After Friday's Celtics-Heat thriller, a lot of print was inked about the Celtics' offense. This was reasonable to me. After all, it was the 7th game the Celtics had played against the Heat this season, and the Celtics had done a remarkably good job on offense against the Heat. In seven games, the Celtics posted offensive ratings of 104, 101, 129, 86, 96, 119, and 116. For a team who averages an offensive rating of 100, that's above average for all but the last game of the regular season and the first game of the Eastern Conference Finals. Normally this wouldn't be all that weird -- after all, teams have irrationally good offensive performances against certain opponents all the time, right? True.

Except that the Heat are the 4th best defense in the league, and the Celtics the 27th worst offense. If the Celtics averaged what they average against the Heat -- again, the 4th best defense -- they'd average an offensive rating of 107 over the full season. That would be the 5th best offense in the league. And the sample size is now 8 games -- so small sample size is no longer a reasonable excuse. THAT'S absurd, and I understand why that was the story. However, as an avid reader of NBA Playbook and the like, I'd like to direct your attention to an unheralded factor in the Celtics’ Game 3 win last Friday: the absolute clinic the Celtics put on defending foul shots.

• • •

Here, we will start at the first free throw I noticed the Boston defense straight up shut down. We'll go frame by frame.

LeBron takes the free throw after a rushed, hurried dribble -- he throws his hands up, as if to say "Hark! Foul! Hark, I was fouled!" Why? Look behind him. Ray Allen, showing why he's still a force to be reckoned with on defense. Bone spurs or not, few in the league provide the threat of a chase down free throw block as well as Ray Allen (5.3% of attempted free throws while Allen is on the perimeter result in blocks, according to Synergy, second only to Mo Williams at 9.0%). Look at LeBron's right foot, separating ever so slightly from the ground. He hears the booming footsteps behind him. He's been there before. He knows what's coming -- Ray Allen, the free throw chase down specialist strikes again.

Unfortunately, Ray is unable to complete the block on this play. But as Bill Russell reminds us: "The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot." Sure enough, LeBron's arc is distorted by Allen's phantom presence. In fact, Ray was relatively busy on this play, as we can hear from the baseline microphone.

"Heh, looks like I evaded your block, old man."

"Watch carefully. I slathered the rim with WD-40 while you weren't looking."

"But... wouldn't that mean it'd slide through like butter?"

"Aw, shucks."

"Heh, you have much to learn about free throw defense, LeChoke Shames."

The force of the raw, veteran savvy-laced insult throws LeBron off balance, almost as though there's a boxer's push. If it weren't for that unsightly (but heavy) beard LeBron's been growing, as you can clearly see in this freeze frame, LeBron would've not only missed the free throw but quite literally fallen over.

Ray Allen's clutch defensive play here deserves a ton of credit. Most work-a-day analysts think that your one-on-one defense ends when the shot is taken, but they're wrong. Real defenders know that your defense ends when the player goes to sleep at night sobbing because your insults and petty criticisms have rocked their self confidence to its core. Ray Allen knows this. And let's not dispute how thoroughly this changed the game. After this free throw, LeBron James went 0-4 on all four free throws he missed. Ray Allen: game changer.

Here's the play in real time.

• • •

We will move on now to a late game free throw, where the brilliance of the team free throw defense overwhelmed me.

Seems pretty average, right? Look to the right of Chalmers. There's Ray Allen, but he's not going to hog all the credit. Ray isn't rushing for the chase-down free throw block this time. It's up to his teammates to stifle this one with some expert team-ball defense. Let's see what they do.

Look at Paul Pierce's hand, where he signals the play, and KG's silent nod of approval. If they weren't communicating with each other telepathically (like a team, because teams do this), here's what they'd be saying:

"I've scouted his free throw form, Kevin. He's going to try a double three-sixty whoop-foul hang time feet set shot with a strong follow through and a smile for the camera. He learned that one at Kansas."

"Gotcha, Paul. I'll channel my anger into an invisible floating brick. It will float in the middle of the hoops on both ends of the court, for the sake of completion, and ensure his free throw bounces the HELL out of that hoop."

"Man, it's pretty cool being a team who knows Free Throw Defense."

"Yeah, and telepathy is pretty cool too."

"Is the brick engaged?"

"AUGUHUGUGUGHUFGUGUHHUGUFIFHU--"

"I can always count on you, Kevin."

We see that Doc Rivers has gotten his team to buy in to their team defensive schemes with a remarkable focus and tenacity. Ostensibly their team culture of "Ubuntu" -- a Swedish word for liver and onions -- saves the day once again. Mario bricks the free throw, Pierce gets the rebound, and the game is saved.

Here's the play in real time.

• • •

Using the powers of my spectra-phantasm screenscanning technology, I was able to achieve insight into how Doc Rivers defends free throws. Unbeknownst to us watching the national telecast, Doc Rivers hangs a gigantic obscuring set of large semi-transparent letters in front of players taking free throws. They say "Demo Mode" on them, which is really quite clever -- mode is an anagram of demo, which shows how the Celtics can challenge the free throw from either side of the court, right or left. Nice one, Doc. Though, call me a purist, but the practice of hanging giant floating semitransparent letters to block free throw shooters seems slightly illegal to me. Still substantially less illegal than poisoning the opposing locker room's water supply, though. So I suppose as an organization the Celtics are making some progress. By the year 2050, they'll be down to jaywalking!

It's also worth mentioning that this is -- realistically -- where Boston's defense makes its bread. Seriously. On missed free throws, Celtics opponents score 0.00 PPP, a number far and away better than any other sort of defense the Celtics (or anyone else in the league) can throw at a team. Indeed, in Game 4 we saw Miami completely going away from the free throw strategy to start the game.

NBA officials, to a man, are unbelievably corrupt and furiously angry at Boston, consistently calling the Celtics for fouls that they could not have possibly been responsible for (Source: Tommy Heinsohn). But Boston's free throw defense completely neutralizes this disparity, and if the Boston Celtics can continue shutting down the Heat's unguarded foul shots, we'll have to add a new catchphrase to the well-worn list of basketball tropes. Defense wins championships, keep the ball moving, make the extra pass, and now... against these Celtics? "There's no such thing as a 'free' throw."

Goodnight everybody.

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

Rajon Rondo sighed as the game reached its inevitable resting point. Down 4 points with 2.2 seconds left, the game was as good as done. As a rule, man's reach exceeds his grasp, Rajon thought, but tonight Rajon knew he had grasped something new. He simply couldn't wait to see how he'd tilted the balance. He walked in the other direction -- towards his locker -- after a half-hearted inbounds pass. Rajon paid no mind to the ball's trajectory, or the remote possibility of a win. The buzzer sounded. It was over.

