 2. Jamal Crawford 3. Andre Drummond 4. Andrei Kirilenko 5. Jason Kidd	Alex Dewey: Gotta be Jarrett Jack - Sitting at 5th in the West, 11 games above .500, the Hornets have dominated the regular season so far on the amazingly balanced contributions provided by Anthony Davis*, Jarrett Jack**, a restored Eric Gordon***, along with young upstarts Greivis Vasquez**** and Brian Roberts*****. Despite Austin Rivers****** looking not quite NBA-ready, the Hornets are thriving. It's hard to imagine where the Hornets would be if they had done something foolish, like given Jarrett Jack to the Golden State Warriors for pennies on the dollar. *David Lee **Jarrett Jack ***Steph Curry ****Klay Thompson *****Draymond Green ******Festus Ezeli
	1. Jamal Crawford 2. Damian Lillard 3. James Harden 4. Alexey Shved 5. P.J. Carlesimo	Adam Koscielak: This is me eating crow. Jamal Crawford. Somehow. He's been a perfect fit to the Clippers, making their bench one of the most dangerous in the league. His shaking, baking and ill-advised jumper taking (heyo, Walt Frazier!) is a perfect counter-balance to Chris Paul's deliberate game. He's the yin to Paul's yang. He's a Mentos in a coke bottle. And to think I chose him as worst newcomer for ESPN's Summer Forecast. (That's the sound of my palm hitting my face.)

• • •

6MOTY: Sixth Man of the Year
In the U.S. Presidential Line of Succession, the Secretary of Defense is the "sixth man" in line. Lay it on me straight, friends -- if you had to pick an NBA player or coach to fill Leon Panetta's squeaky, vacant shoes and take up their role as our president's "sixth man", who would you pick?
	1. Joel Anthony 2. Tim Duncan 3. Kevin Garnett 4. Gregg Popovich 5. Stephen Jackson	Aaron McGuire: One of the problems inherent in a hyper-partisan congress is that you really aren't going to make much headway with any sort of controversial pick. I mean, I love Kevin Garnett's defense, but imagine trying to get him through senate hearings. Just isn't happening. Popovich is too much of a liberal for the Tea Party caucus, and Spencer Hawes would bomb his neighbors. No thanks. I'll go with the most conservative pick I can, then -- welcome to the cabinet, Joel Anthony. May your appointment be as uneventful as your two minutes of playing time in last year's finals.
	1. Shane Battier 2. Grant Hill 3. Chris Duhon 4. Carlos Boozer 5. Kyrie Irving	Alex Dewey: Gregg Popovich, because he can see the future. But it would be political suicide to appoint him! So I won't. Grant Hill or Shane Battier would be much easier confirmations. Such nice young men. They went to Duke and have probably never personally overseen the Air Force coup of an extraterrestrial planet. They've never coached a team of young military prodigies in space, forcibly removed from their families from birth, to destroy a Borg-like empire with devastating efficiency, only thereafter having their minds wiped before being placed into Golden State to coach basketball professionally the rest of their days. Neither of these players, that is to say, is Gregg Popovich. That gives them a fresh political start. Shane Battier gets the tiebreaker... because of his defense. [Ed. Note: Alex, why.]
	1. Gregg Popovich 2. Chris Kaman 3. David West 4. Ivan Johnson 5. Tim Duncan	Adam Koscielak: Well, at first I wanted to say it's Steve Nash, but then I realized he's too much of a pacifist. Then, I thought of Kobe, but decided against it, after realizing Kobe would probably advise foreign powers to "count da nukezzz" and launch an apocalyptic chain of events. And then, I remembered Gregg Popovich has ties with the CIA and might actually be an action flick hero. He'd probably be the next Sun Tzu if given charge of an army. Trojan horses, surprise attacks and all. Perfect candidate.

• • •

COTY: Coach of the Yacht
What recently fired/retired coach will have the most success in becoming a yacht aficionado in his second career? Alternatively: success in simply becoming a yacht. (Note: includes departed coaches from 2012 & 2011.)
	1. Avery Johnson 2. Alvin Gentry 3. Mike Brown 4. Jay Triano 5. Nate McMillan	Aaron McGuire: There are a lot of obvious answers here, but I'd like to go a bit off kilter and suggest that Avery Johnson would have the most success as a future yacht-based entrepreneur. My reasons? He sounds like Popeye, who's... like, a sailor, man. Also, he's known in Spurs circles as "little general", which indicates he has the leadership chops to successfully lead the yacht to victory. On the minus side, he's a abject Lovecraftian horror as a coach.
	1. Mike Brown 2. Mike D'Antoni 3. Phil Jackson 4. Alvin Gentry 5. Mike Woodson	Alex Dewey: Mike Brown. Easy. Hard-working, yachtesque, husky-skipper-walk is perfected, has experience coaching Stephen Jackson in two locations, military background, knows how to upset Kobe Bryant solely by working too hard, knows how to bring Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum to tears with a single word, knows every play and offense that has ever been run, navigational wizard, a true original, and inscrutably unfathomable in his ultimate power. His laughter is a basilisk of sound. The only problem is it's too easy: Mike Brown would actually be the Admiral of the Navy.
	1. Alvin Gentry 2. Stan Van Gundy 3. Phil Jackson 4. Avery Johnson 5. Scott Skiles	Adam Koscielak: Well, I'm a sentimental guy, so I really have to go with recently fired Alvin Gentry. He'd make a fine yacht captain, m'kay-ing every single order he'd make, launching into angry tirades after his faithful assistant (Thunder) Dan Majerle forgot to adjust the sails for the thirtieth time that day, and in off-time sitting down and leaving sad messages on Steve Nash's and Grant Hill's voicemail. It must be noted that when writing this, I'd imagined Stan van Gundy in a captain's hat, and decided to give him co-ownership of this award.

• • •

DPOY: Dread Pall of the Year
Which coach or player do you think opposing teams dread the most? Either for general churlishness, player quality, play style, whatever. Who does everyone hate to play?
	1. Tom Thibodeau 2. Pat Riley 3. Manu Ginobili 4. Reggie Evans 5. Kevin Garnett	Aaron McGuire: This one's a little tough. Lot of different angles to take. I'm going to go to the coach side of the ledger and tap Tom Thibodeau. Reasons should be somewhat obvious, but to put it succinctly -- Thibodeau's teams have been a massive pain in the butt to play for 5-6 years running. First the dynasty Celtics, whose defensive legend knows scant compare, and now with the Chicago Bulls he's keeping the annoying train running on-time. His players like him, but he plays them into the ground and grinds the other team's effort into dust. I'd be shocked if there was anyone in the league that actually enjoys trying to score against a Thibodeau team. SHOCKED.
	1. Eric Gordon 2. Kyrie Irving 3. LeBron James 4. Kevin Durant 5. Andre Miller	Alex Dewey: I'll go with Eric Gordon. Everyone that follows basketball even just a little knows that Kobe/Duncan/Melo/KG/Durant will take your lunch money, and there are times when an elite coach does the same. But Eric Gordon is in an odd sort of arbitrage where he's just about in the stratosphere of these players in quality but not in recognition. Even Steph Curry/Kyrie/James Harden/Anthony Davis have stories and gimmicks and there's a good chance your random fan off the street has heard of them. Heck, I'm guessing Nate Robinson and Glen Davis get some daps when they walk down a busy street. The Pacers were in Parks and Rec! But if you lose to Eric Gordon? Eric friggin' Gordon? No matter how great he turns out to be, you've lost to Eric Gordon. Who? Eric Gordon, man. You probably didn't see him coming, not to that extent, but you knew he was pretty good. Not that good, though! And you're left explaining how good Eric Gordon is. Might just be a Spurs/Lakers thing, though. Because he kills those teams, for reasons unknown.
	1. Chris Paul 2. LeBron James 3. Kevin Durant 4. Kevin Garnett 5. Tim Duncan	Adam Koscielak: The obvious answer would be LeBron or Kevin Durant, but I'm going to go with Chris Paul. The man has obvious skill, but he's also a trash talking, flopping menace on the floor. He'll make your blood boil. And then he's going to give you a hug, tell you you've played a good day and invite you to your house to play Monopoly or something. Try not losing your temper knowing the dude beats you in basketball AS WELL AS Monopoly, Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit.

