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

• • •

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

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

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

But... why?

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

I've been itching to respond to Steve Kerr's recent Grantland piece arguing for raising the age limit because I find so much to disagree with. However, trawling the Internet for counterarguments, I found this podcast by Henry Abbott and Michael McCann, laying out almost every imaginable critique of Kerr's piece two months in advance of it being written. I find it more succinct, organized, and authoritative than anything I could put to text. Still, at the end of the podcast I felt like something crucial went unsaid. Kerr's piece ultimately had less to do with the age limit itself than with the larger problems Kerr uses the age limit to simultaneously attack: player maturity, development, and marketing. These are clearly critical problems to be solved, and in this two-part response, we're going to work on them.

But in the framework of these larger problems, Kerr's proposal to change the age limit by one year seems at best absurdly limited and unsuitable for these problems. Kerr's argument, to me, reads somewhat like that of a high school student who writes an essay arguing something trivial like that a first-time drug possession fine should change by $50, in order to ameliorate crime, increase revenue for the state, or advance political liberty by a few ticks at the end of the fiscal year, using a bunch of ad hoc, heterodox arguments. "It will ameliorate crime because... it will increase revenue because... it will advance political liberty because..." Perhaps, Steve, perhaps. Crime, fiscal policy, and liberty are enormous problems, though, requiring a broader vision than a rhetorical, cherry-picked take whose prime directive appears to be "stay on message."

• • •

There's a qualitative difference between ages 18 and 19 and 20 in our culture. But changing any such age restrictions by one year in either direction isn't going to solve a whole lot for the few high school seniors and college freshmen good enough to enter the NBA. Changing the age limit to 18 didn't work, changing it to 19 didn't work, and changing it to 20 won't work, because these aren't problems of age but problems of pattern. And solving a systematic problem of pattern with a marginal tweak of quantity is foolish.

There is a problematic undertone to Kerr's approach to decision making. Kerr refers to his proposal of simultaneously offloading player maturity, development, and marketing to the NCAA and Europe as "smart business" almost completely for reasons of cost. This is the absurdity I want to address today: Kerr may be right that raising the age limit is smart business. I don't agree, but I could at least buy that premise. But if I'm an executive with any business sense as I'm listening to Kerr make this pitch, I'm not going to sign off on this proposal in a million years, unless Kerr takes the additional step of recognizing (and at least estimating for me) the gigantic hidden costs the NBA is also taking on in outsourcing huge portions of its business to organizations the league has no direct control over.

What do these hidden costs look like? Well, consider. The NBA has absolutely no control over...

• ... What kind of maturity the NCAA or Europe is going to teach these players. In the case of the NCAA, "Maturity" sometimes requires first making stupid mistakes like getting injured without adequate school-sponsored insurance. "Maturity" sometimes means first becoming cynical over being lost in an unjustified bureaucracy. "Maturity" sometimes means being part of a program that doesn't care about you and undermines your confidence. These lessons of so-called maturity may in fact arise from conditions endemic to the NCAA that make the lessons completely unnecessary for a life in the NBA, or a life in professional basketball in general.

• ... What kinds of skills the NCAA program develops in the NBA's best prospects. "That big man is the next great NBA prospect! Just imagine what a coaching legend like Mike Krzyzewski can do for him in two years! I just can't wait until he comes to the NBA with ever-present knowledge of how to stealthily foul for 30 seconds of a 35 second possession, this will truly augment his ongoing development nicely."

• ... What kind of a training staff is handling the NBA's top prospects. Not every school is like Duke, with a massive on-campus hospital -- some schools are dreadfully behind in sports medicine, just like some NBA teams. It's true, we get one more year of data if we force players to stay in the NCAA for another year. But the NBA as a whole also takes a massive, unnecessary organizational risk when we allow them to stay that extra season. (Such as, say, De'Sean Butler.) Just saying.

• ... What kinds of situations the NCAA puts the best prospects into to get that valuable second sample year of scouting data. If so much decision-making truly hinges on those four extra months, then isn't at a minimum inconvenient that half the games for, say, Duke, may be against cream-puff non-conference opponents like Elon and UNC-Albuquerque? What about the fact that the central event of the NCAA is a single-elimination tourney, which is basically the opposite of an effective statistical sample? Isn't it at least a substantive cost that the NBA has no control over this process so crucial to its own scouting?

• ... What kinds of marketing efforts the NCAA will make to single out their greatest players. Marketing a player is the process of crafting a story and a message for that player, and the NCAA is hardly helping them out in this respect. For the most part the NCAA errs on the side of marginal players from high-powered programs, pasty-white volume scorers like Jimmer Fredette, or "prospects" like Austin Rivers of Duke or Harrison Barnes of UNC. Rivers is never going to be a stud in the NBA, he's just not that great. And yet the fact that he goes to Duke (and is related to Doc) is always going to trump his true talent. Barnes has disappointed his backers again and again, and yet he was and is still referred to as a top prospect from that class. He'll probably go top-7. The hype machine doesn't care much whether the player ever gets close to the hype, and as far as the NBA is concerned, college hype for players that don't pan out in its league is indistinguishable from static on the airwaves, crowding out its prospects, competing with the NBA's young players for the nation's attention. College marketing is built on the best stories, not necessarily the best players, and yet the NBA is built on selecting for the best players from college and overseas. College does write better stories for college players plenty of times, it's true, but by and large the NBA gets the residual, leftover hype (that it has to establish again anyway when the player gets to the league) while the NCAA reaps the spoils of that process.

I hope I've demystified some of the hidden costs of the proposal that are three-card-monte'd by Kerr's presentation. Solving these problems not only takes us far from "common sense," but also takes us into the sticky realm of addressing our priorities and our vision for the league, and making choices and compromises accordingly. It's suddenly not just a smart business, common sense, open-and-shut case whose only rejoinder comes from straw men like "Who are we to deny a 19-year-old kid a chance to make a living when he can vote, drive, and fight in a war?"