• • •

It hadn't been like this before the game. Then, in anticipation of the ill-fated Game 2, Rajon had written and consulted endless binders of tables containing adjacency matrices of all possible Miami-Boston match-ups, using known data from years of statistics and Rajon's encyclopedic recall of play-by-plays stretching back into the Cousy era. Rajon, carrying a sharp metal compass for reasons passing understanding, was going to optimize the efficiency differential and psychological tenor of the game. He gave Kevin Garnett very precise instructions. He gave Ray Allen very precise and completely opposite instructions. They obliged, each believing the other to have according instructions. No one could be on the same page, Rajon reasoned, on either team. Except him, of course. Rajon would know all. If the Celtics were to win, the team must be disarrayed, winning in a baroque and seemingly random fashion. They could not hope to win Game 2 in Miami systematically in the traditional sense, the numbers revealed. They would have to slip into the margins of the moment, slithering in on the dirty knees and gnashing teeth of Paul Pierce. Yes, the margins of the moment would be their system and salvation.

There were no percentages in the young man's perfect mind, there were armies. Rajon believed that every shot was predestined for make or miss a hundred years before it was launched. Systems were not a means of enacting high percentage looks, they were a means for enforcing one team's Platonic logic on the game. The Celtics slithered in. That was their system. It was perfect. They could (no, should) win any game. But the match-up binders fell off the shelf as Ray came tumbling in on half a foot.

Missing data, Rajon had almost said aloud. He sighed as he swiftly recalculated every number in every binder.

He found dismay in the strength of his armies.

• • •

Ray Allen airballed the meaningless three at the buzzer. It was a four-point loss. Rajon and Paul Pierce had already checked out from the game, the latter having fouled out and left the forsaken city of vice for greener pastures. Such did Rajon, left alone by a clubhouse that respected and adored him but could not approach him in his current state of fugue, return to his tables and binders.

"I am the margins of the moment," Rajon declared in his notebooks. "I am the leftover rebound and the unheralded assist. I am the points that come as you look away."

Having achieved some fifty points, a rare feat for anyone, much less for a player derided for his scoring lapses, Rajon began to see previously imperceptible errors in his match-up matrices that had nevertheless predicted with certainty the inevitable loss of the series and his inevitable scoring explosion in the heartbreaking, crushing loss. The bleak and pale in his face left for the silent films, the full color and action returning from some movie from the year 2800. Rajon smiled, just a bit, with a twitch below his eye. A grain of sand of marginal confidence shifted the whole balance of the series, in his perfect estimations.

From certain defeat, certain victory.

He prepared his instructions to each player - instructions that would be even more contradictory, impossible, and confusing than this last game - and peppered each with still more contradictory pep talks. Some in Russian. His teammates would not only be running into one another as per his designs, they would also pull the emotional fabric of the game apart from the Heat and one another, leaving in its wake a rip, a void, a shadow, into which he would step and repair his own way. A new dawn.

Oh, the series was done. There are no hypotheticals in this life or the next. Rajon did not have to ask if but when his mind-shattering apocalypse of a Game 3 would burn hotter than heat. He would conquer this game of inevitability, if only the armies aligned.

This is part of a two-part series. For observations on the Spurs and the Thunder's specific matchup, see 48 Minutes of Hell.

As one of my questions in Monday's Statistical Q&A, I fielded a question from the imitable Tim Varner of 48 Minutes of Hell. His query was whether the Spurs stand to gain in OKC smallball lineups by pushing the pace and playing fast. In short? Yes. I covered that today in detail at 48 Minutes of Hell, but there's a lot of interesting tidbits to be had in this table, enough so that I felt a separate post was necessary analyzing the trends and tendencies of the non-Spurs teams. To examine, I've produced this table that shows the W/L record, the offensive and defensive efficiencies, the eFG%, the efficiency differential, and the free throw rates of our four remaining teams in four distinct buckets of possessions. First bucket includes all games with under 91 possessions; the second includes 91-95; the third is 95-100; and the fourth and final bucket includes super-fast games with over 100 possessions. These are roughly quartiles of possessions. I placed in red a team's "worst" pace and in green a team's best.

Looking at this table, some interesting takeaways after the jump.

• • •

• BOSTON: Bet you didn't expect this, huh? Out of all the paces the Celtics play at, one stands above all others as the absolute worst they could possibly play at. I refer, of course, to... an absurdly slow game? The Celtics force the pace low by Doc Rivers' own desires -- in the Big Three era, he has always preached a defensive-oriented strategy of keeping as few possessions as possible. This season, though, the Celtics have been bloody awful when they play their slowest. When they have under 91 possessions in a game, the Celtics have a losing record (12-15), a defensive rating WELL above their season average, allow teams to shoot almost 50% from the field, and barely ever draw fouls. On the other hand, when they play to a league-average pace, they're a really excellent team -- a +9 differential, fantastic defense, and a sparkling 16-4 record. Had you shown me Boston's numbers before I did this exercise, I wouldn't have believed it. But it's true. When the Celtics play super-slow, they're a terrible team. Doc Rivers may deserve a bit of blame -- no other team is more inefficient at forcing the tempo that suits the team best, and to some extent, that's on his game plan. Not a full extent, but certainly to some.

• MIAMI: Little rhyme or reason to the Heat's numbers, though some funny stuff here. They average a differential of +7.1 in games with over 100 possessions, but somehow managed to go 5-4 on those games in the regular season. Which means they won those 5 games by over double the margin they lost by. Absolutely silly. Overall, the Miami defense actually gets a bit better as the pace goes up -- their real problems come on the offensive end. I take back my first statement. This actually makes a lot of sense to me. As a team highly reliant on two players, it stands to reason that there is some sort of upper limit on the number of possessions LeBron and Wade can use up in a single game. The more possessions the Heat use, the more likely that one of those extra possessions is something useless, like a Joel Anthony layup or another bricked Battier three. Thus, their offense gets a bit less efficient as the possessions rack up and they're forced to burn more possessions on their atrocious bench. As a mathematical example, assume LeBron a usage rate of 33%. In a 90 possession game, that's 30 possessions -- in a 100 possession game 33. That means that Non-LeBron players used 60 possessions in the 90 game and 67 possessions in the 100 game. What this means, big picture, is that even if the ratio is the same there are more possessions spent on players you know can't really give you much. In simplified terms... how easy is it for two players to have 50-60 out of 80 points in a slow paced game compared to 70-80 points out of 110 in a fast paced game? It takes more effort, and it takes an increase in a player's usage above and beyond simple extrapolation.

• OKLAHOMA CITY: To hearken back to economics, the Thunder are in an odd position of not really having big marginal advantages over anyone in any one area, despite a lot of strengths when averaged across buckets. Their only real weakness is that they simply can't play slow-down, knock out ball the way a team like Miami can -- indeed, the Thunder actually were better than the Spurs at super-slow games, and far better than the Celtics. But against the Heat, that relative strength becomes a massive boondoggle. The, conversely, the Thunder are well above average at a faster-paced game... but still significantly worse than either the Heat or the Spurs! The only decisive advantage the Thunder really have in terms of pace is to play a very normal, league-average 91-95 possessions. My theory is that the Thunder defense gradually breaks down as the game gets faster, but the offense (isolation based and transition-heavy as it already is) doesn't have a second gear that allows it to become more efficient in a fast-paced setting. It's worth noting that the Thunder are fantastic at the league-average play, and in today's 48 Minutes of Hell post, I covered how the Thunder need to get back to their game and a league-average halfcourt pace if they want to get back into the series. I reiterate that here.