• • •

MIP: Most Infuriating Player
Let's end it with a simple one. Out of all the players in the league, which player has infuriated their team's fanbase the most this season? Whether from injury, general tendency towards being a capricious manchild, or the worst play that a man could imagine.
	1. Dwight Howard 2. Pau Gasol 3. Michael Beasley 4. Andrew Bynum 5. Josh Smith	Aaron McGuire: Dwight Howard is the only person allowed to win this award in my book. I know exactly zero Laker fans that aren't completely and utterly disenfranchised by Dwight's capricious moaning. It's at the point where most Laker fans I know are actively wondering if it'd be better to trade Dwight or Gasol. Mull on that for a moment. Dwight Howard has been such an infuriating feckless twat that many Laker fans are actually defending Pau Gasol. Shock and awe. Honorable mention to Gasol, Beasley, Bynum and Josh Smith -- all players who would be mortal locks for this award in a non-Dwight season.
	1. Pau Gasol 2. Dwight Howard 3. Michael Beasley 4. Chris Kaman 5. Brandon Jennings	Alex Dewey: Pau Gasol -- It's not really fair but it is what it is. Pau is probably injured, certainly derided, poorly-managed, and poorly-led. Doesn't get credit for his greatness and gets his flaws magnified by everybody. But this isn't a question about validity. When it comes to annoying his fanbase? "Gasoft" takes the cake.
	1. Michael Beasley 2. Andrea Bargnani 3. Dwight Gasoward 4. Andrew Bynum 5. JaVale McGee	Adam Koscielak: If it isn't Michael Beasley, I don't know if these awards have a point. [Ed. Note: They don't.] I mean, yes, there's always Andrea Bargnani. At least he had the common decency to injure himself! As a Suns fan, I can tell you that when Beasley steps up to the scorers table, I get nauseous. And then, when he plays well, I feel even more nauseous! Because I see how much better he could be, if he had the tiniest iota of self-awareness. But that's too much for a brain devoured by joints. Oh, and his contract? That's 3 years, 18 million... Screw Beasley, is what I'm saying.

• • •

What do YOU think? Let us know your picks for the "awards" in the comments below.

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. 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. What more could we provide? Today's three short pieces are as follows.

• CLE vs BOS: Kyrie Irving -- the Demon Barber of Q Street (by Aaron McGuire)
• OKC vs LAC: Kevin Durant is the Living Future (by Alex Dewey)
• EAST vs WEST: Marginalizing the Five Percenters (by Alex Dewey)

• • •

__CLE vs BOS: Kyrie Irving -- the Demon Barber of Q Street
___Aaron McGuire_

"Easy shaving for a penny / As good as you will find any."

There's something breathtaking about the pint-size dominance of a player like Kyrie Irving. No, I'm not being racist against Australians, thank you very much. (Leigh Ellis, you're the bomb.) I just mean to highlight "small" players -- not Boykins small, mind you, but any player who could be described as relativistically small. Tiny in compare. Of course Irving isn't small relative to the world at large -- the one time I met him I was barely taller than he was, and most people I know think I'm oddly tall. But on the silver screen, surrounded by seven foot trees and rippling athletic freaks of nature like Westbrook and Wall? There's a certain smallness of form, and it lends to an allure. That whole sense of rooting for the little guy, both figuratively and literally. It doesn't always make sense that a player that size is obliterating all that stands in his path. But it's almost always fun to watch.

Part of Sweeney Todd's allure as a cultural emblem lies in the very same oddity. It's fun watching small basketball players knife into the lane and make mincemeat of a team's defensive scheme. Conversely, it's fun watching a downtrodden man exact his revenge from a fundamentally ignored profession. It's unexpected, odd, unsettling. Nobody goes to the barber and suspects them to harbor murderous tendencies. Before you see Sweeney Todd, you never think to yourself... "oh, wow, I'm baring my neck to a man with a large razor and giving him full sight of my jugular veins." Nobody thinks that! In a person's pre-"Sweeney Todd" youth, barbers are simply ignored figures who perform a service and that's that.

In reality, there's nothing particularly off-kilter about the mere idea of a demon barber. After all, blade-wielding or not, they're human beings just like the rest of us. There's nothing especially disturbing about a murderer just because their profession gives them a bit more access to the human neck. There's nothing especially interesting about a forty point scoring night just because the bedazzling guard is a bit on the short side. Neither are especially exemplary by themselves. But it's the expectation that counts. We live with the unstated truth that we're constantly trusting our barbers with our lives. Sweeney Todd challenges that. So too do we live with the unstated truth that a shorter player is "worse" than a larger player, less fitting, more foreign. Untrue, of course, but it's a matter of expectations. We can't account for what we don't expect. So we watch Sweeney Todd, we read of his exploits. We consider all the times a barber was a flick away from ending our lives. And what happens? Our skin crawls. Discomfort, shivers, and horror abounds.

And then, as with last night, we glance upon a demon barber of a different sort. We watch Kyrie Irving scrub his hands and dive into the teeth of a wheezing, storied defense. We watch a helpless Celtics squad triple team the diminutive Irving to no avail. He drew his straight razor and sliced the lane in twain, putting the game away and making a title-aspirant defense look like a set of deck chairs. And it really isn't all that unexpected at this point. Kyrie Irving is as bloodthirsty a competitor as any Sweeney Todd look-alike -- the Cavaliers aren't a good team, and the Celtics aren't anywhere near what they once were. But they've got a future. And they've a dazzling waterbug guard who, at his best, plays in such a way that you simply can't look away.

Slice away, young man.

• • •

OKC vs LAC: Kevin Durant is the Living Future
Alex Dewey

Kevin Durant was the future last night. I don't know where basketball will be in 40 years, but one of my pet ideas is that we'll make the court about 45 feet shorter. That is to say, the court would be about half as long. You could get the entire field of play in a single camera shot, more or less. I'm guessing the court also gets a few feet wider on each side to make Thibodeau-style defense more difficult and corner threes a mite less efficient. Why do I like this idea?

Because you're always in transition. You're always in motion!

You're always defending your basket and, at the same time, near a quick score at your opponent's basket at any given time, potentially only a short outlet pass away. Those of you familiar with tennis? Well, there would be a game-within-the-game similar to tennis' shot construction, where balancing offensive and defensive commitments of players becomes a defining strategic consideration. Keep a point guard at the top of the key to run the offense? Okay, but if they lose the ball on a pass they're going to have trouble covering a rangy defender! Dominant rim-protector? Sure, but the closer you bring him to your own rim, the further away he is from scoring.

The reduced size of the court almost eliminates defenses getting set habitually except out of timeouts, inbounds plays, and special defensive strategies. Would smart teams like the current Spurs benefit from a faster-paced assault? Sure. Would it help transition speed-demons like the Thunder and Heat? Sure. Would it help the talented Lakers? Trick question. Nothing can help the Lakers. But yeah, probably. Who knows? I think it's worth finding out. Kevin Durant and LeBron James would be the ideal players for this model. They're always in transition defensively and always ready and able to chase down players that get ahead of the break. This version of basketball would actualize the two of them in both the individual and team senses, even moreso than the game does now.

That's the key reason it's a pet idea of mine. Basketball as it is seems more primed to actualize players like Tim Duncan, Derrick Rose, or Chris Paul -- players that don't want to run back between every play or be a constant two-way threat. Players that want to switch their attention every play. Granted, Duncan would pull off some amazing outlet passes. Derrick Rose would force the "defensive" team to sacrifice transition-time resources just to stuff him at the rim. Chris Paul is an all-time great in terms of his intelligence and feel for the game. Physically, though, they'd suddenly be at a serious disadvantage to the relentless athleticism of LeBron or Durant.