Kerr's proposal to raise the age limit is also a proposal for the NBA to let the NCAA and European basketball dictate the maturity, marketing, development, and maintenance of its talent pool for an extra year. What his proposal reduces in cost to the league it reduces in equal measure the control that can be exerted by the league. "What age rules will maximize revenue and limit cost the most?" is a perfectly valid business question. But Kerr isn't presenting the costs fairly, and the proposed benefits of outsourcing these functions to the NCAA and Europe are fraught with compensatory costs of their own, all of which deserve strong mention.

• • •

On Sunday afternoon, the Miami Heat lost Chris Bosh to a lower abdominal strain. He's almost certainly gone for the series, and most rumblings have it that he's gone until the finals. The problem with an abdominal strain, it's one of the rare injuries that sounds a lot worse than it is -- it's hard to play through, difficult to get past without serious rest, and ruins a player's rhythm. I'll cut to the chase. I think the Heat are in a relatively large amount of trouble right now, and while I'm not quite ready to_ assure_ a Pacers win, I certainly think the series has become -- at worst -- a 40-60 series for the Pacers. Like it or not, they have a huge shot at an upset right now. Despite the Heat's one game already on the ledger. I think Zach Lowe rather effectively summarizes most of the reasons why in his large-as-a-mansion "caveats" section of his Bosh injury rundown, but I think he underrates a few factors. After the jump, I delineate them.

• • •

As a fan who watched LeBron in Cleveland for years, I think most commentators underrate the level to which LeBron despises playing the "big forward" role on the court. He's not in love with playing the point, either -- he generally likes keeping to his natural small forward position and letting the chips fall where they may. But despite being a consistently effective lineup option, LeBron has ALWAYS loathed playing the big forward, starting early in his career when Mike Brown realized how effective it is. And don't front -- it's an extremely effective lineup option if you put the right players around LeBron, and always has been. In his last year in Cleveland, LeBron played almost 300 minutes of "big forward" LeBron. In 200 of those minutes, he shared the floor with Anderson Varejao -- those lineups posted an offensive rating of 120 and a defensive rating of 92, making that two-man pairing (no matter who the Cavs put up with them) arguably the greatest lineup that the LeBron Cavaliers ever put out on the court. Thoroughly dominant.

So... why does he hate it so much? If he's so dominant with it, why is he so reluctant to use it? Primarily his exhaustion level, I'd say. LeBron is an excellent defender, but part of what makes him so good is that he's massively oversized for his position and can simply use his size to smother the shots of smaller players. Against big men, LeBron doesn't quite hold that sort of an overwhelming advantage, and it leads to LeBron having to expend a lot more mental and physical heft trying to stick to his man. It also forces LeBron to -- generally -- get a larger percentage of his offense on post-up plays, something that can wear down a man's knees over time and can weaken a player not used to it. I've thought since watching the evolution of the "Power LeBron" lineup during Mike Brown's 2010 season that LeBron as power forward lineups are inherently doomed over the course of a full year, or prolonged minutes. The more it's used, the less engaged LeBron is using it. And as seasons go on, the lineup's effectiveness wanes until it finally peters to a screeching halt late in the playoffs.

Why? I haven't totally figured it out yet. Whether it's fatigue, distaste, or better scouting, the trend seems true year-in and year-out. I haven't a wealth of evidence to back intuition up, here, and given the current state of lineup examination data I don't know how you could. Last year, I seem to remember Spolestra trying it two or three times in the playoffs -- it had absolutely no impact, and in fact, LeBron tended to do worse using it. Every time Mike Brown broke out the "Power LeBron" lineup in the 2010 playoffs, it seemed to me to get destroyed by the Celtics and even performed poorly against the Vinny Del Negro Bulls. LeBron at the four works very well to start a season, and has sustainable success up until LeBron has played too many minutes at the position. Then the lineup's effectiveness begins to degrade. I'd assume it's from fatigue. I wish I had an easy way to query my database for this sort of thing, but alas -- I don't save lineup data, so I can't. This is the kind of thing I'd love to get confirmation either way on, though. Because the degrading effectiveness of a lineup over a full season seems like it would be an important thing to keep track of.

• • •

ALLOCATING THE BIG MAN MINUTES

It's often said that the true impact of an injury is rarely measured by the 1st or 2nd backup being forced to play a big-league role -- generally, when given the opportunity, a sparsely scouted backup will do a relatively good job patching in over a short absence. The real problem that faces a team that loses one of their top players is when the backup's backup has to become the backup, and a team's depth is tested to its absolute core. The issue that faces Miami going forward, and one that Frank Vogel may be able to leverage to his advantage, is that they're faced with 96 minutes of frontcourt play per game (going against the best frontcourt in the playoffs, mind you) and a grand total of -- besides LeBron -- zero quality players to place in those roles. Udonis Haslem, Joel Anthony, Dexter Pittman, and Ronny Turiaf can patch in the remaining 50 minutes if LeBron and Bosh combine to play 46 of those minutes in a game. That isn't going to kill you.

But take out Bosh's 36-40 and you're left with a serious dearth of lineup options once you're stretching for the backups. Even if you play LeBron -- as Spolestra did in game one -- 20 minutes of large forward a night (which is already far too much, mind you), that leaves you with 76 minutes a game that you'll need to allot to three players haven't ever been called on to play minutes of quite this importance or heft. Effective in short bursts, sure, but they've never been purely scouted or game-planned for to the extent that Vogol will look to do. The Heat can handle replacing Bosh with Haslem. Can they handle replacing Haslem with Turiaf? Or Anthony with Pittman? That's the big question, and the reason that 3rd/4th man injuries can be so harmful on a team with lacking depth, like the Heat. One wonders how the Heat bench (which is already far too thin) will hold up. I'm not bullish.

• • •

THE PACERS ARE A DAMN GOOD TEAM

More than either of these reasons though, there's this. What game 1 established to me was that the Pacers are a team whose margin of error is surprisingly high. The Pacers didn't do anything particularly unsustainable in yesterday's first half, to these eyes -- West and Hibbert did about what everyone was expecting them to do against the Heat's front line, and the Pacers defense did about as well as it did in the regular season. In fact, out of the myriad of factors that swung game one, I'd actually assess most of the luck-based ones in the Heat's favor. The Pacers aren't going to have that many players in foul trouble on a game-to-game basis. Simply aren't. The referees called a very tight game, and Indiana simply didn't adjust very well to that reality. In future games, I'd expect them to adjust a bit better. But the fact remains. Despite their insane foul trouble, the unprecedentedly abysmal showing from their wings, and an anemic bench performance? The Pacers were down to the heat by a single point with four minutes left to play, and down four with just two minutes remaining. Had they gotten the bogus charge call on Barbosa in the first half, they'd have added three to their total and been up until the very last seconds.