• SAN ANTONIO: This is much like my statement in the Q&A, and by far the simplest relationship. As the Spurs get slower, the Spurs get worse. As the Spurs get faster, the Spurs get unbeatable, improving on both the defensive end AND the offensive end. They also shoot better, which speaks to Chip Engelland's yeoman's work in ensuring the Spurs maintain proper form on quick, set shots and the Spurs added efficiency when they force a transition-heavy, D'Antoni style of play. I discussed this a bit at 48 Minutes of Hell, so I won't belabor the point. But really: the Spurs are great when they play fast, and more than any other team left, they're the best at dictating the tempo and forcing teams to play fast. A deadly combination, that.

Long story short, I just mathematically proved why I don't want to watch the Heat-Celtics series! Therefore, I'm going to sleep through it. You know how I do. If that offends you as a reader, then I suggest that you link to YOUR mathematical proof in the comments. I promise I will read it and review it, and perhaps rethink my stance.

... Nah, probably not.

This was an idea we had a few weeks back, when I posted the "Last 21 Game" efficiency rating posts both here and at 48 Minutes of Hell. An understated aspect of those posts that I was experimenting with was that I, for the day it was posted, attempted to respond to every twitter question regarding the stats used (or any statistical trend readers wanted to hear about). Probably should've advertised it more.

In a combined sense, I got a lot of great questions from the 48MoH commenters and my twitter followers -- so many, in fact, that I'd like to codify it and make it a feature. As it's memorial day, I have the day off and have a chance to actually spend most of the day sifting through data, and it's a good opportunity to kick this off. To start the discussion, here's a table of team playoff efficiency stats vs regular season efficiency stats.

• • •

A few notes, perhaps to help the questions arise:

• Somewhat impressively, Memphis and Denver finished their first round series with positive efficiency differentials. Given that the Lakers and the Clippers got curbstomped in the second round, it leads one to an interesting question: would Memphis and Denver have been stronger second round foes for the Spurs and the Thunder?

• While everyone waxes poetic about the Spurs offense, and asked how the Spurs would respond to a stout Thunder defense, it's worth noting that the Spurs are also the best defense the Thunder have faced so far as well. In last night's game, I thought the most interesting fact wasn't just the fact that the Spurs offense found itself challenged by the OKC defense -- it was also the OKC offense finding itself shiftless against the best defense that it's faced so far, as well. The only one "better" were the Mavericks, whose defensive rating is a bit misleading -- they haven't been a top 10 defensive team in the last half of the season and their playoff performance matched their second half stats far more than their first half stats.

• The much-ballyhooed slowing of pace that comes with the playoffs has occurred in force, with the playoff-average pace of 91.1 falling all the way to 88.9. The biggest offenders? The Knicks fell from 93.2 possessions per game in the regular season to 86.9 in the playoffs, a difference of 6.3 possessions per game. Also notable were the Nuggets (who fell 3.9 possessions per game) and the Thunder (who have fallen 3.3 possessions per game). The Clippers, Jazz and Spurs have scarcely fallen at all, though -- an indication that the Spurs have in large part succeeded in forcing the tempo. In last night's game, they succeeded in kind, as the game was played at a blistering pace of 95.9.

• • •

QUESTION #1: Do you think the San Antonio adjusts more to the length and athleticism of Oklahoma City in game two? Or do you think they'll have the same struggles they had in the first three quarters? from @NoSwaggT

A little of both. I thought the Spurs offense struggled a bit too much, in game 1. Some of that is very replicable for the Thunder -- they're a better defense than either the Clippers or the Jazz, after all. And they seemed to have done an excellent job scouting the Spurs offense. One of the biggest things Memphis did to drive last year's upset was disrupt the Spurs' passing lanes -- the Thunder were following the Grizzlies' playbook to a T in terms of passing disruption, and it showed in their ability to get the Spurs to revert to an isolation-heavy offense for many stretches of last night's game. So in that sense, the struggles won't be entirely abated.

But there are reasons to think that the Spurs' fourth quarter explosion wasn't a fluke, either. First, the Spurs reverted to the same ball movement that they had success with during the regular season -- by percentage, there were more PnR/cutting plays in the fourth than in the first few quarters. Second, the Spurs absolutely missed a bevy of open shots in the first half that very nearly cost them the game, as well as a remarkably poor transition attack. In the fourth, they hit their open shots and stopped doing the things that weren't working (like transition offense).

Which probably deserves its own notation. While the Thunder's transition defense was about as good as you get, it's hard to imagine the Spurs scoring 0.4 points per transition possession as the series goes on, especially since they averaged an NBA-best 1.24 points per possession in transition during the regular season. Over a full series, the Spurs will shoot a bit better on open threes and won't be so lost in transition. But the Thunder's advantage in the passing lanes and their well-scouted defensive attack won't go away -- the question now is how well Pop adjusts to it. In last year's Memphis series, he didn't do a particularly good job -- this year, though, the personell is better and the Spurs' current defensive attack is much, much better than last. I think they can adjust, but the Thunder aren't going to miss all their open shots on a regular basis either.

• • •

QUESTION #2: How often does Tiago score on pick and rolls? from @_chrisblack

Quite a lot. In 168 possessions as the roll man on the pick and roll, Tiago averages 1.32 points per possession -- he scores 66.7% of the time in those situations, and finishes baskets at a 71% conversion rate on 121 shots. Twelve of Tiago's 28 and -1 baskets came on the pick and roll this year. It's one of the most deadly offensive tools in the Spurs' arsenal, and the chemistry between Manu and Tiago is something to keep an eye on every time they share the court.

• • •

QUESTION #3: Has the east been worse offensively in the playoffs? Or has pace just slowed down and the lower scores happened because of it? from @sstewart1617

Good question. It's not just the pace, nope. In the regular season, the East's 8 playoff teams averaged an offensive rating of 105. Not incredible, but well above average. In the playoffs? Try 98. A decrease of 7 points per 100 possessions, pace-adjusted. If you feel like the East wasn't this unwatchable in the regular season, you'd be right -- it wasn't. The offense we've seen in the east so far has been a special kind of awful.