Kevin Durant gets buckets at an amazing rate and has improved in all facets of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if the main limiting factor to his and LeBron's improvement is to be found in the nature of the game rather than in the nature of their transcendent talent. That's what Kevin Durant showed me last night. Not just that he can get buckets at a legendary clip (although, still, just look at this dunk again). He showed me that through athleticism and talent forces us to reconsider the entire nature of the game.

• • •

EAST vs WEST: Marginalizing the Five Percenters
Alex Dewey

If you have some pieces, you're almost there, and if you're almost there, you go for it — even if the chances of toppling a superpower are slim. "If you've got even a 5 percent chance to win the title — and that group includes a very small number of teams every year — you've gotta be focused all on winning the title," says Rockets GM Daryl Morey. Mark Cuban, the Mavs' owner, agrees: "One sprained toe or two, and the competitive landscape changes," he says. "You don't want to miss that opportunity. You should always put the best team you can on the floor within the parameters you have set for yourself."

-- Zach Lowe, The ("Low End") Five Percent Theory

I think the NBA should switch to a 16-team seeded bracket for the playoffs. My reason for this is simple. It's mathematics, even. Using the above 5% number as a baseline, let's assess some hypothetical probabilities. Let's say that the team with the highest likelihood to come out of the East is, say, Miami. The Heatles sport a tidy 64% chance in this set of hypotheticals, with the Pacers, Knicks, and Bulls each featuring 10% chances. The other 6% goes to the field. Let's say the West is more like... Thunder at 34%, Spurs at 17%, Clippers at 17%, Grizz at 10%, Warriors at 8%, Nuggets at 6%, rest of the field at 8%. In a position of uncertainty (uncertainty including everything from injury, unforeseen breakout players, and sheer random chance) I think those are fair as a starting point. I might actually have these team lower and the Nets, Celts, and Hawks a little higher myself, but I'm illustrating something.

Now, a forward perspective -- let's just say that the Finals is a 50-50 flip, each time. No matter how good a team's chances are coming in, after the crucible of three rounds they've made a statement that they belong. That means we can get the odds of a title by dividing each team's conference-winning chances by 2. In that case, Miami's the only >5% contender in the East, and the West features the Thunder, Spurs, Clippers.

Here's the funny thing... despite the fact that the Warriors and Nuggets are excluded from contention by this calculation by a hair (4% and 3%)? If we take this model at face value, the non-contender Warriors and Nuggets are far better than the 5% Pacers, Knicks, and Bulls! Winning 3 rounds against a grab-bag of the Thunder, Grizz, Spurs, and Clippers? That's absolute madness, and it's the main reason the Warriors and Nuggets should expect to have such trouble winning a title. If they only have to play one round against a truly elite team, they could pull something crazy off against that team and hang with the other very-good teams in their conference. Both the Warriors and Nuggets are actively deep in a way that the Pacers of this and last season are not. That is to say, the Warriors and Nuggets could pull some high-variance games, JaVale McGee could find himself in a groove like he did against the Lakers, and the Heat or Thunder could find themselves suddenly out of luck.

It's not likely, don't get me wrong. But remember that the uncertainty that we're basing our model on includes not only Draymond Green breaking out to shut down LeBron or KD, but also the probability of a serious injury or string of injuries to the contenders. If Marc Gasol goes down, the Warriors still have to go through the remains of that decent Memphis team, and then two of the Thunder/Clippers/Spurs, likely with both at full strength. The point here isn't to make some deep statement about the contenders as they are, the point is that -- with a reasonable model of probability -- we can say that the East-West bracket combined with West-dominated depth of the league ends up crowding out plenty of Western teams from realistic contention, putting teams that could theoretically compete with the best in the league into rebuilding mode.

On the other hand, eastern pseudo-contenders without a realistic shot can point to "that ECF appearance two years ago" or "that 36-46 playoff season where we took them to 6" as an example of how close they are with the right pieces. (Hello, Philadelphia!) Eastern teams and players can accumulate fans and acclaim just for being in the right conference! Meanwhile, solid Western teams can lose them for the same reason. Them's the breaks, and I'm sure I'll live with the consolation prize of great basketball every night in the West and not having to pay attention to the Pistons except that one guy (you know who), even if it hurts the Spurs chances a few percent.

But I also think it's self-perpetuating, in the sense that an Eastern team doesn't have to field quite as good a team to be mediocre, playoff-bound, or in contention. Ergo? It doesn't. This is a collective problem, and collective problems in the specific cooperative/competitive sense are hard to solve without action by the ruling body. And along those lines? Perhaps it's time to solve it.

Coming off my 370-part player capsule series, I'm taking on a significantly less incredible task -- a 30-part frame examining the evolution of the individual teams in the NBA's 2013 season. Some in medias res, others as the season ends. Somewhat freeform, with a designated goal to bring you a few observations of note about the team's season, a view into the team's ups and downs, and a rough map of what to expect going forward. Today, we cover a team I recently deemed one of the league's biggest surprises, although certainly not in a good way -- we're covering the sordid, unhappy tales of the 2013 Chicago Bulls.

In the preseason, I notched Chicago for a record of 41-41. There were two main reasons. First, the obvious -- I'd gotten some information indicating that Rose was going to be out for all but 10-15 games of the season, and in Rose's absence, I had absolutely no idea how the Chicago offense was going to hold up. The defense would remain decent, but I was worried it too would experience a drop-off after the Bulls let bench mainstay Omer Asik go, let Ronnie Brewer go, and watched helplessly as Luol Deng suffered more injuries over the summer in London. Needless to say, I wasn't entirely apt -- the Bulls are hardly a great team, but a stay-puft early schedule combined with one of Joakim Noah's best years as a pro have kept the Bulls well above water. They're comfortably in the Eastern playoff picture, and if Rose is back into shape by the playoffs, they'll be as firmly ensconced in the eastern picture as any non-Miami team. How have they been so far, though?

• • •

TRENDSPOTTING: CHICAGO AT A GLANCE, IN TWO WEEK INTERVALS

A few comments on the format of the statbox. EFF DIFF indicates the average margin of victory per 100 possessions. OPP SRS indicates the opponent's strength using Basketball Reference's "Simple Rating System" -- high numbers indicate a hard stretch of schedule, low numbers indicate an easy one. W/L and H/A are straightforward, and ORTG/DRTG/POSS are calculated using the Basketball Reference formula. For more on the metrics in the bottom panel, see their page on Dean Oliver's four factors. Savvy?

A few metrics and observations of note in this split:

• BEST STRETCH: Although it wasn't their best stretch in terms of raw wins and losses, you'd be hard pressed to pick against their most recent two weeks if you're simply looking for their best general performance against decent competition. Home shellackings of the Hawks and the Lakers and a close overtime loss to a good Memphis team highlight the surprisingly-fast-paced stretch for the Bulls, although that blowout loss to the Suns (at home!) might end the season as one of Chicago's worst losses. Still, it's been a good stretch for Thibodeau's guys.
  

• WORST STRETCH: They were playing against moderately decent teams, but that doesn't really excuse the general play -- the Bulls were at their worst back in a memorable mid-November schneid, a five-game road trip they went 2-3 on only to bookend it with a confusing home loss to the not-really-good but not-really-bad Milwaukee Bucks. During that stretch, they very nearly dropped a game to Phoenix (barely pulled it out in OT), got obliterated at Staples center against the Clippers, and scored 93 points two games in a row against the Bucks (once to win, once to lose). Pretty bad stretch. On the plus side? Since that stretch, the Bulls have gone 9-2 on the road, which is pretty phenomenal.

One interesting trend, coming from that home/road note -- the Bulls are currently 12-5 on the road and only 13-12 at home. There aren't many teams in the league that can say they've played better on the road then they have at home. In fact, of the current 16 playoff-bound teams, only the Milwaukee Bucks can say that, and they're only better by a half-game (11-9 road, 10-9 home). If they can keep the road warrior act going in the playoffs with some Rose-fueled home improvement, they'll be an extremely tough out whether they've got home court or not.