On the other end of the ledger, the Heat needed two insane performances from Wade and LeBron to win, as well as the foul trouble and the unexpected shooting slump from the entire Pacer team. Outside of their big three, Miami got 21 points on 21 shots -- including a never-to-happen-again nine points on 4-4 shooting from (of all people!) Joel Anthony. Before the series, most everyone expected a 5-6 game beatdown from the Heat. I admit, after the Knicks series, I did too. But the Heat barely edged past the Pacers at home in game one, even as virtually everything in the game rolled their way. The Pacers may not take game two, but if they can hold homecourt, game one tells me that they can take a game or two in Miami in this series. It won't be easy, and they'll need a few more things to go right than the things that went right on Sunday. But as I said -- their margin of error is far larger than I previously expected. If George Hill, Danny Granger, and Paul George ever combine for 6-of-25 again in this series, yes, they'll probably lose the game. But would you bet on that happening?

• • •

In all, I'm not sure I disagree with Lowe all that much. My initial thought was that I disagreed with him a lot, but that was mainly due to the hyper-confident start. His caveats touch on many of my key points, if only glancingly. The Heat should still be favored to win the series, though if they can, it's very important for them to end this series early. They need the rest, and every extra game this series goes is another chance for LeBron's energy level to fall off badly, as in last year's finals. Smart money would be on the Heat winning the series in a nail-biting 6 or 7. But fatigue, adjustments, and the unexpected strength the Pacers showed in game one has made me a believer. I think this Pacer team can win the series. If I had to assess the probability of various outcomes, I'd do it like so:

• 20% chance the Heat win in 5.
• 10% chance the Heat win in 6.
• 25% chance the Heat win in 7.
• 15% chance the Pacers win in 7.
• 30% chance the Pacers win in 6.

Which, in the end? Makes the series a slightly Miami-leaning coin flip. In the interests of being a contrarian, though, I'll take the dive. Pacers in 6.

Prove me sane, Indiana.

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 has one of the longest pieces we've used for this series in a while, with Alex ruminating on the Nuggets' elimination to the tune of Sorkin's ultimate masterpiece, "Two Cathedrals."

• "Brothers in Arms." by Alex Dewey.

Click the jump for today’s take.

• • •

Brothers in Arms
Alex Dewey

You ever see that masterful West Wing episode "Two Cathedrals"? Well, I got to thinking of it as I watched Game 7 of the Nuggets-Lakers last night. The episode - for those unfortunate souls who haven't seen it - carefully sketches out young Jed Bartlet's friendship with Dolores Landingham at a Dead Poets Society-type prep school. Jed, of course, would become the president one day, but it takes a wake-up call from new secretary Landingham to send his intelligent, compassionate character into a life of public engagement. Meanwhile, in the present, Mrs. Landingham (now Jed's longtime secretary) has recently died, having been senselessly hit by a drunk driver. And Now-President Bartlet -- attacked on every side, personal, emotional, professional, physical -- is doubting whether he should continue his career and seek a difficult second term. After Mrs. Landingham's funeral, Bartlet tells the Secret Service to seal the cathedral, so that he can give God a piece of his mind.

"She bought her first new car and you hit her with a drunk driver. What, was that supposed to be funny? "You can't conceive, nor can I, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God," says Graham Greene. I don't know who's ass he was kissing there 'cause I think you're just vindictive. What was Josh Lyman? A warning shot? That was my son. What did I ever do to yours but praise his glory and praise his name? There's a tropical storm that's gaining speed and power. They say we haven't had a storm this bad since you took out that tender ship of mine in the north Atlantic last year..."

Bartlet's anger builds and builds until finally, feeling totally betrayed by a God he'd lived to serve, Bartlet shouts some blasphemies in Latin and tops it with an emphatic: "You get Hoynes!" This is the ultimate blasphemy, giving way for his dismal, cynical rival (Vice President Hoynes) to receive the nomination, effectively ending Bartlet's future political intentions.

• • •

The Gasol-Kobe-Bynum Lakers are there to break your hearts, to make you blaspheme against the Basketball Gods. Again and again, these Lakers will kill your favorite and your second-favorite team and send your most intense and enigmatic players to the locker room feeling like they had a chance. You will learn to root against these Lakers by virtue of the character and intensity of the other teams they inevitably face. But to the victors go the spoils, as they say, and for all the talk of their dogging it in this series, they clearly did have a few spare bullets in their chamber. Once again the strength of their game has justified their own perennial boast to relevance. No one has beat them four times in a series this season and it really doesn't matter that the Nuggets thrice refused them. That's how a seven-game series works, and more power to them if they can do it their way.

Their way or not, though, I get a naive and vulnerable feeling sometimes. Too often it's when I watch the Lakers or the Heat enact their prescriptive doomsday against some wonderful, joyful team doomed to fail. Like these Nuggets. These Lakers in particular make you question again and again just what it is we're all doing watching a game where the catty, drama-laden forum blue and gold can simply use teams like this as their personal scratching post solely and shamelessly coast through a series on account of their natural advantage. "You get Hoynes!" I actually tweeted this during the game, when the Nuggets' deficit was at its most dire. The dismal march of the Laker machine churns onward, and with it the remarkable joy that watching the Nuggets brought me.

But remembering "Two Cathedrals" also made me stop and reconsider. At his low point, after he's decided to concede the nomination to Hoynes, Bartlet utters ruefully to his wife that "the world can rest easy." The moment is shocking in the context of the series, even beyond the cursing of God (which is at least active and assertive). It's something as bad as death when you've given up hope. And when you look at the emotional arc of "Two Cathedrals," hope is the real problem of the episode, not the cliffhanger of whether Bartlet will run again or whether we'll give our goals another try.