• • •

QUESTION #4: Does the high mpg that guys like Kobe and LeBron play actually make a difference in their play in the 4th? Or late in a series? from @sstewart1617

I don't have a ton of stats on this, but the eye test would tend to say yes, at least for me. For an example, I'd look at the last two years of titles -- while Kobe played very well for most of the finals, he broke down late in the fourth in several key games of the 2010 finals, with an emphasis on his clunker in game 7 that most people remember but never properly contextualize -- Kobe had played an insane number of minutes the entire playoffs, and was coming off two games of virtuoso performances. He looked exhausted, and by all accounts, he was. Last year's finals have gotten a lot of press, but not necessarily for the reasons they should. LeBron was absolutely worn down by the end of games once he got to the finals -- part of that was the excellent Dallas defense (and their effective "force LeBron to run around" scheme), but part of that was the fact that Spolestra had played him 44 minutes per game in the playoffs up to the finals, then increased his minutes load when they got there. The same was actually true in 2007, when LeBron had the first awful series of his life against the champion 2007 Spurs. Part of it was obviously Bowen, but people rarely understand just how awful Bruce was at guarding LeBron during the regular season. He used to be terrible at it. If LeBron hadn't been completely exhausted by the finals, having played 45 minutes per game in the run-up, it's likely that the 2007 finals would have been at least slightly more competitive than the annihilation they became.

Long story short? If you have good defenders, it's a lot easier to guard a player when they're exhausted and can't get their legs under their shot.

• • •

QUESTION #5: What's OKC's best crunch time lineup? Are they making a mistake by not playing Sefalosha in the 4th? from @steven_lebron

I don't have stats on how OKC's lineups performed at specific times of the game, but it looks unlikely Thabo is part of those lineups. According to Basketball-Value, the only lineup Thabo played in that got more than 20 minutes of burn in the regular season with a +/- better than their season average was a Westbrook-Thabo-Durant-Ibaka-Collison lineup that registered a +11.9 in 21.99 minutes of play -- other than that, he had just two lineups that fit that criterion; one with a negative differential and one representing his time with the starting unit, where the team produced slightly under their season average production. This is backed up by Thabo's stats on 82Games.com, where his clutch stats indicate that the team was markedly worse in the clutch when Thabo was on the floor.

• • •

QUESTION #6: Kawhi Leonard had the worst +/- at -16. This may mean nothing, but what did KL do poorly in game 1? How can he improve? from @TBJ_soldier

He actually didn't do that bad a job defending Durant -- while Jackson did a better job cutting off Durant's shots, he also fouled him on every other possession and gave the Thunder free points at the line. Consider the stats from the game, here. With Kawhi on the floor, Durant shot 47% from the field, to 25% when Kawhi was off the floor. However, he also averaged only 6 FTA per 36 minutes and 6 rebounds per 36 minutes. With Jackson on the floor, Durant averaged 16 FTA per 36 and 12 rebounds -- both of these are obviously well above his season averages. Jackson also held him to 25% shooting, which is incredible. Anyway. Kawhi did a very good job keeping Durant under his usual free throw attempts and provided a very different defensive look on KD. As for what he did poorly? Primarily offense. He averaged 1.05 points per possession in the regular season, with 1.39 off the cut and 1.31 in transition. In game 1, he shot 33% from three, 2-6 from two point range, and turned the ball over twice for an abysmal 0.64 PPP, the 2nd worst total on the team. In game two, he needs to actually make the open shots he missed during the opening salvo and continue playing Durant tough. Also, continue rebounding -- Kawhi was a major part of the Spurs' huge advantage in rebounding percentage during the game, and that may have been the factor that decided the game in the first place.

• • •

QUESTION #7: how many charlotte bobcats from @CardboardGerald

There were 16 players who suited up for the Charlotte Bobcats this season. The number 16 is notable because it is the number that Hall of Fame Power Forward Matt Bonner wore in his first two years with the Charlotte Bobcats. This is the only reason such a number is notable.

• • •

QUESTION #8: Who's played better defense on star guards/forwards, Danny Green or Kahwi Leaonard? from @sstewart1617

Clearly, Danny Green. Kahwi Leaonard is not a person who exists, Sam. ... Okay, for real though. Green's defense has been overall worse than Kawhi's this year, at least in the overall synergy numbers and through +/-. It's arguable that Kawhi has played far more minutes on better players, too, given that Pop has tended to give Kawhi the Bowen-esque assignments without remorse. I'm not sure of the best way to quickly get you an answer on this, so I'd go with my intuition and say that Kawhi probably got harder matchups and played more minutes on star players, meaning that the large gap between him and Danny in the overall numbers would therefore extend to star players as well.

• • •

QUESTION #9: Is Tiago Splitter's cuteness to effectiveness ratio the best in the NBA? from @sstewart1617's wife

Probably not. The "cuteness to effectiveness" ratio is probably a stat that would underrate Tiago. He's simply too effective -- even if you give him 5 or 6 on a 10 point cuteness scale, he's _certainly_got a high number on the effectiveness scale. Compare that to, say, someone like Nick Young (who my friend Monique has a decisive crush on) or someone like Gordon Hayward or George Hill who have high reported cuteness but markedly lower effectiveness. Probably not a very favorable stat for Tiago, all things considered. Sorry.

• • •

QUESTION #10: It wasn't his shooting hand, but is there any statistical correlation between Tiago's hand injury and his sudden drop in FT%? from @calebjsaenz

That's a really good observation. The injury Caleb is referring to occurred in game 2 of the NBA playoffs, where Tiago suffered a sprained left wrist on a freak fall in the first quarter. Splitting Tiago's free throws by pre-injury and post-injury, you get the following split:

• Pre-Injury, Tiago made 125 out of 183 free throws this season -- or, 68.3%.
• Post-Injury, Tiago made 9 out of 28 free throws this season -- or, 32.1%.

• • •

QUESTION #11: Who gains the most from playing small in the WCF, the Spurs or the Thunder? And how did Boston fare against lineups with LeBron playing PF? from Jared Dubin of Hardwood Paroxysm

Jared always asks the tough questions!

Over the whole season, the Spurs had limited-to-none success with true smallball. No lineup with Duncan at C and a non-big at PF that played over 19 minutes in the regular season registered an above-0.500 winning percentage. The same was true for Tiago Splitter, the next most commonly played center on San Antonio's roster. Thunder lineups with Durant at the 4 played significantly better, putting up a net rating of +15.3 in serious minutes and showing themselves to be one of the best possible configurations of the Thunder's roster. Personally, I'm not convinced that this lineup is going to be nearly as effective against San Antonio. The biggest problem the Thunder face against the Spurs -- beyond the obvious defensive problem of keeping San Antonio's league-best offense in check -- is rebounding. I covered extensively in my Thunder/Spurs preview the problems facing the Thunder on the boards, and while Durant is a great rebounder at the four, I'm not sure he can hack it on the boards against the front lines the Spurs will be putting out there in this series. So I think it's a general push, personally.

As for the second question, I've put together a spreadsheet that details every instance of LeBron at the four during the regular season. In about 70 regular season minutes across 4 games against Boston, lineups with LeBron at the four ended up with a net rating of +0.0. Yes, exactly zero. They gave up as many points as they scored (161 both ways). This might sound strange, but it's actually a pretty good result for the Heat -- the Celtics beat the Heat 3/4 times this season, with an average differential of +7.8. For a lineup to have +0.0 when the overall picture is that bleak, that's a reasonably good result. And a good sign that even with Bosh out, the Heat aren't exactly chopped liver if they play the LeBron at the 4 lineup. Especially considering the Celtics are missing Avery Bradley, and may as well be missing Ray Allen at this point.