• • •

CHICAGO'S BIGGEST MYSTERY: Who's their best player, sans Rose?

Unlike most teams, there aren't a lot of huge mysteries about Chicago's play. We know how they defend, in a general sense -- after all, just about every team in the league has adopted Coach Thibodeau's flood-the-ball-side defensive strategy that tends to spread the scoring around and give bigger games to secondary scorers to the minimization of the primary scorer's raw numbers. Thibodeau teams seem to be better at it than anyone else, but that's more a function of effort, personnel, and the tickling intricacies of the strategy than a function of Thibodeau doing something nobody else is aware of. The offense isn't much of a mystery either -- it's pretty awful, for sure, but you could make a reasonable argument that his teams are offensively deficient on purpose. That is to say, Thibodeau sacrifices offensive creativity for defensive creativity, getting his players to put their best work in on the defensive end because it's simply more consistent and more his personal style. Such as they strive and all. All that said, there's still one curiosity I've always had about the Bulls.

Who's their best player? Obviously, if you look at the Bulls with Rose back, it's going to be their MVP. But we aren't. It's a funny question, because the obvious answer isn't quite as fitting as most people think. The easiest answer is to say Joakim Noah and call it a day. And I'll admit, it's tempting. Noah's pivot passing is a stone's throw from best-in-class, he has a rangy dominance of the defensive end that's easy to underrate, and he's a vocal leader on the floor. And all of that's great, but I tend to go back to the facts I outlined in Noah's player capsule -- he's regularly been an oddly preeminent drag on Chicago's statistical performance when he's on the court, and it's been a pronounced effect for long enough that I have trouble simply looking past it without any reasonable explanation. The trend has held up this year, by the way -- the Bulls have been about a point worse per 100 possessions with Noah on the court, despite no incredible backups a la Omer Asik.

So I'm not positive that Noah's their best player. But if not Noah, then who? Carlos Boozer would be a possible answer if we were watching the Magic School Bus, but we aren't, so he's not. Luol Deng is a great player, but I've got difficulty naming him Chicago's best. He's a great defensive player whose offensive statistics are a bit inflated due to his completely insane minutes haul. And his defense has suffered a bit over the past few years as he's racked up a heavy weight of untreated maladies and injuries. I maintain that Taj Gibson is their best defensive player, but Thibodeau gives the man 20 minutes per game and never seems to consider increasing his role on the team, so he certainly can't be called their best without calling Thibodeau incompetent. Kirk Hinrich is the cryptkeeper. Rip Hamilton is torn. Which leads one back to the obvious answer -- mystifying off-court numbers aside, Noah's their best player.

I just wish I could figure out those splits, you know?

• For more Bulls scouting, check out the 2012 Chicago Bulls player capsules. •

• • •

FORECASTING: WHERE THEY GO FROM HERE, AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Trying to figure out how the Bulls are going to finish the season is essentially impossible. It's not that they've been an impossible team to figure out -- as I said, they're a classic Thibodeau unit. Great on defense, lacking creativity or vigor on offense. But without Rose around to carry them offensively, "lacking creativity" becomes "lacking quality", and "lacking quality" becomes a morass that nobody in the world wants to watch. One of the sad subplots of the 2013 season has been watching Bulls fans experience profound frustration on those games where the Bulls can't seem to get anything going. They come more often than they used to, now, and it's immensely irritating to anyone paying close attention. More irritating than that, though, is the sense that the Bulls -- as an organization -- don't care all that much.

This isn't the on-court product, mind you. The Bulls are a whirling dervish of effort and energy on the court, at least on the defensive end -- they hound teams to the breaking point. Chief among Thibodeau's assets as a coach is the way his teams come to play and throttle lesser teams. If a Bulls adversary takes them lightly, it doesn't take more than a quarter or two for the Bulls to go up by 20-30 and end the game early. But that on-court product masks a general disregard for the franchise fortune from their owner. Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf (his titles notwithstanding) is one of the NBA's least engaged owners. He doesn't seem to care much about his team, and he has more regard for blasting past the luxury tax than he has for building a product that can seriously contend for a title going forward. How else do you explain the franchise's lateral moves, letting promising pieces like Omer Asik go for a pittance and losing more and more depth as Thibodeau puts more and more heat on Chicago's best pieces? How do you justify wasting a year or two of Derrick Rose's prime with an aging supporting cast and few avenues for improvement?

That's the real thing, for me. What are the Bulls going to do when Rose gets back? They'll compete. They'll contend, perhaps -- I think they've got a good chance of pushing an immensely lazy Miami team to 6 or 7 games. And then, in that last game, they'll get blown out of the water. Exposed. Every team in the East will, and it won't really be Chicago's fault. But it'll happen. Reinsdorf will shrug his shoulders and give his old "what, me worry?" grin. "We'll be better next year," he'll say. "We'll keep building on what we've done," he'll say. "We'll get over the hump when Derrick gets better," he'll say. But if his track record's any indication, he won't really care all that much. He'll grin and bear it as he takes the abuse of a fanbase desperately aching for an owner that cares as much as they do, and he'll watch as the Bulls continue their old habits. Maximum effort, maximum energy, maximum grind. And when the chips are down? A wheezy crew of worn-down veterans who played too many minutes with depth that was sold to save a buck.

All that said? Prove me wrong, Jerry. Please. I like Rose. I don't want him to retire with nothing but "what ifs."

• • •

I told you all I'd try to come up with a riddle. But since I'm dealing with teams, now, riddles come cheap -- I'll be using a trio of random statistics or facts from a random subset of the next team's last season. If you can intuit what the next team is from these numbers, you're a scientist of the utmost brilliance. Today's facts about our next team are:

• Team #3 has been one of the worst teams in the NBA over the past two weeks. Seriously atrocious play. This is despite going 3-6 in their last 9, too. They've sported the 25th worst offense in the period, shooting the ball relatively well but never getting second chance points and virtually never getting to the line. That's all a bit astonishing in the aftermath of their 9-3 stretch from mid-November to mid-December, but let's be honest -- we all knew they weren't that good, right? Right?

Best of luck. See you next week. (Or later this week. I'm not sure.)

Long ago in a distant land, Alex Arnon was watching a Kings/Suns preseason game when he became so furiously enraged at a Tyreke Evans double-teamed isolation jumper with 19 seconds on the shot clock that he hit his head, fainted, and woke up a delusional new man. To my understanding, he's now wholly ensconced in a bizarro world where some guy named Xenu created the Earth, Segways changed the very core of how people get around, and small markets make up the vast majority of NBA coverage and traffic. So just remember the motto we've provided our cracked-skull columnist: "No superstars? No problem!"

Remember Smash Mouth's smash hit "All Star"? Having made that song my life's motto many moons ago, I was incredibly disappointed recently when I learned that the absolute poetry which legendary frontman Steve Harwell blessed our lives with isn't 100% true.

With All-Star Game voting concluding recently, I had latched on to one lyric in particular - only shooting stars break the mold. What an astute metaphor that was for the wonderful game of basketball, I thought. Only rising small market superstars could break the big market mold. I knew that the unholy liberal elite New England media stranglehold was going to incessantly push for stat-padder and all-around petulant child Rajon Rondo to start in the All-Star Game. I also knew that small market darling and future greatest point guard of all-time Kyrie Irving was much more deserving than Mr. Rondo as is evident by a quick look at their Player Efficiency Ratings: Kyrie is 2th among all point guards in the East, behind only Kyle Lowry who has played 329 minutes less than Kyrie, whereas Rondo is 6th among Eastern conference point guards. This is surely incontrovertible evidence, right? Wrong.