• • •

And so the climax of the episode isn't Bartlet deciding to run again: It's Barlet (thanks to an apparition of Mrs. Landingham) recognizing where he came from and recognizing who he is: a flawed, occasionally impulsive, decisive, compassionate public servant that will stand up again and again for what he believes in. What matters is that Bartlet has regained hope. For all his weaknesses, he can always rely on his virtues and experience to keep hammering away against the problems of the world as long as he can draw breath. And he can always have the solemn faith that maybe, one day, some of these problems will break forever. Once that's established, the outcome of the political story is an obvious, meaningless afterthought. After a long motorcade ride set to Dire Straits' "Brothers in Arms," the president enters the press room and takes the hardest question first: Will you be seeking re-election, Mr. President? Bartlett's actor Martin Sheen - in one of my favorite moments in all of television - wordlessly answers with a posture of hope and affirmation. Roll credits.

Because of the appearance of Metta World Peace for Game 7, George Karl felt averse to using the Nuggets signature smallball backcourt of Ty Lawson and Andre Miller. But down 16 in the third, Karl realized he had nothing to lose and sent in Miller at the middle of the third quarter. Before the inevitable run that ensued, the run that put the Nuggets up 4 but still kept a Denver victory well out of reach, I muted Steve Kerr and Marv Albert, turned off my other monitor, and cut the lights in my apartment. Well, all the lights save for the light from two cathedrals in the backcourt, perhaps never to play again together. I played an apt song for the occasion: "Brothers in Arms." It was impulsive and superstitious on my part, but I don't know that I'll ever forget 'Dre Miller and Ty Lawson getting the Nuggets back into their unique brand of steal-and-rebound-and-transition, if only for a few glorious minutes of game time.

That stretch was a wordless affirmation of the Nuggets season and of the Nuggets themselves and while the Lakers tonight will wake up as the Lakers tomorrow - with a still-extant chance to deliver Kobe's 6th - the Nuggets on that team will wake up as Nuggets forevermore, and that moment of hope will always give Denver's mountainous sunsets a blip on the horizon, a hand silently reaching for last traces of light.

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 covers Adam discussing how you simply must make your free throws and Aaron discussing the hilarious breakout of "project" big men in the 2012 Playoffs.

• “You've Got to Make Your Free Throws.” by Adam Koscielak.
• "The Playoffs of the Project." by Aaron McGuire.

Click the jump for today’s two works.

• • •

You've Got to Make Your Free Throws

Adam Koscielak

Recently, in one of the rare weeks of good weather you get in a Polish March, I went to my local basketball court. I was out of shape. After all, the only shots I'd taken were bounces off an X I drew on my wall. So, I started taking a few shots. A few from midrange, a few from beyond the arc. Made some, missed some, and did a hell of a lot better off the dribble for some unknown reason. Then, out of nowhere, I decided to shoot some free throws.

When I do shooting practice, I make mini-deals with myself. I make a nice point system, I make myself string together a few hits, et cetera. When I came to the line, I decided that I'd have to make five in a row just to make sure my form was ok. Hell, I even set up a shot counter on my iPhone to keep stats. I made my first free throw. Then the second. And then I just started missing. A few went long, clanking off the unforgiving rim, so I adjusted. I hit two again, hoping that I could string this into my self-promised five in a row. ... Ha! Nope. I didn't even make 4 in a row that day. In fact, I may have shot more air balls in a row than free throws made in a row.

It was strange, really. I could make the Tim Duncan bank shot without a problem. I could make a running, Steve Nash-style three pointer. Hell, I could even nail a couple of turnaround Js in a row! But I couldn't make a shot I'd easily make as an 8 year old kid. After around 20 minutes, the counter on my iPhone, that I'd tap my scores into every time I'd miss a free throw (not to break a streak, of course) was showing a ghastly percentage. Around 33% on 70 attempts. Yikes. I was alone on the courts, nobody was watching me. Except for myself. And I just kept missing a shot I knew I could make. Missing a shot way easier than the (... international length, ahem) threes I swished, banked, and rimmed in less than a half hour earlier. It was humiliating. More humiliating than missing a wide open layup, really. The rim wasn't bent, I wasn't tired, I just couldn't make it.

And this is how I understood. There are no easy shots when you're over-thinking it. I haven't played basketball since, but I've watched. And the night of May 10th was just the perfect example of how big of a deal free throws can be. After all, a make on one end and a miss on the other in the Bulls game would've changed the outcome, and sent it back to Chicago. One make in the Hawks game would've sent it to overtime. I, alone on a court, couldn't make a 70% of my free throws. How can I expect a guy playing under the basket to make one with 20 thousand people booing him with all their hearts? How can I expect anyone to take that kind of pressure? This is how I began to understand all the big guys in the league, the ones who probably had a rough start to their free throw shooting careers and just never got it out of their heads.

Everyone finds it so easy to say "you got to make your free throws" or laugh at the air balls. The truth is, sometimes mental blocks can kill the best. Derrick Rose is a prime example of that. Andre Iguodala had to think about his son and let his muscle memory make the shots for him. In the end, the time a player takes to make a free throw might as well be a long internal battle, a long line of questions. "What if miss?" "I always miss... What am I doing wrong?" "I pulled it long last time, I should adjust". This is probably why the best free throw shooters (*cough* Steve Nash *cough*) have characteristic routines. It's finding the happy place, taking the mind off the shot... And just drilling it. The problem is, not everyone can. Perhaps what we should be saying instead of "you gotta make 'em" is "just shoot them, no pressure."

Because in the end, it seems like it's all about that.

• • •

The Playoffs of the Project

Aaron McGuire

These playoffs have been pretty interesting, if not always amazing. We find ourselves on the verge of two first-round game sevens, something that's only happened thrice in the ten years we've had ourselves the 7-game first round. While the entire Eastern gauntlet has been historically dismal, we've been (in some sense) blessed -- the only two series to go the full seven have also happened to be the two most entertaining to watch, in contrast to the last time we had two game sevens and one was the historically awful 2009 Heat-Hawks series. And in tonight's bout to conclude the Nuggets vs Lakers thriller, we get a final look into one of the most hilarious and unexpected upsets of the first round. I refer to the trend that this year's playoffs have been defined and fueled not necessarily by the stars, but by the projects.