• • •

QUESTION #12: I'm interested in the Spurs' success relative to possessions per game. Is there a number of possessions per game that seem to treat them unfavorably? That is, say, less than 90 or some such. Is there actually a pace at which they play better or worse, or is that just something we make up? from Timothy Varner of 48 Minutes of Hell

Interesting query. There does seem to be a slight correlation. Per Hoopdata calculations, when the Spurs use over 95 possessions in a game, they're virtually unbeatable -- they're 29-3, with one of the three losses the loss to Portland where Pop sat every starter but Kawhi and didn't give a crap about anything. However, their record is relatively indistinguishable in the super-low ranges to the mid-tier ranges of possessions per game -- to wit, the Spurs are 5-4 at under 91 possessions and 17-9 in games where they use 91-95 possessions. So it appears that slower is better, for Spurs opponents. But it's extremely rare that the Spurs actually allow their opponents to dictate the tempo and force a game to be as slow as that. Still. The relationship is there.

• • •

QUESTION #13: What have the Celtics' most effective defensive lineups been over the course of the postseason, and who has led the Heat's offensive resurgence? from @NickFlynt

Essentially, any lineup starring Kevin Garnett. Lineups with Garnett in them have had a combined defensive rating of 86.9, which is nothing if not bananaphones. No other player on the team is close, with Avery Bradley the only other rotation player with an on-court DRtg under 90. As for the Heat, you might be surprised to hear it, but it's the bench. Ignoring the players who have played less than 100 minutes in the postseason (sorry, Juwan Howard), check out the Heat's rotation players ranked by the Heat's offensive rating with that player on/off the court in the playoffs:

1. Mike Miller; 235 minutes, 113 ORtg on the court, 105 ORtg off the court.
2. Joel Anthony; 257 minutes, 111 ORtg on the court, 106 ORtg off the court.
3. Udonis Haslem; 179 minutes, 110 ORtg on the court, 108 ORtg off the court.
4. LeBron James; 442 minutes, 109 ORtg on the court, 105 ORtg off the court.
5. Chris Bosh; 182 minutes, 109 ORtg on the court, 108 ORtg off the court.
6. Shane Battier; 314 minutes, 109 ORtg on the court, 108 ORtg off the court.
7. Dwyane Wade; 407 minutes, 108 ORtg on the court, 109 ORtg off the court.
8. Mario Chalmers; 369 minutes, 105 ORtg on the court, 116 ORtg off the court.

• • •

QUESTION #14: Are Kevin Garnett's obscene +/- numbers in the playoffs due to his offense, his defense, or both? from @SixerSense

Both. The Celtics have a DRtg (points allowed per 100 possessions) of 87 with him on the floor and 117 with him off the floor. On the other hand, the Celtics have an ORtg (points scored per 100 possessions) of 102 with him on the court and 85 with him off the court. So, basically, they've been a shady-but-decent offensive team with him on the court and a lights out defensive team, as opposed to the worst offense/defense combination in human history with him off the court. Yep.

• • •

QUESTION #15: Do the Spurs want to face Boston or Miami in a theoretical finals matchup? from @TBJ_Soldier

I don't like answering hypotheticals like this, especially given how hard of a series OKC is going to put up to possibly prevent the Spurs from even getting there. However, it has to be Boston. The Celtics are one of the worst offenses to get to a conference finals in the history of the league. Amazing defense or not, they're a one-man team that's relying on a 36 year old Kevin Garnett to do literally everything on the court, game-in and game-out. It would be one of the most mismatched finals ever, possibly even moreso than 2007. In other words: yes, the Spurs would rather have Boston than the team with the reigning MVP and a still-in-his-prime finals MVP from a previous title team.

• • •

QUESTION #16: What box score stats predict winning the best? from @PGPostUp

I'm not a huge fan of the Wages of Wins network, for reasons which are extensively outlined here. But if you want to look at simple regressions of which box score statistics correlate to winning, they've got a relatively detailed body of work on the subject, which can be found in their "about" section. In particular, Arturo Galletti has a nice post on the matter here. I'm more a fan of Dean Oliver's work on the four factors of basketball, which is his attempt at finding the most predictive box score statistics. Another INCREDIBLE resource (and the one I'm most fond of pointing people to) comes from friend of the site Evan Z., whose Advanced Stats Primer is by far the best in class and explains virtually every derivation of the box score statistics that you can use to predict wins. I'd start with Wages, move on to Four Factor stats, and then go through Evan's Primer if you want a step by step journey of increasing complexity into the seedy world of basketball statistics.

• • •

A few notes on the questions, now. I'll answer anything I can, so long as the question involves basketball numbers of some form. Questions about playoff teams are preferred, but not required. I'd prefer if you left the questions in one of the following forms: the comments of this post, sent on twitter (@docrostov), or emailed to our staff email (staff@gothicginobili.com). That way, I don't have to go looking into my Quora account seven weeks into the future only to find I missed a question. (None of you would do that, right?) I hope to do these Q&A sessions a few times a month, as I feel I get a lot of questions on twitter regarding numbers behind basketball and I think this is a great forum to start addressing those. I'll be answering questions until a few hours after MIA-BOS game 1. So ask away, folks.

You may have noticed a bit of a dearth on the posting front this week. Two reasons. First: super busy at work. You know the deal. But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, we've been preparing for something we've wanted to do for a long time. We're dropping our very own Gothic Ginobili podcast. Kicking off our inaugural episode, we're covering three main topics: why the East is so boring, finding the perfect pets for NBA players, and previewing the conference finals in the most unrelated and out-there way we could think to do it. Along the way, we're bringing you a Lipton-esque interview with the bloggissist wunderkind (not the pitching wunderkind) Matt Moore, and discussing with him his favorite player and what he likes to watch in the game of basketball. We had a whole lot of fun kicking off what we're hoping will be a bi-weekly feature from now on. We do hope you'll give us a listen, and have some fun yourselves. Normal content resumes tomorrow with... well, probably a long and detailed post about something. You know how we do, readers. -- Aaron

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

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

• • •

CHOICE #1 -- COURTNEY LEE

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

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

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

• • •

CHOICE #2 -- LEBRON JAMES

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

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

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

• • •

CHOICE #3 -- GRANT HILL

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

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

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

• • •

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

To bring our playoff coverage up, we’re bringing our formerly retired series of daily vignettes — titled “The Outlet” — back for the playoffs. “Don’t call it a comeback.” Though, you can call it series 2, as we are in the title. Every day (or, rather, every day we aren’t doing a larger and grander piece), we’ll try to share two or three short vignettes from our collective of writers ruminating on the previous day’s events. Should be a fun time. Today’s Outlet is just one piece strong, featuring a short piece on the current dogfight between the Indiana Pacers and the Miami Heat. As the title indicates, I don't think it's over.

• "It's Not Over Til It's Over." by Aaron McGuire.

Click the jump for today’s take.