You see, I forgot to factor in the fact that those uppity liberal elites would stop at nothing to win! The All-Star Game is a popularity contest voted on by the unwashed masses and who else but big marketeers would have millions of these cretins in their city? As you probably know by now, Rajon Rondo will be starting for the East in this year's All-Star Game and not Kyrie Irving. Smash Mouth lied to me. Smash Mouth lied to us all. I've been spending the weekend making all of my friends promise not to eat anything associated with Guy Fieri or listen to Insane Clown Posse records (which, granted, no one should be doing in the first place) because of the resemblance they all bear with the Mouth's lead singer. But I guess only one thing truly matters now:

Hey Rondo, you're an all-star.

• • •

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

In this section last week I told you young guns to look out for Denver, Utah, and San Antonio at home in the upcoming week and as always the Arnoninator (that's me with a cool Schwarzenegger twist, get it!?) got it right. The Nuggets went 3-1, the Jazz went 2-0, and the Spurs went 2-0. What's more impressive is the teams they accomplished this against -- the Jazz beat the reigning champion Heat, the Nuggets beat the reigning Western champion Thunder, and the Spurs beat the reigning grittiness champion Grizzlies. Home is where the heart is, my friends, and we small marketeers have more than enough heart.

In related news, the model small market franchise Indiana Pacers have snuck into the 3rd seed in the East without their biggest star, Granny Danger (who is unrelated to all those unfortunate actresses playing grandmas in danger everywhere in LifeAlert commercials). They play their next 4 on the road however, surely a devilish scheme by David Stern himself to derail the Champacers on their quest for moral and NBA victory. Never fear, though -- the Pacers will make it to the Eastern Conference Championship... at the very least.

• • •

Sammy's Sack Racing Presents: "The King Of The League!" Jimmer Fredette MVP Watch

The Stormin' Mormon has looked more like the Dormant Mormon as of late, surely a reaction to the news that he is going to be relocated to hippy pot-smoking paradise Seattle next season. How do you expect someone with the moral fiber of one Mr. Jimmer Fredette to enjoy himself on days off in a town where all the locals do is sip caffeine-filled lattes (the only energy worth having is that which God's love inspires you with!) and make snarky comments about people without Macbooks in their local Starbucks? As we all know, Jimmer is still an ardent Windows ME user. He likes telling people it stands for "Mormon Empathy" before he shows them the righteousness of Joseph Hezekiah Smith's original teachings. One must hope that Jimmer doesn't have a Mike Dunleavy-esque fall from grace due to this troubling news, but we're going to have to keep an eye out for a possible new MVP candidate -- I've got my eye on you, Chandler Parsons.

• • •

Small Market Mondays Game of the Night

Today's Martin Luther King day, friends! We get to celebrate the contributions of the greatest Americans of all time by watching basketball from 10AM to 10PM (if you're on the Best Coast, that is... SUCK IT BIG MARKET LEAST COAST). Unfortunately, the game of the night will be the first game on the day's slate - the Champacers take on the gritty Grizzlies in a showdown sure to feature brilliant rebounding and beautifully drawn inbound plays. Words can't describe my love for the double-screen half-court pirouetting mid-range pump fake play which Indiana coach Frank Vogel calls at least once a game after a particularly strategic timeout. And don't get me started on Grizzlies Coach Lionel Hollins' famous "Who Let The Dogs Out" play where Marc Gasol just reads Tony Allen's Twitter feed out loud to Zach Randolph's defender as Mike Conley simultaneously barks at him which frees Randolph to intentionally brick a Z-pointer that he sprints after and cleans up for the Z-Bound.

One more note - even though it's not a Small Market game in the least you have my permission to watch the Lakers travel to Chicago and lose yet again. I'll be damned if there's anything more hilarious than any arrogant dream big market dream team having a sub-.500 record halfway through the season. I have a dream. I have a dream that big market teams will one day play in a league where they will not be judged by the number of their superstars but by the number of their wins. And when that day comes, we can all get together to laugh at the Lakers together regardless of race, creed, or color. Amen.

According to A Season on the Brink by John Feinstein, legendary Indiana coach Bob Knight once had a sign in his locker room reading "Victory favors the team making the fewest mistakes." Knight loved it. I do too. If you think about it, in a situation of uncertainty, that's all we can do. Try to get better, and try to make fewer mistakes than your opponent, if there are opponents involved. More broadly, coaches seem to understand at all times something that fans, commentators, and bloggers all at times seem to forget: you're in a game to compete with the other team, not to look competent, even if that's only a few letters off. Whether or not that's always possible with political and organizational realities is another matter altogether, but that's the job description, right after acting as leader and manager and putting the best sporting product on the floor. You have to compete. And competing means looking carefully at the levers by which wins are raised, and attempting to aggregate as much leverage for your team in a given match-up as possible, and denying the same to your opponents. That's -- in a nutshell -- what it means to compete.

Let's talk about mistakes.

• • •

While there are players that are simply mistake-prone by nature or inexperience, there's generally some sort of consistent schema or a mechanism in the sport by which players and teams make their various types of mistakes. For instance, "you don't know how to pass out of a post-up when they bring a certain type of pressure" or "you don't have the ability to score or shoot so they can play off you and pack the paint every single time." These schemas and mechanisms form much of the strategic calculus underlying competition. Simply stating "that's a mistake" may be accurate but it says very little. How something is a mistake, is far more important. It's not that the mistake occurred, it's how a team tilts the odds in its favor, how teams force mistakes, and how teams get themselves out of the situations that demand mistakes. There are little mistakes that can be corrected on their own terms, but to go further, to fix the mistakes that plague your team day by day, you have to solve the mechanisms by which the mistakes come about: the misconceptions about spacing, the troubles your team has against a press, the trouble you as a player have against back-door cutters. And so on and so forth. And the trouble your team has with turnovers.

As the title of this piece probably suggested, this is really about turnovers. Turnovers aren't just mistakes, and even to the extent they are, they need to be examined as part of the strategic fabric; after all, the absence of turnovers happens only in a simplified strategic situation. A turnover is not some nebulous failure of execution that happens when a certain neuron doesn't fire in the non-idiot section of the brain. Oh, sure, a turnover can be like that, or a young player that just whiffs on a pass. But most of the time we have to delve deeper, just the same way we wouldn't automatically dismiss bad shooting on a given night as either bad luck or horrible players or horrible shooters. Good players miss good shots, and a turnover, like a missed shot, can simply be the negative residue of a good decision made by players in a position of uncertainty.

We're no fools, generally speaking, in basketball. We get that there are "good and bad shots" that happen to miss because of random chance, even if the NBA is a "make-or-miss league". What's more... and this is key, there are shots that both the offensive and defensive team will live with in the competitive fabric, essentially saying "Good if it goes. Bad if it doesn't." or, more precisely, "Serge Ibaka taking that shot? Well, gee, we could both do better, but we could both do worse. At this point there's no point for the defense to contest it, and no point for the offense to go for a better shot. Serge Ibaka, this is your lucky day. Take that shot, Serge, so we can all stop standing around like idiots while essentially nothing unfolds but the slow march of seconds." (Much of the variance in a game comes from the outcomes of such shots that both teams decide to live with; in some sense this is the largest source of variance in the strategic calculus of a game, though I'm not sure yet how to phrase that constructively.)

Like good shots, we observers tend to be attuned to good plays and good decisions that simply don't work out, too: LeBron passing to an open Udonis Haslem instead of trying to drive on a lane-packing zone, for example. And turnovers can be part of those good decisions and good plays. This isn't universally the case, but I often see turnovers as just an unfortunate residue of a creative team and creative players that pass and create before they have perfect control of a situation (against defenses whose goal is to deny them this control). And if you accept all of this, then we as a group of observers need to have the discipline to live with those turnovers as fans if they're part of a decent plan, just like we live with missed open 3s by shooters from the wing and corner. I'm saying this because I'm a Spurs fan that watched San Antonio come up a bit short in Memphis last Friday night and dominate the Grizz in San Antonio Wednesday night.

In both games, turnovers were right at the center of things, present in one and absent in the other.