Consider this. In separate games this year we've seen:

• Reggie Evans take Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph's lunch in a 4th quarter shellacking to steal game 1.

• Glen Davis take Roy Hibbert to town and utterly dominate him en route to their upset game 1 win.

• Boris Diaw outplayed Paul Millsap at both ends of the floor, leading the San Antonio attack.

• JaVale McGee outplay the combined effort of Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum to force a game 6... in Los Angeles.

• Spencer Hawes -- SPENCER HAWES, GUYS -- completely destroyed Carlos Boozer en route to the shocking Philadelphia upset over a Bulls team that (even without Rose) still destroyed teams throughout the entire regular season.

Absolutely none of those are things that you could've seen coming going into the playoffs. The talk of every commentator prior to the Denver series was that the Denver big men would wilt against the Laker front line -- but after they punted the first two games, the Denver bigs have fought Los Angeles to a draw at worst. Kenneth Faried's coming out party has been extraordinary, but not any more insane than JaVale McGee finally making good on his potential and showing the league exactly what he can give to a team when he has his head on straight. He's been phenomenal, despite being the stirring image of a "project" big. As for the rest?

Davis is a fringe prospect-level big man who has never really been all that much more than a jump-shooting widebody with a lack of defense and a lack of marbles. He still produced excellent numbers throughout the series against the 7'2" Hibbert, and somehow managed to outscore Hibbert in all but one game of the five game series. Boris Diaw -- never a player known for his defensive acuity or real impact -- held the almost-all-star Paul Millsap to a 11.9 playoff PER, and (despite taking 15 shots to Millsap's 54, and playing 45 minutes less than Millsap over 4 games), managed to outscore him once and outrebound him twice. Reggie Evans -- REGGIE FREAKING EVANS -- has thrice in the series outscored Marc Gasol in the 4th quarter of a game, and twice outscored Zach Randolph in that same period. Who saw that coming? Ever? And Spencer Hawes? Look at that picture I began this piece with. Just look at it, preferably for several minutes. It's the only argument I need, Shawn.

We may see a return to form going forward. To a certain extent, we've already returned to the status quo. The Reggie Evans magic ran utterly dry in game 6, and the Randolph-Gasol attack overwhelmed his formerly shutdown defense and surprising offensive attack to pull the Grizzlies into their needed game 7. We could, tonight, see JaVale and Faried finally wilt and allow the Gasol-Bynum duo to go nuclear on the Nuggets and show us why we were fools to count out the Lakers. (I actually think that's going to happen. I'd love to see the Nuggets win, but come on -- they're the Lakers, and all things considered, a team that has the 3 best players in a series rarely loses it -- and the Nuggets have won in LA only once this year. I don't get why everyone is so sure the Lakers are toast.) Spencer Hawes could (potentially) remember that he's Spencer Hawes, and stop making every jumper he takes. And Glen Davis, JaVale McGee, Reggie Evans -- all of them could be gone by the next round. By all accounts, they probably will be.

But if anyone asks me what I remember about this first round, right now, the answer is obvious. It won't be Rose's injury, because I don't like thinking about things that sad. It won't be the dominant attack that the Spurs and the Heat unleashed on their first round fodder. Because their real playoff moment will come later. No. It was a first round dedicated to and in celebration of the "Project." Those few, merry, unheralded big men that carpet-bombed their expectations and dramatically outplayed their betters for several games in a row, and showed the world just how talented they really can be. When they get past their foibles and stop wearing American flag button-downs, of course.

• • •

"Closeout games are actually kind of easy. Teams tend to fold if you come out and play hard in the beginning."

-- Andrew Bynum, prior to Game 5 vs. the 2012 Denver Nuggets

Matchups, matchups, matchups. Like it or not, they're the name of the game in the NBA. If the best team in the sport has an elite wing, you stock up on elite wing defenders. If the best player is a freight train, you break the bank on a conductor. And if the team that's got your goat has the most dominant post presence in the league? You pick up Shaq and pretend he can still guard anyone, of course! It's not a foreign concept to most fans: You make a number of adjustments to your team over the course of the season, and while they're ostensibly made solely for the good of the team, everyone really knows why the adjustments are made. The dirty little secret is that - for teams blessed to be in the sphere of five or six contending teams per conference - the personnel adjustments tend to be little more than an ill-concealed arms race. A juggling of human capital in a usually futile attempt to adjust your team to fit perceived weaknesses in the better teams. Neutralize the strengths of the best team, and perhaps you'll luck your way into the finals! Or so they'd say. I'm going to tell you a story about the biggest arms race in the NBA over the last five years. As most things tend to be when you boil them to their essentials, it's about the Lakers_._

• • •

Andrew Bynum is not a natural player, in my estimation. He's naturally talented, certainly, and his ceiling is incomparable. But he's not a natural at the art of being a player. Bynum is more attuned to more nerdy, systemic things. Cars, computers, engineering. The greatest misunderstanding you could have about Bynum is to assume his talent and natural skill presupposes a love for the game. It doesn't. I've never seen a goofball statement or an interview indicating that Andrew Bynum looks at basketball as anything more than it really is to him -- a job, and a means to make the sort of big money he needs so that he can spend his free time doing the things he actually loves to do. There is nothing wrong with it. And there's no reason an NBA player has to love the game. Nevertheless, for whatever reason, Andrew Bynum doesn't really seem to.

The same goes for Pau Gasol, in a sense. Pau is another naturally sublime talent. His passing is as deft as it could be, his defensive potential (were he to ever put it together) is vast, and his natural rebounding is excellent for a player that couldn't properly box out to save a life. Pau isn't an engineering type, like Bynum -- he's a medical type, and a man who has seriously considered going back to med school after he retires from the sport. Lamar Odom's multiple off-court pursuits require no introduction, and Phil Jackson's interest in the game post-Shaq was always a tad underwhelming. The drive for ten rings, for... gratification? Justification? Jeanie Buss? Probably more point three than anything else. Phil's most visceral love for the game was lost, in my view, with the Kobe-Shaq feud and his break from the Lakers in the mid 2000s.