• • •

It's Not Over Til It's Over

Aaron McGuire

This may seem somewhat self serving, in a way. Last week, with the series tied 1-1, I published a piece outlining how the Pacers could win the series. That night, the Pacers won. Two days later, the Pacers blew out Miami at home and made me look really, really smart. The Heat proceeded to -- as many expected -- knot the series up at two apiece and regain home court advantage in game 3. Which made me look less markedly less smart. The Heat looked good, with Udonis Haslem coming up with big elbow jumpers in crunch time and the LeBron and Wade duo scorching the Pacers for 70 points, their highest combined playoff total in their 30 playoff games together thus far. LeBron put up a completely unprecedented statline, putting up 40 points and 18 boards with 9 assists, 2 steals, and 2 blocks. Absolutely eldritch. I'm not kidding when I say that's unprecedented -- even if we relax the constraints to something a bit more human, like 37-16-7, it's still only the 3rd game of its brood in the last 17 years. Demonic.

Which isn't to lessen the contributions of his tertiary players -- while LeBron dominated the game in a way that's impossibly rare, Wade shook off an abhorrent 1-8 type first 20 minutes to the tune of a 12-15 second wind, leading most of Twitter to declare that he'd shot up with cortisone during halftime. It came out after the game that, instead, he'd simply had his knee drained earlier in the week -- that makes sense, given that one's body is often late to respond to stress relief like that in a game situation until the player's had a chance to walk on it a bit. And Udonis Haslem had the best game he's had in months. Literally. If you use Game Score (a 1-game representation of John Hollinger's PER metric), Haslem hasn't had a game as good as Sunday's since April 1st, 2012. And keep in mind Haslem did virtually nothing in the game until his 4-5 fourth quarter. It was excellent, and for a quarter, showed Haslem at his best. The Heat were aggressive, assertive, and powerful. They utterly outclassed the Pacers in just about every facet of the second half. The game was a 9-point win, but it felt like more. The rest of the series -- as goes the narrative -- is little more than window-dressing. The Heat have won.

I disagree. The Pacers should still be favored to win this series.

Look. A few things worth noting. The series is 2-2, not 3-3 or 3-2. The Heat are still two wins from wrapping the series up, and judging by how effective the Pacers have been in Miami during the series thus far, it's hard to ascribe some sort of momentous, game-changing home court when the Pacers played the Heat to a 1-1 draw in their first two matchups at home, with Bosh available for half of the Heat's singular home win and a curious set of circumstances conspiring to keep the Pacers' two best players muzzled in crunch time as well. In fact, there are a few key takeaways one can make from the two games the Pacers won and the two games the Heat won. To wit: when the Heat won, LeBron James averaged 36-17-7 on 44 minutes per game. When they lost, he averaged 25-8-4. While the Heat have yet to win comfortably by double digits, let's relax the criteria here a bit. Let's say that in order for the Heat to beat the Pacers, LeBron needs to put up a line of around 30-15-5 in 40 minutes of play (to ensure the lowest possible dip into their shoddy bench). He needs to rebound, with Bosh gone. He needs to score, to help make up for Bosh. And he needs to set the offense up. A bit. How many times in the last decade has a player done that more than once in a single postseason?

Oh. Uh... hm. So, what we're saying is that this relatively pedestrian statistical accomplishment of LeBron's, a mark he's met in two nail-biting wins and come just under in their two losses, is something that's virtually unprecedented in NBA history and can only really be said to be repeated by Tim Duncan's constantly and hilariously underrated 2003 scorched-Earth playoff run? Yes, I think we are. If the Heat are to win this series, they'll need one of two things to happen. The first would be that LeBron simply repeats his virtuoso game 1 and game 4 performances in 2 of the remaining 3 games. LeBron is an amazing player. He is very good at basketball. But he is not immortal. That expectation -- much as the national media would like to claim it's reasonable -- is not. The other possibility? The bench and Wade step up. Wade has one of his godlike, 40-50 point outbursts to carry them to a win in a game where LeBron is pedestrian.

It's also worth noting that, as I keep beating the drum on, this is a very good Indiana team. Roy Hibbert has spent the season shocking all of us and making us look like fools for ever doubting him. The Pacers are +30 with him on the court against the Heat in this series -- they're, conversely, -25 with him off it. George Hill has fit in well, and while I agree with John Hollinger that the hullabaloo over Indiana's "killer depth" is essentially for naught (the Pacers are not deep -- they're merely a 6 man team instead of a 3 man team, and the sooner Vogel realizes that the sooner his team can start actually closing the damn series out), West/Collison/Granger form a trio of solid players fully capable of taking over a game for very short stretches. Paul George has had a disappointing offensive series, but he's been a MONSTER on the defensive end, and other than Wade's game 4, he's absolutely throttled Wade's game and kept the Heat in check.

Furthermore, just as in game 1, the Pacers battled extreme foul trouble in their game 4 loss. Roy Hibbert (whose series +/- I've just mentioned) played barely 12 minutes of the second half, as compared to LeBron's 22. David West only played 15 minutes in the second half, also due to foul trouble. The Pacers led at the half in both games, then lost the lead in a war of attrition, primarily wrought in fouls and the Heat pounding away as Vogel found himself forced to rest his two best players. For a period of almost ten minutes in the second half, foul trouble limited Vogel to a frontcourt including neither Hibbert OR West -- the Heat proceeded to extend the lead from a tied game at 63-63 to a 9 points before the two of them came back in the game. By that point it was simply too late. Haslem was on after Hansbrough and Amundson blew rotation after rotation and gave him the wide open shot. Wade was on fire. LeBron was completely disengaged, but it didn't matter -- the game was in hand.

I don't know if the Pacers win the series. I think they're favored, because I can't see LeBron playing this well for more than one more game. The series now falls to the Heat's supporting cast, and the general ephemera that flip a roughly even series one way or the other. The idea that the Heat lost games 2 and 3 simply because they were "disgracing themselves" is absolutely bollocks. This series is about as even as a 2-2 series can be, and at this point, it's anyone's game. The Heat need to finish it off before LeBron's body wears through. The Pacers have the inertia of youth, energy, and 5 of the best 7 players in the series. Both teams play hard, and will continue to do so -- if the Heat lose this series, it won't be because they've somehow disgraced themselves or the sport. It will be because the Pacers smelled blood and struck. And no, the series isn't over yet. It's a new day, and a 3-game series with a tired LeBron and a streaky Dwyane Wade against a solid, five-man team with a chip on their shoulder and a Batcave in the rafters.

Or, as I like to call it, "exactly what the playoffs are about." Game on, gentlemen.