• • •

Fortunately for me, I actually wrote this piece about the Memphis game and turnovers last Friday, and had the opportunity to sort of soak up what I'd written and reconcile it with the rematch in San Antonio, and the ensuing adjustments. So let's start with Friday. The first item of note is that the overtime Memphis win had a nice ebb and flow to it. Great execution from beginning to end. Ultimately, Friday saw a very close game that the Grizzlies won on some close calls, and a phenomenal performance by Darrell Arthur late. The important thing to remember is that the Spurs (and Duncan specifically) had a lot of harmful turnovers, and with Memphis' personnel, those turnovers led (rather predictably) to:

1. A lot of friggin' points. As well as...
2. An understandable "all these turnovers make me sick!" reaction by Spurs fans.

I wanted to address that. Speaking personally as a Spurs fan, it's viscerally infuriating to see Tim Duncan lose the ball again and again against the Grizzlies, looking old and tired and mistake-prone. But the fact remains that on Friday, Duncan wasn't just making idiotic plays: Memphis was swarming him with their lengthy, athletic wings and guards. Since 2011, this has been one of the themes: Memphis has ably recognized Duncan's individual offensive skill, including his ability to make and receive passes, and to score good baskets from the mid-range despite advancing age. And Memphis, recognizing all of this, decided to cut that lever for their destruction off. If anyone gets the Spurs and Duncan and Popovich, it's the two teams that have co-opted them the most: the Grizzlies and Thunder (not coincidentally their two most recent playoff defeats).

The Grizzlies simply have a better understanding of Duncan's "old man game" than any other team in the league, and they aren't going to give Tim Duncan simple single-coverage where one of the smartest players in the league is given unlimited time to think and the best off-ball offense in the league has unlimited time to operate. So they denied Duncan the entry passes and the dribble on Friday. They didn't let Duncan dribble ("not even once") and they helped on him. They threw looks at him and forced him to react, and sometimes made even reaction impossible, because as soon as he dribbled they were on him. Despite that the whole of a good defense had been calculated to stop him, Duncan simply was not making glaring mistakes and the Spurs team as a whole weren't poorly executing (with perhaps the single exception of Gary Neal). The Spurs had decided to give Duncan the ball at the high post and the Grizzlies had decided to counter by helping off shooters.

This strategic equilibrium, perhaps not ideal for the Spurs (but plausible as an ideal) happened to lead to Spurs turnovers by the bunches. These teams have been stuck in this game since 2011 (and teams in general have been doing this to Duncan since he went to Wake). And ultimately, it wasn't a horrible strategy for either team. The Spurs still managed to score, and Duncan's interior passing (as well as Splitter/Diaw's) anchored the Spurs to a offensive game against a solid defensive team. Also, yes, there were turnovers. Occasional lapses in execution behind the turnovers explain a few of them, but overall the game was an example of excellent execution. Smart coaching, tenacious players on both teams that knew their roles, and the kind of control you get with good teams that don't leave their feet without purpose. That's where I'm coming from. But a lot of the reactions understandably fixated on turnovers as a great plague facing the Spurs. My response is: Okay, but do these turnover woes really justify radical changes? Are turnovers really hugely avoidable against Memphis? If so, does the solution have anything to do with the buzzword "execution"? I doubt it.

• • •

This is a line of questioning we now have a solid answer to. See, everything up to now I wrote on Friday, more or less, including that line of questioning. What was interesting to me about Wednesday's San Antonio blowout is that with Manu out and Parker not having an exceptional game, the key adjustment that the Spurs made offensively was (indeed) simply to limit the turnovers. And let's be clear here. Above I wasn't saying turnovers weren't bad or that they weren't the thing that cost the Spurs in that game. They were bad, and they did cost the Spurs, perhaps the entire game. I was saying that, even if that's true, Tim Duncan is a generational talent and, in a crucial way, still an efficient offensive player, even if his skill is now less of the "get buckets" variety, and more of the "navigate the complex strategic sub-games of an offense to reach win conditions effectively" type.

So, on Friday, it wasn't a horrible strategy by the Spurs to give Tim Duncan the ball on the low block or the elbow to initiate offense against the Grizzlies, a team that can defend all guards effectively and run out in transition off turnovers. The low block, after all, is close to the rim and ideal for hitting cutters and the corner three. And the elbow matches Duncan's midrange game perfectly, and he can also hit cutters and three point shooters from a central location. Guards like Chris Paul and Steve Nash relish the center of the paint at the free throw line on dribble-drives, but for a stationary big like Duncan, the edge of the paint is where he loves to operate. But, as Wednesday proved, the Spurs could certainly do better against a team like Memphis with their respective personnel. Their answer was to deliberately bring Duncan slightly back out of the offense. When he got the ball, Duncan seemed to operate from the space between the top of the key and the wing. Call it the elbow, but maybe take a few steps back. Which is to say that Tim Duncan was operating 20-22 feet from the basket. So not ideal by any stretch of the imagination. But by doing so, the Spurs' calculated adjustment thereby altered the geometry of the situation, in order to deny Memphis the chance to double and trap Duncan.

The adjustment worked; the Spurs ended up with just 13 turnovers, and Memphis apparently got zero fast break points the entire game, one of the many things that left their offense in shambles in the 2nd half. No easy buckets whatsoever. Why did it work? First of all, Memphis couldn't sensibly commit a trapping Tony Allen or Mike Conley to take Duncan off his dribble. In fact, on a semi-related note, when Tony Allen tried to over-help off a shooter at one point, Duncan punished Allen severely with a sharp pass to the open man. Duncan isn't a serious dribble-drive threat from 22 feet, but that simply meant Duncan had an unmolested look at the basket. Second, placing Duncan at 22 feet gave Memphis a much trickier decision even for the single defender (Marc Gasol): while Duncan is only an above-average mid-range shooter this season (Tim shoots about 4 per game from 16-23 hitting 43.5% according to Basketball-Reference), he flirts with the elite in that category regularly enough to make a consistently open shot a dangerous concession. What's more, the Spurs offense is predicated to an extent on avoiding mistakes. So many of their easy looks come from good teams turning their heads for a second while Danny Green or Kawhi Leonard cuts to the rim. Marc Gasol is an excellent rim protector, but he certainly isn't if he's 20 feet from the basket guarding Tim Duncan at the elbow. And so Marc stayed back.

On a related note: the Spurs offense is great partially because even if you deny cutters by staying home in the paint, their open shooters kill you. Memphis being unable to trap Tim Duncan without overhelping off open shooters, then, turns out to be quite a huge deal in the structure of the game. And on Wednesday they couldn't trap or steal from Duncan, and for the Grizzlies' sake, their offense was stuck in half-court mode the whole game, which is where their poor spacing bit them in the 2nd half. The Spurs didn't significantly cut down on turnovers from Friday to Wednesday (18 to 13), but they did cut down on the types of turnovers that the Grizzlies got low-risk, high-reward situations from. And I suppose that's part of what I'm getting at: If your team is coughing up the ball, it's worth it to see if they're genuinely coughing up spots of blood or if they're just getting a good, high-percentage idea out of their system that didn't turn out so well.

That metaphor went somewhere, didn't it?

• • •

I'm a Spurs fan, obviously. Less obviously, the 2011 series between these two teams marked a change in the way I viewed basketball. The two teams played in a way that you could really suss out with study and experience, in a series that genuinely came down to minor adjustments and how certain players were playing from game to game. Defensively, Duncan looked about 40 years old for stretches in that series, and likely had suffered an ankle injury earlier that season in silence. Manu Ginobili was at 85% (which is still really, really good, it should be noted) and had broken his arm just a week before. And Memphis was able to obliterate Tony Parker. Still, it was a 6-game, well-contested series, and the Spurs and Grizzlies traded often brilliantly-executed, gritty, tough basketball. Although Zach Randolph had the series of his life, anyone that watched that series had to gain a lot of respect for that whole Grizzlies team as competitors, and if nothing else, for the Spurs as competitors.