And then you have Kobe Bean Bryant. The man whose veins run thick with the burnt rubber of melted game-winning shots. The man whose heart was replaced at a young age by a throbbing bright-red-white-and-blue ABA regulation ball. The man who'd stay in the gym forever, if his body would let him. Or so some would say. That's one take on Kobe, and it's perfectly reasonable -- my take is considerably different. I don't think Kobe chose basketball because he necessarily loves the sport for its own sake, or has any intrinsic connection to it that he hasn't developed from familiarity alone. He chose the sport because Kobe needed a means to dominate. He chose basketball because his father played basketball, and the happened to be very good at it. Kobe could just as easily have been a ruthless take-no-prisoners general in the Iraq War. He could have been a remarkably successful corporate litigation lawyer. He could have been a brutishly effective politician, if he'd put his mind to it. Kobe's love of basketball is a love rooted in a self assured semi-narcissistic love of his own image and a love of his own exaltation. He loves basketball because it's the area where he is the best. This isn't a criticism as much, for Kobe -- it's simply an observation that even Kobe, the player on the Lakers who loves the game more than all others, has a different passion for the game than someone like Ricky Rubio or Kenneth Faried. He's different. No value judgment, just... different.

Put it all together, and you come to a perhaps surprising conclusion. The Lakers are a wonderful, talented team; at times, they can be one of the most dominant squads in recent memory, and the 2009 Lakers is one of the best title teams of all time. The run of glory the Lakers have had since the Pau Gasol trade speaks to how excellent they are as a whole unit, and as a team. But if you examine the individual cogs and sprockets that make up that team unit, you realize that as a team, the Lakers really don't like basketball that much. They make a good show of it, of course. Kobe tells the media how fired up they are, and how eager he is to destroy the latest victim. Pau says all the right things. Bynum doesn't, but at least sounds like he cares, generally. But this isn't a matter of caring about a game in a singular sense, as Bynum tends to make it. It's a matter of caring about the game. It's loving the broader structural mores of the game and the tics and idiosyncrasies that make the game so curious.

It's about NOT doing the types of things that these Lakers are prone to do -- the lazy on-court demeanor, simply out-talenting whatever opponent gets thrown their way, the constant "we can flip the switch any time" mentality that Laker fans are so aggravatingly used to. This Laker team has allowed the Nuggets to turn a 1-3 deficit into a 3-3 series with a winner-take-all game 7. They allowed a Yao-less Rockets team to return from the brink and force 7 games of hell. The 2006 Laker collapse against the Suns, the inconceivable folding of the 2011 Lakers to the should-have-been-outclassed Mavericks, the legendary Laker shutdown in the deciding game of the 2008 finals -- the Lakers of recent memory can be more apathetic, lazy, and flat than any truly great team in the history of the sport. They can, more than any other team, simply shut themselves down by not caring. They can lose a game and spend the entire game wishing they'd never stepped on the court, with not a moment of legitimate effort in the contest, and not a single bone to their worried fans.

The thing that it really boils down to is the idea of playing basketball for fun. It's about being able to go out with a few friends, get the pants beaten off you, and still find some enjoyment in the activity just because you got to play basketball. It's about appreciating the game as more than just a means to a paycheck, about loving the game as more than just a way to show off your personal talents. The Lakers are talented, incredible, and scary. But there's no denying the odd truth of the matter: the recent dynasty Lakers are a collective contrapositive to a team that truly adores the game above all else (more or less collectively exhausting all other passions over basketball). The recent dynasty Lakers are perhaps the first great team that truly and honestly didn't care for the game of basketball. The talent is there. The passion? Terribly, horribly lacking.

• • •

I submit to you a theory: the fatal flaw of the Los Angeles Lakers has been considered in this way before, and even if it was an unconscious consideration, their western rivals acted upon it accordingly. For the last five years, Western contenders have been stocking up on players that act counter the Lakers' grandest weakness -- they're bridging a matchup that's eluded them all for years. Their aim? To counter the Lakers' infuriating lack of focus and lack of true passion for the game with players that live and breathe the game. After all, why do you think Sam Presti stockpiled a super-talented recess prep squad in Oklahoma City? Why do you think San Antonio picked up Stephen Jackson, and Patty Mills, and DeJuan Blair? Why do you think that teams like the Nuggets, the Rockets, and the Mavericks have spent years acquiring player after player and coach upon coach who really couldn't be doing anything else with their lives? These teams have been developing more and more players who, all things considered, are as inseparable from the love of basketball as this Laker team is inseparable from frustrating contempt for the game.

The Lakers have spent the last five years owning the Western Conference. General Managers like Presti took note, and realized that if the Thunder -- and the Spurs, and the Nuggets, and the Suns, et cetera -- simply kept stockpiling more and more players that love the game as more than a simple paycheck, they'd eventually have a gigantic advantage over the Lakers. Sure, it'd take a while. Sure, the Lakers would still out-talent the universe for 3 to 4 years while the young kids grew up and the team cultures changed. But one day, perhaps in the middle of a series, the Lakers would wake up and find themselves with less of a talent gap between them and their rivals than ever before, and they'd find the heart of their foe beating with a passion for the game the Lakers neither understand nor care to embody. That day is today. The Lakers may still beat the Nuggets, but they'll enter their second round date with the Thunder having had to expend an extra three games of energy solely because they couldn't prevent the inevitable meltdown in game 5 and met the brick wall of a team that refused to go quietly in game 6.

I began this post with Bynum's now-infamous observation on teams that simply fold. The primary issue with it is that the statement reflected how the Lakers approach games where they're to be closed out, not a developed understanding of the heart of their opposition. With the exception of games 6 and 7 of the 2010 finals, the dynastic Lakers have never been a particularly inspiring closeout team, and a team with grit and hustle is never quite out of the series if they'll push and push at the Laker empire. Bynum observed that his opponent would fold if he'd just show the requisite effort -- he was right, but only if he's facing a man made of mirrors. If Kenneth Faried (the electric rookie whose style of play bleeds basketball in a way few ever have) was to do what Bynum thought he would and simply lie down and take the loss, he wouldn't be Kenneth Faried. He'd be Andrew Bynum, or Pau Gasol. He'd be a member of the team that felt a season slip from their grasp the year before, and spent the capper of the sweep wishing they were anywhere but the court. It seems the Nuggets, to a man, love basketball more than anything -- the Laker collective, on the other hand, loves everything more than basketball.