Nate Jones (@JonesOnTheNBA) recently made an argument against Tim Duncan's private, quiet approach to life in the NBA. It's one he's been making for a long time. The argument goes like this: basketball - regardless of the product's essence - is an entertainment business. Tim Duncan is an interesting person and an important basketball player. In the hands of the right writers and interviewers, Tim Duncan could be marketed as a fascinating public figure. Therefore, opening up to the media should increase Tim's brand recognition and that of his team. In Duncan's case, it would also be good for basketball in general (and the NBA in particular) if Tim did so, because he embodies rarefied, virtuous qualities on and off the court. There are templates for Duncan to follow such as Steve Nash, but regardless of how he does it, Tim Duncan should become a more public person, at the very least showing his interesting personality to the national media. In fact, one could argue (as Jones does), Tim Duncan's salary is paid precisely because more athletes don't follow his quiet path. Duncan may not like it, but morality appears to demand that he seek an active public profile for the benefit of the league.

• • •

First off, let me stop and note something: There's a piece I wrote recently that I absolutely will not publish in its current form. (EDITOR'S NOTE: And it's not just because I won't let him. -- Aaron.) The piece starts with a petty complaint about writers complaining about the Spurs and then goes on to posit alternatives. Yeah, not a great pitch to begin with. But there was a moment of realization that illustrated a greater concern, and made the piece fall apart in the end: Spurs fans have insanely little to complain about, right now. Voicing these complaints amid a sea of light, fat-free criticism (that never failed to acknowledge the Spurs' greatness on some level) would therefore be not only tonedeaf but ungrateful. The Spurs are blessed to be the rock of the NBA and I'm blessed to be one of their fans through this stretch of basketball. So I'm not really going to complain about anything today. As Browning said, "God's in his heaven/All's right with the world." And Duncan's at the four. (Or five, if we're being honest.)

But Jones' argument needs to be addressed I think, not as a Spurs fan and not as a Duncan fan. No, Jones' argument needs to be addressed for the sake of keeping perspective in our demands of public figures. Consider this. In Chris Ballard's piece (four words we will repeat in aeternum) about Duncan, Tim is in a hotel elevator with Ballard when suddenly a family of three enters:

_ Here's what the husband does not do. He does not do a double take, betray any recognition of Duncan or make a comment about the previous night's game or this year's postseason or that one time Tim Duncan did that amazing thing. The wife does not bat her eyes or squirm. The daughter does not think OMG! OMG! OMG! and start texting furiously. This is not LeBron or Kobe. Or even Melo._

The door opens, the family leaves without looking back. Duncan looks relieved.

It's a very simple and poignant take - in a moment, Ballard has perfectly illustrated the price of fame to someone like Duncan. The price of fame is not just the simple cost to an athlete in time and pretentious, insipid discussions of brand (doubly so for an introvert). It's also the constant cost a famous person endures whenever he walks out the door. It's not just the people that rave over him that he meets in elevators. It's also the people he doesn't meet but that always threaten to address him and his family in public with a bit too much familiarity. It's not just the "shaking hands and kissing babies" part, to put it in presidential terms. It's the Secret Service part.

The consequences of increased fame aren't just present in an interview or two with the incredible Chris Ballard: they're in the hordes of tabloid writers. They're not just in the long-term recognition of his image, but also in the long-term commodification of his image and the lessening of his control over that image. Not just the extraordinary people he'd meet, but also the ordinary people the earthbound Duncan would have trouble dealing with on an equal and uncomplicated footing. Not just about his own privacy, but also about his wife and daughters' privacy. Not just about the privileges he's not taking advantage of on behalf of the league, but also about the corrupting influence of such privileges on him and those around him. And so on and so forth. Try to say you're humble when you've got a billboard in the center of town promoting your book. Try to say it's not about you but about the team, then, when you're being paid to wax rhetorical about what taking the last shot feels like. Try to say that journalists are worth your time when feckless hacks like Dan Shaughnessy are twisting everything you say -- even your small, humble quips -- to make you appear a confidence-lacking lesser star. Please. Go try it.

• • •

Yes, Duncan is a smart guy and could probably figure out how to make fame as controlled, pleasant, and altogether about his message as anyone else. But when you demand that the more private public figures be more vocal and start holding their salaries over them, well, realize something. You're not only asking for them to share their lives with the world more: you're also asking them to bring the world into their lives more. The athletes that welcome some measure of this intrusion should be respected as a necessary part of the ecosystem of this entertainment business. But let's not ask someone like Duncan to make such sacrifices unless we're damn sure we're clear on the costs. At some point Jones posted a tweet that really bugged me.

Nate Jones @JonesOnTheNBA: Duncan should care, @Rags8, because the league has enabled him to become a very rich man. There are obligations that come with that. 2:06 PM - 16 May 12

Can you see why I think this all needed to be said? Take it all together: Duncan gets paid a whole lot, but for that compensation already has plenty of obligations endemic to being a public figure, even if you ignore his 82+ appearances in front of thousands of fans to perform at a world-class, historical level. (Let's not even touch the looming fact that salary caps and max deals are effective price ceilings below market clearing price for a franchise-cornerstone star like Duncan.) Oh, and Duncan also has to go on the road away from his family for 41+ games a season. Oh, and he constantly makes physical sacrifices to maintain his declining, ever more precarious athleticism. Oh, and even if he isn't necessarily seeking out appearances, he addresses the media (and often appears at press conferences) after virtually every game of the season. Jones may be respectful of players like Duncan as players and human beings, but when it comes to the public realm Jones is dipping dangerously into the well-worn "ungrateful to be paid millions to play a children's game" trope.

Isn't it far more plausible that the intelligent and conscientious Duncan does care, and does recognize (as he says over and over again in interviews) that the league is an entertainment business... but still wants to strike a compromise for his public image that's further on the spectrum towards privacy than a Steve Nash? (And by the way, don't these more public athletes like Nash get further compensated for such public appearances? Just saying.) Why is any of this wrong in the slightest? Duncan has done everything with his basketball skills with remarkable class. Perhaps I'm biased, but I'd say that Tim has given us more than enough. In his long career, he has produced his personality for the league more than enough. He has produced financially for his team and league far in excess of his salary. He has produced spiritually for fans far in excess of what he has been given. Asking Duncan to do more -- to sacrifice more -- may be effective as a conversation-starter and indeed, Jones articulated plenty of great points.

But with the disengagement of an observer, Jones has given us precious little in the way of empathy or insight for Duncan's real options and priorities. Duncan made a choice. And while I would defend til death Jones' right to critique Duncan's choice, a fair assessment of the personal implications of what Duncan's choice entailed is critical to the argument here. You can call foul on Duncan's introversion and decry his quiet nature. You can say he should've brought the media into his life. That's your right. But understand the hidden costs, and at least acknowledge them -- it's a choice he made, with tangible benefits and drawbacks. It was not a moral obligation. The argument should be framed accordingly.

Narratives are a powerful thing. For whatever reason, that seems to be a controversial statement, particularly in NBA blogging circles. Stats are king, you see. My kingdom for the purity of the game. Efficiency, ball-sharing, teamwork. But like it or not? The narrative -- lacking in substance though it may be -- is important. It’s the truth. Sports are entertainment, at least as a commodity. Professional athletes are for most of us as unknowable and inscrutable as a famous actor or politician. They’re caricatures, into which we plug the stories we’ve heard, the way they act on the court, and the individual components of their game. At times we project upon them our own personalities, our own flaws and sympathies, our own feelings on what’s important to the game, and in life.