The Gary Neal shot (and the preceding run of buckets the Spurs got in the final minute) remains one of my favorite basketball memories of all time, and in a fit of curiosity, I vowed to document every possession of the series on my old blog. I didn't complete that particular project. But I did get an entire six minute stretch done and the insights gleaned to this day help me think through this match-up. Moreover, I gained a strong appreciation for two of the most iconic teams in the league today. Sometimes I look at other teams in the league and just notice something missing. Thibodeau's teams that can't get buckets for stretches, Indiana's own inability to score a bucket, the depressingly baroque Mavericks, the Morey Rockets in the pre-Harden era, the hyper-spaced Woodson Knicks, the post-Ubuntu Celtics, the pre-smallball Heat, and so on. And it just seems kind of shady, like they're trying to manufacture wins with almost cynical efficiency. There's a maddening incoherency to teams that can't score for stretches and a maddening blase randomness to teams that don't defend and don't move off the ball on offense.

As for these two teams? Memphis and San Antonio -- while both having diagnosable issues -- aren't holding anything in reserve, and they aren't being anything but on the level with who they are and what they bring to the table. The Grizzlies are missing good shooters, and the Spurs are missing perimeter defense and a fourth big. They're tired, gritty, methodical teams that get up for the games when they need to. They're smart teams with an ethos and usually bring their best to the playoffs, and sometimes, a six-minute stretch can give you a pretty darn good idea of where the two teams are respectively, a stretch that can make you forget all about sample size and withholding judgments. Look, the Grizzlies are still a bad match for the Spurs. In some sense nothing has changed. But something about the essence of the sport, something more eternal than other games, can be found in the simple matchup of 10 players that know where they are and what they're doing. It's in that spirit that I wrote a piece about the night the Spurs -- somewhat unexpectedly -- made the fewest mistakes. Thanks for reading.

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. 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. What more could we provide? Today's three short pieces are as follows.

• HOU vs LAC: Grant Hill's Tenth Centennial (by Aaron McGuire)
• LAL vs MIL: Lurking Demons & Shot Clock Follies (by Alex Dewey)
• PHX vs OKC: Dribbling the Night Away (by Adam Koscielak)

• • •

__HOU vs LAC: Grant Hill's Tenth Centennial
___Aaron McGuire_

A lot of numbers seem strangely meaningful, even if they're meaningless outside of the way we address them. Come, foreign nations: give us your even, your prime, your divisible-by-five! It's an odd and fascinating cultural tic we all seem to share. Inordinate appreciation for the attractive digits, that is. There's no real difference between Grant Hill's 999th game and his 1001st -- arbitrary difference, at best, and if you measure by minutes it becomes even more absurd. Consider: Hill had played 34,363 minutes before last night, and finished the night at 34,379. What an accomplishment, that! We'll be writing about Hill's 34,379th minute for years. I will someday tell my grandchildren, indeed, minute 34,379 was a sight to see. ... No, these are the ramblings of a crusty statistician. The child in my soul doesn't need milestones to mean things to be interesting, and by god, quadruple digits? A thousand contests? Meaningless significance or not, sometimes an arbitrary milestone sticks in your craw. This one stuck in mine. Good work, Grant.

Oh, a story. On this, Grant Hill's tenth centennial, he entered the game to a fun introduction. On a night where James Harden had decided from possession #2 that he'd be running face-first into every player on the court, Grant Hill planted his feet and took a solid charge at the age of 40. It was a good call -- he was set, outside the restricted area, and the offensive player got into him with their shoulder. But the Houston announcers responded to the charge by chuckling, calling it a blown blocking call, and -- 1,000 games into his NBA career -- mention that Duke players like Hill and Battier get a lot of "fake" charge calls. I just sat there a bit bemused. Really, Bullard? You're calling a team that stars James Harden, Jeremy Lin, Carlos Delfino, and Chandler Parsons... and you're going to complain about fake charge calls? I realize Houston doesn't have the best broadcasting crew, but it amused me a bit.

To put it one way: we're 1,000 games into Grant Hill's NBA career and bad announcers still can't get past where he went to college. He's posted the most triple doubles in Pistons franchise history, become a cautionary tale for the young and injured stars, and reinvented himself in a late career renaissance as a perimeter defending 3-and-D roleplayer. He's lost a step or 50 and still remained an active ambassador to the game and the sport. He's got a shot at being a hall of fame player, if on potential primarily, and he's one of the nicest guys in the league. He has a body of work the size of the Grizzlies' franchise history, for Christ's sake! And the first thing you say about him when he takes a good charge is that Duke guys get fake charge calls? Sometimes in analyzing sports we have memories shorter than a goldfish. Other times, though, we can't seem to lose the nagging image of the college title contender, 20 years prior, dishing passes to Laettner and taking Krzyzewski's pet charges. It's comforting, I suppose -- we'll never forget everything, right?

As for the game itself, it was a good game. For a half. The passing dazzled, the offense hummed, and both sides played a rousing match that made the victor's identity borderline irrelevant. Then the Clippers remembered that they're a clockwork contender and the Rockets are running high on Cinderella fairy-dust and bone-grinding hustle, and the contender roundly blew the young guns out of the building in the second half. Jamal Crawford did his running-on-Portland-tears thing. DeAndre Jordan continued his renaissance. Blake Griffin controlled, insofar as he's able, and Grant Hill hit 1000. It was a good night for a team that's becoming accustomed to them. And Coach Paul the Third gesticulated on the sidelines, urging his troops onward. The Clippers are a factor. Don't call it a comeback -- lord knows they've never been here, ever.

• • •

LAL vs MIL: Lurking Demons & Shot Clock Follies
Alex Dewey

Surreally poor clock management, especially by great offensive players, is really mystifying to me.

We always talk about defense as a big deal - generally speaking in the context of effort for older players and execution for younger players. But you only have to play defense if you let the other team have the ball, and two-for-ones/running out the clock are great examples where you simply don't have to let the other team have the ball an extra time, or where you can get the ball for yourself an extra time. It's not a totally value-free choice. The smart teams guard against two-for-ones -- they commit defensive resources and acuity to the early offense sets. And as for running out the clock? Well, it's often possible to get a GREAT shot with 9 seconds instead of a tightly-contested buzzer-beater, and in those situations, you obviously shouldn't. Danny Green's game-winner against the Lakers early this season comes to mind. That's all part of the competitive calculus, the give and take that characterizes a well-structured game. But something tells me Monta Ellis was quite far from thinking about denying the Lakers a final possession.

In a sequence at the end of the half, the Bucks totally ignored clock management as an element of strategy. There's just no other way to put it. Look: Metta World Peace hit a shot with 38 seconds left in the half. The Bucks waited for the prime seconds (32... 31... 30...) to drip off harmlessly before attempting a bad shot at 17 seconds. Then Luc Richard Mbah a Moute got an offensive rebound at 15 seconds and immediately went up for another bad shot instead of resetting. LRMAM's shot was sent out of bounds by Metta World Peace, and the Bucks rushed to get a shot on the inbounds. Monta, to his credit, got to the line. But he was struggling at the line and missed both. Off the Bucks' second free throw, Milwaukee actually got another offensive rebound. They didn't get anything close to a good shot, though. Now, I get that certain elements of strategy may be inaccessible to me when I'm watching at home, and I also get that the best player to lead a game might not be the best player to receive basketball "wisdom" from an Internet writer (and I'm the first in line to dismiss lines of reasoning like "JUST HIT YOUR FREE THROWS"). But I wasn't seeing the strategy from either team: The Lakers weren't feverishly attacking the two-for-one or addressing LRMAM's potential kick-out or trapping Ellis' dribble with :32. No, instead, I was seeing the Bucks trap themselves with bad management, and do it much more effectively.