When it comes right down to it, Kenneth Faried does not fold. Kevin Durant does not fold. Stephen Jackson does not fold. All around the western conference, team after team after team have begun to base their attack on transforming their squads into the starkest opposite of the Lakers' lacking effort. The seed is planted. Perhaps the Lakers embarrass the Nuggets in Game 7 with the dismal march of unconquerable advantage we envisioned during game 1. Perhaps they'll out-talent them, and perhaps Bynum overwhelms the west for a 4th try at the Larry O'Brien. No matter. This series, this playoffs, this year has announced that the clock is ticking. The Laker foes out west have birthed flourishing temples of basketball that grow ever stronger opposite the Laker empire. Through cracks in the purple and gold ceiling of a once-impenetrable fortress begin to drip dollops of hot oil, scalding the flesh that cannot feel, and promising an inevitable and impending resolution to the strange contrapositive history of the indifferent Los Angeles Lakers.

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 covers Adam discussing his confusion at the peculiar success of the Spurs system and Alex discussing the peculiar everything of Pierre McGee.

• “Why Can't Everyone Be Like the Spurs?” by Adam Koscielak.
• "JaVale's Good Game and the End of Days." by Alex Dewey.

Click the jump for today’s two gems.

• • •

Why Can't Everyone Be Like the Spurs?

Adam Koscielak

The ball moves around as if it were on a tight string. On some possessions every player touches it, on others only two. Whatever happens, however, you can be pretty sure that it's going to swish through the net sooner rather than later. With ruthless efficiency and a wide array of talent, the Spurs are making Suns and Mavs fans remember the heydays of Steve Nash. Ruthless, efficient and (perhaps most surprisingly) beautiful to watch. But their Steve Nash is Tony Parker. Quick, agile, but not exactly known for his playmaking prowess, and utterly lacking in Nash's magnificent shooting stroke. Their big time forward is an all-time great, but at age 35, he's not the Tim Duncan we used to know. All that while their elite wing player isn't even playing 25 minutes per game? The rest of their roster are, if you will, pure role-players, from rookies to washed up vets. The truth is, the Spurs don't have the most impressive roster in the league. Despite that, they remain the most impressive team.

They murder teams with an artfulness reserved for thriller-ish serial killers. Yes, Gregg Popovich is a genius, nobody will deny that, and yes, the Spurs management has done a great job of finding diamonds in the rough, but my question is: Why isn't this replicable? Pop manages to get everyone to buy in, all the time. Nobody takes stupid pull-up jumpers out of the rhythm of the game, nobody breaks up a play to get an ISO, unless he has a mismatch, everybody plays their roles without scoffing about it. It's beautiful, it's what basketball is about.

My question is this: Why can't everyone be like the Spurs? Why can't the Heat, with all their talent and might, just make an offence work? Pop is a wizard, surely, but I'm pretty sure that if Erik Spoelstra watches film of the Spurs, he can get his team to run the plays, particularly given the very similar makeup of both teams (Wade can be very Parkeresque in his game, after all, and LeBron is... Well... LeBron). Why can't the Sixers start moving the ball instead of relying on Lou Williams to bail them out in the ugliest of ways, why can't the Lak... You get the point.

Perhaps coaches in the league are lazy, and so are GMs. The front offices make reckless decisions based on bad research and stick with them, while the coaches decide to go the easy way out and focus on the individual rather than the team. Players are signed and played based on reputation rather than facts, systems are built for stars not around them, killing the beauty of teamwork and cooperation. Am I really supposed to believe that the players are so boneheaded that they don't do what coaches tell them? Am I really supposed to believe that coaches will automatically get fired if they try to get their team to listen to them?

I don't want to believe that. I want to believe that everyone can be like the Spurs... All it takes is a little thought.

• • •

__JaVale's Good Game and the End of Days
___Alex Dewey_

"Hang on to that game ball, JaVale," Craig says indifferently with that powder-blue outfit that - despite the overtures of a tailor - just looks to JaVale McGee like an indivisible morning sky above the mountains. With only the basic hesitation of finding a place to throw it, JaVale more or less immediately hurls the ball into the emptiest, lightless corner of the Staples Center.

Later, JaVale would dream of morning sky. In the dream, the sky's shapeless clear powder blue would crack into crystalline factions of the same hue and would never reform: upon cracking, the sky would crumble down, bringing violence to the mountains and to the people: cracked blue shards of rock candy. In the dream JaVale would look for cover, or maybe try to save his mother, or one of those other urgent motives of dreams, he'd notice - that instead of the familiar and infinite blue ceiling that could crack and crack forever with our triumphs to an even deeper shade of blue, JaVale would see only the perfect black airlessness of space amid the cracks. JaVale would wake in the middle of the night, impatient for twilight.

The only thing better than a game-ball was sixteen of the same, JaVale would suppose sadly. And yet - on this solid balcony overlooking the Denver mountains, JaVale would still wait on the morning sun because - like even the most apocalyptic of nightmares - the shattered ceilings and broken ambitions of yesterday would mercifully be forgotten and the once-blackened sky would seem just as blue and the day would hold just as much time and energy for all his endeavors.

When they ask him - right after the game - why he'd thrown the game-ball he says he'd have to think about it. Later, sipping coffee on a glass deck-table that held cold and wet condensation, JaVale would feel as hot as the sun, burning lakes under his feet and sending the light of his soul up to the sky for all to behold and to derive strength from.

• • •

Fun times. Join us tomorrow for more coverage, and be sure to watch tonight's slate -- it should be fantastic.

For a more specific look at the surprising Spurs, see today's post at 48 Minutes of Hell.

It was recently brought to my attention that most people aren't quite as ridiculous as I. Let me explain. For much of the season, I've been offhandedly keeping tabs on the overall trends from an offense/defense perspective, through the view of eight-game moving averages, rankings in five-game spans, and a large spreadsheet updated when-I-remember with the latest summary data from Hoopdata. I was asked by my friend -- Tim Varner of 48 Minutes of Hell -- if I'd put together a complete post on the surprising late-season defensive renaissance by the San Antonio Spurs. Compiling my data into an easy-to-share form for the purposes of the post in question led my data to a form where it would be easy to share the whole league picture. Hence, I decided to make a post here about it as well, specifically taking aim at interesting trends (at the most rudimentary, league-wide level) over the last 21 games of the year and sharing the underlying data behind the graphs at 48 Minutes of Hell and the entire ranking. Onward, then.