• • •

But for the most part, willing consumers of mainstream sports narratives or not, we balk at the notion. Nobody likes to think they’ve been sold a false bill of goods or given the answers to the riddle; that anyone but themselves can play them for a fool when they’re wrong, or that anyone needed to tell them what’s what when they’re right. I’m admittedly one of the self-righteous; I laugh at preposterous headlines questioning LeBron’s mental toughness, or extolling the killer instinct of Kobe Bryant. I try to contextualize, to take what is valuable and make fun of the fluff. When I see Westbrook executing the offense for Oklahoma City, exploiting a consistent mismatch and lack of rotation adjustment for easy points like in Game 1, I don’t question why he isn’t giving up those looks to force the ball over to a tightly defended Kevin Durant. When I see LeBron pass in the final seconds to a wide-open Haslem, who misses a 10 foot jumper that is unquestionably his shot, I understand that this was the right basketball play, that clutch performances don’t have to come from heart-stopping isolation fadeaways.

Yet as I watched the Lakers pound the ball inside and finally exploit their frontcourt advantage, while the Thunder offense seemed to collapse in a way it hasn’t done in some time, I found myself cringing. No, I wasn’t cringing because my team was getting beat, I was cringing because I felt a growing urge to acknowledge how little Kevin Durant seemed to be doing about it. He had been quietly scoring in his usual fashion, if a little less so than usual, but time after time I watched him receive or create excellent looks for himself, only to pass off to an inferior offensive teammate for an equivalent look. This was a legitimate basketball complaint, this was my favorite player in the NBA not executing his greatest skill to the extent he could’ve in a game where he increasingly needed to. I’ve never been especially shy about critiquing or acknowledging legitimate points of concern with my favorite players and team. But this was different. In my gut it seemed wrong, and I felt a profound sense of disappointment in openly acknowledging to myself and no one in particular the ugly, made-for-TV truth: Durant needed to take more shots. He did. I even tweeted it, for God's sake. _I never use twitter!_ EVER!

... Anyway. Durant absolutely needed to shoot the ball more. He needed to use offensive possessions himself rather than creating positionally equivalent yet statistically inferior ones for teammates. And when he finally seemed to engage offensively in the final seconds of the game, securing yet another clutch Kevin Durant performance, it felt, if only for a brief second, hollow. By Game 3 it’s likely I will have forgotten this uncomfortable feeling, but there it is. Why though? It wasn’t because I felt the Thunder didn’t earn it. A win is a win however you get it. A gritty well-executed comeback is as impressive as holding onto a comfortable lead. No, this was about Durant, a player who by all statistical measures had an excellent night and a dominant crunch-time performance capped off by a commercial-worthy game-winning shot. So after being given all that, all those objective merits to extol and a Game 2 victory for my team, what reason could I possibly have to be disgruntled?

• • •

Because narratives are important, and it’s more apparent to me here than ever.

Narratives are powerful not only by virtue of the ways they shape our perceptions of athletes, but also in the ways we can balk at them. How many NBA fans have you met who’ve embraced the Miami Heat this season, because they feel sorry for LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, because they feel its unfair the pressure they were put under and the impossible expectations and criticisms ESPN headlines would level at them night after night? I know quite a few. You wouldn’t put “Miami Heat” and “underdog” in the same sentence, but that’s the contrarian narrative that has developed in many circles. Let’s get more intimate; how many people do you know that characterize Michael Jordan as an “asshole”, or a “reprehensible human being”, adding it almost as a mandatory footnote to concessions of his greatness? I’d put good odds on more than a couple. But I’m willing to put even better odds on the likelihood that none of those people have ever so much as met the man.

We're so willing to buy into narratives because they’re part of what makes following professional sports interesting. We develop our own if we find the commercialized ones distasteful, and we experience reactionary cognitive dissonance when our own narratives fall flat. I “know” Kevin Durant, insofar as I can. I know that he’s primarily a passive source of offensive efficiency, quietly plugging away for much of games, somehow ending the game with 30-35 points that you can’t seem to remember more than one or two of. I “know” that because of this he must always want to make the right play, and only rises to the occasion and takes “the big shot” reluctantly. It’s what makes those moments so satisfying in a way Kobe’s no longer are; an individual playing his game as well as he can for 4 quarters and yet is required by the basketball gods and a seemingly insurmountable opponent to make one final play, to cap it all off and secure his immortality. That’s the stuff that makes narratives, personal or commercial.

That’s why we find it hard to become excited about a recent Kobe game-winning shot when they are so often preceded by 30+ ppg, earned by an atrocious shooting night and unwillingness to adapt or distribute that borders on masochistic. As much as we know Kobe can be better, should be better, the moment feels unearned, consolatory. For the narrative, there is little glamor in good clean-up work. And it’s for this reason I felt so uncomfortable, as I watched Durant throughout Game 2, and even as I fist-pumped and cheered and reveled in his sudden dominance when it counted, as Kid Clutch emerged and another highlight was recorded in my mental checklist of Durant moments. Because my interpretation of Durant is not my interpretation of Kobe; they sit upon opposite ends of the spectrum, one defined by an individualized and personal perception of their personalities, motives, and games. Durant is the reluctant young hero who nevertheless will rise to the occasion, Kobe is the old guy who hasn’t noticed the world has moved on and he isn’t what he once was.

Neither of these characterizations necessarily have any basis in reality whatsoever. But even being cognizant of that, they affect how I watch the game, affect my feelings on its outcome and on those players’ performances. And we all have them, not just for athletes, but for nearly everyone we encounter, whether we acknowledge it or not. When I look back on my checklist of great Kevin Durant moments, I likely won’t remember that for large stretches of Game 2 the Thunder offense completely fell apart as he watched, stony and impassive. I’ll go back and look at the statline, and I won’t remember all the looks he passed on, passes which resulted in bricked Nazr Mohammed and Kendrick Perkins jumpers. I’ll remember the steal, the dunk, the game-winner, I’ll probably even remember the free-throw, and his sheepish admission that it was a “bone-head move,” an error that in light of the outcome and context adds a favorable touch of humanity. I’ll look at the statline and see the usual efficiency, and most importantly, I’ll see the W in the column and that will be the end of it.

But for the moment, as I experienced the entertainment of basketball, as I watched it happen, I felt the very real tug of cognitive dissonance, the discomfort in my gut as I watched a quietly visible reminder that narratives, for as as deeply as they root themselves in our perceptions, are nothing more than constructs. They’re artificial meanings we embrace every day, that provide meaning and significance to what is, ultimately, just a game being played by exceptional human beings who most viewers and fans will never meet or know. And that’s okay. Because we love meaning, we love rooting for somebody, we love believing in stories, in heroes and villains, in the thrill of the comeback and the drama of the loss. We whoop and holler, curse and cheer, and yell our voices hoarse. Because even if it doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things, it means an awful lot to us.