I think players like Monta and Jennings might be "competitive" in the sense that they want to win games, but something about giving possessions away to the Lakers (with absolutely no apparent benefit) makes me pause in my assessment of them: We tend to think of these players as having feel for the shot and the game that can excuse their occasionally poor decision-making. Let Westbrook be Westbrook. And I buy that. But it was only by chance (and his offensive rebounders) that the Lakers didn't get a great possession or let the Bucks outright waste theirs. I'm giving Mbah a Moute the benefit of the doubt on the putback because he's not primarily an offensive player, but for such a smart defender of elite players, he must know: the best way to win on defense is not to play. It's just that simple. In the end, over 38 seconds of basketball, neither team scored. That sounds about fair, considering that, neither team competed for those 38 seconds.

The game itself was sort of microcosmic of that. Neither team showed up with especial gamesmanship to steal the game or get past the win condition pole. The Bucks dominated the offensive glass and used this to get back into the game several times when they were down. Milwaukee also hit a lot of random shots, but you can only take so many horrible shots before Sample Size starts to weigh heavy. The Lakers made a likable effort on defense (at least in the halfcourt, stifling a few possessions) and Dwight (with vim-and-vigor) looked like a monster offensively (and at times defensively, though 2 foolish goaltends sort of wipe out the impact of his 4 blocks). I thought the Lakers got better looks from deep than their 10-29 mark might indicate, and so all told it's hard for me to say they didn't dominate, even if it took a run in the fourth to seal the deal. Still, as dominating as the victory really was, it just strikes me as a game that they likely don't win against the Spurs, Nuggets, Rockets, or Thunder. The Lakers let the Bucks hang around. Against a coherent, good, playoff team, they would get punished severely.

Which is another way of saying the obvious: the problems are still there.

• • •

PHX vs OKC: Dribbling the Night Away
Adam Koscielak

Monday night, during a Suns game, a random tweet caught my eye. "Shannon Brown leads the NBA in dribbles per touch."

I wish I'd used the "favourite" button, but I didn't. I'm not sure whether this is a legitimate stat, or something conjured up by a frustrated mind as it watched his abomination of a basketball handle. Whatever it was, I'm pretty sure it's not that far away from the truth. Make no mistake, Shannon Brown made some strides since being Kobe's annoying backup. He learned some of the team game, he learned how to shoot better, and sometimes, just sometimes, he has that moment of brilliance where he slices the defence baseline and uses his trampoline-like legs to get a reverse layup.

But those are fleeting moments. The moments might come more often from Brown than the great moments from Jared Dudley or Wesley Matthews. The problem is, much like teammate Michael Beasley, Shannon Brown has a frustrating tendency to trade five disgustingly horrible moments for a single brilliant one. And nothing is more annoying than the ball going up and down in a fated isolation as time slowly trickles down, a staple of Shannon Brown's game, followed by a horrible pull-up jump shot.

My question: why does it happen? Even the folks at the weekly pickup game I wrote about last week have more awareness than that, and there's no shot-clock to respect, nothing to stop them from doing them but the purity of the game. They seem to embrace it. In a way, it's impressive that Brown -- despite all the pro experience, despite his two championship rings -- still manages to dribble the shot-clock out like that. It's impressive that his teammates and coaches still trust him enough to give him the ball. But the most magical fact of all is watching what exactly Shannon Brown does with that ball. Puts it between his legs, plays around with it, throws it behind his back, dazzles with it -- ... and ends up going absolutely nowhere. He rarely gets layups. If anything, he'll hit a lucky pull-up jumper that he'll follow with a brick or five.

But if he gets an opportunity somewhere other than isolation -- if he goes into the pick and roll, the pick and pop, charges the rim -- he can be a very dangerous, efficient player. He can finish at the rim, and sometimes he can make a brilliant pass. By that, I don't mean simple flashy passes. Steve Nash-style passes, straight out of nowhere. That's where he belongs, this is how he should be used, but he's not. Perhaps the coaches don't notice it. Perhaps they just want an ISO threat.

Or maybe Brown is simply content with dribbling the night away, bounce after bounce after bounce.

Hey, all. For today's post, I'd like to present some cross-conference matchup data. A lot of people discuss cross conference games from a perspective of raw wins and losses. I'm amenable to that, in the aggregate -- there are usually enough games that looking at raw intraconference wins/losses can give valuable results. Still, there's generally more insight to be gained by looking a tad bit behind the numbers -- not simply the raw number of wins, but how they came about, what sort of statistical quirks underlie them, and what teams are best against the opposing conference. You know, all that jazz. So come with me, friends, and let's get behind a few of the preliminary factors that drive 2013's main inter-conference trends, and note a few interesting quirks

Full-size table after the jump.

• • •

I'm rather busy and crunched for time today, but here are a few observations.

• First, while this isn't a historically lopsided cross-conference split, these are still some pretty startling numbers. The West has won 137 of 230 cross-conference games -- 59.6% of their cross-conference games, overall. The West has an efficiency differential of 2.94 against the East. In a single team, that differential and that winning percentage would translate to a 4/5 seed. And those numbers were arrived at despite, obviously, having heavy game coverage from the lower-tier western teams. Look at Phoenix, for instance -- they've already played 21 of their 30 cross-conference games, which means they have fewer games to go than several better western teams. A few teams of note:

• Denver has looked pretty good in recent months, but their poor record against the East is one of the reasons they've yet to crack the West's top 5. It's possible -- even likely -- that they'll regress to their mean and post a better record in the second half of the season. Same is true about the Lakers, Grizzlies, and Clippers (all of whom have a lower-than-expected record against the East.)

• Sacramento and Dallas -- despite overall records under 0.420 -- are barely below 0.500 against the Eastern conference. In fact, almost nobody in the West is. Only four teams are, actually with just Phoenix and New Orleans below 0.400. The inverse is true in the East, where all but four teams (Miami, Indiana, New York, and Atlanta) are below 0.500 against their Western brethren.

• The San Antonio Spurs have won their eastern games by an average of 13 points per 100 possessions. This is despite sitting everyone with a pulse against Miami and playing 9 of their 16 Eastern games on the road. Also: despite their 2OT game against the Raptors.

• How is the West doing it? Offense and defense. Fun fact: the East is marginally better on defense than the West over all games played (the East has posted a defensive rating of 105.9 by my numbers while the West is at 106.2), but in cross-conference matchups, the Western defensive attack tends to shut down the East's weaker teams while the Western offensive attack tends to obliterate the East's defenses. While the West gets about a point-per-100-possessions better defensively when they're facing the East, the Western offensive attack absolutely fillets a weaker-than-it-looks slate of defensive looks, especially for poor defensive teams like the Bobcats, Nets, and Bucks.

• Going forward, most would intuitively assume there's a good chance this regresses to a less lopsided mean and the East closes the gap a bit. In theory, right? In actuality, I'm not at all sure this is going to happen, and it's more likely to get worse. The thing that one has to understand is that the current distribution of teams played actually tends to favor the East. Washington, Milwaukee, and Cleveland -- all teams that have been dismal against the West -- have a combined 54 cross-conference games left. Conversely, the East's 3 best teams against the West (Miami, New York, Indiana) have just 39 cross-conference games left! Although San Antonio has already played 16 of their 30 Eastern games, the Clippers, Grizzlies, and Nuggets combine for 51 remaining games. If you calculate out a full-season expectation for the final West/East win total, you get a number even worse for the East than the current reality, with the West going 271 to the East's 179 wins -- a final percentage of 60.2% in favor of the West.

• The other issue that could exacerbate matters for the East is that of the playoff picture. If the East featured several teams racing for a playoff spot, you might expect teams to hold off worrying about lottery positioning until they were mathematically eliminated for the playoffs. But as things stand, there are about six Western teams racing for the last 2 playoff spots with legitimate cases that all but about 3 Western teams could make the playoffs -- that stands in stark contrast to the East, where one could make a relatively strong argument that the eight playoff spots are already completely decided. If the pressures of lottery-tanking start to depress the fortunes of the East's worst teams, that's only going to worsen the picture against a Western conference with enough legitimate playoff contenders to fill a league.

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