• • •

DEFENSE AMONG PLAYOFF TEAMS: GAMES 45-66

This table reports the average of each team's defensive efficiency in 5-6 game stretches, labeled in the top row by the last game in the stretch. The final total is their overall average defensive efficiency in the last 21 games of the 2012 season, which makes up roughly a third of our compressed season. There are a few main takeaways from this data, on the rawest level.

• The Lakers have looked OK on defense against the Nuggets, mostly because Denver has missed an insane amount of wide-open shots in the series. But their awful performance on the defensive end to finish the season should go down as one of the most incredible stretches of bad defense put up by a top-5 playoff team. Ever. Denver has their awful injury-riddled 45-50 stretch bringing their average down, Orlando missed Dwight for most of the schneid, and the Mavericks defense was worn down by age as the season concluded. The Lakers? No real excuse. In their last 21 games, the Lakers held opponents to an offensive efficiency under 100 only five times -- that's compared to allowing an offensive efficiency over 110 ten times. For all the talk about tanking, only four teams played worse defense down the stretch: Cleveland, Sacramento, Golden State, and Minnesota. That's right. Even the Bobcats, who lost their last 21 games by an average of 18 points a game, defended better than the Lakers over the last 21 games. Are you starting to realize how insane this is? (The Lakers went 13-8 over this stretch, by the way. Sometimes the world makes no sense.)

• The general sense I've gotten from many on Twitter is shock and awe at how gritty, grimy, and awful the offense in first round has been for games in the Eastern conference. But what were we really expecting? Five of the top six teams that played the best stretch defense are in the east, and of those five, all but Miami succeed by making the game ugly and slowing down the pace. As of late, the only western teams playing above-average playoff defense are the Spurs, Grizzlies, and Thunder. That's it. That's your comprehensive list. Is it any wonder the Western bracket has been more fun to watch, to those who like offense?

• Yes. The Spurs had the best defense in the West over the last 21 games. The numbers aren't here (simply because I haven't added them to this particular spreadsheet yet), but this has extended into the playoffs -- the Spurs have defended very, very well (despite a breakneck-fast pace that makes their opposing point totals seem high) to end the season. This really deserved its own bulletpoint.

OFFENSE AMONG PLAYOFF TEAMS: GAMES 45-66

Second verse, same as the first. Five game offensive efficiency averages, then an overall average over a team's last 21. Three observations, as before:

• Yes, that's Denver way up top, at number two. They closed the season on an underrated hot streak on the offensive end, behind timely April shooting from Danilo Gallinari and Arron Afflalo. That, combined with the Lakers' atrocious defensive performance to close the season, is what led me to pick them as my one upset bid of the first round. Of course, I forgot the the second of two key rules of playoff basketball. First, you never count on the Hawks. Second, you never -- NEVER -- pick post-2002 George Karl to win a series where his team doesn't have an overwhelming talent advantage or home court advantage. Karl's inexcusably odd late-game playbook for the Nuggets as well as his always odd late-game rotation decisions have essentially doomed the Nuggets in this series. They should be up 3-2 right now -- instead, they're down 2-3 and came very close to getting gentleman's swept.

• Reason number 2 why we should have expected the Eastern playoffs to look substantially different than their Western brood is rooted in the respective offense of its component teams. The only eastern offenses that performed at an above-playoff-average rate to close the regular season were the Pacers and the Hawks -- the Pacers don't really have much of an excuse for their ugly showing, but the Hawks are facing the best defense in the playoffs by a country mile. And, as everyone points out, they run one of the least creative offensive playbooks in recent memory -- if there's any team ripe for being shut down by a better defense, it's the can't-trust Hawks. There's a reason for the vast stylistic differences between the Eastern and Western playoffs, and it's not simply a tired narrative about how awful the East is. (Though, to be fair, we're sympathetic to that view here at the Gothic.)

• There were four playoff teams that actually finished the season with negative efficiency differentials in their last 21 games (which, over a full season, would project to a sub-0.500 record). These four teams, along with their closing records:

• The Orlando Magic (103.2 - 106.6 = -3.40) -- 8-13

• The Dallas Mavericks (104.0-105.5 = -1.52) -- 11-10
• The Los Angeles Lakers (108.1 - 108.7 = - 0.57) -- 13-8
• The Philadelphia 76ers (101.4 - 101.7 = -0.29) -- 10-11

To do your own analyses, I've put together a Google Doc that collects the per-game offensive and defensive efficiencies of every given team -- in other words, the raw data behind the rankings, in an easier-to-parse form than the overall totals on HoopData. Using this, you can put together charts for your own team of choice if you'd like to examine a specific team's evolving defense or offensive evolution as the series went on. Once I figure out how to use Tableau, I might add a few more visualizations to this post -- until then, hope the overall picture is sufficient for most of our readers. If you have any questions,

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 covers the exaltation of Knicks fans in the wake of their first playoff win since 9/11. We were going to have another piece, but I'm on deadline at work and can't finish the second piece until later, so for now we'll stick with a single piece.

• "Dewey Defeats Miami." by Aaron McGuire.

Click the jump for today's piece.

• • •

Dewey Defeats Miami
Aaron McGuire

Governor Thomas Dewey was not a particularly interesting man. The former Governor of New York did not glad-hand, did not preen, and did not excite. Dewey was the youngest Republican nominee in the history of the party, and the first presidential candidate born in the 20th century. To put his positions in shorthand, Dewey liked tax cuts, the death penalty, federal education funding, internationalism, and anti-discriminatory labor laws -- he represented the lighter and liberal wing of the 1940s Republican party, and his ongoing control over the party through the 50s represented a generalized triumph of Roosevelt's New Deal and a victory for casual liberalism over Robert Taft's conservative wing of the party. Dewey's place in political history -- while little-mentioned -- is quite substantial. Without Dewey leading the way, it's possible Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, and Richard Nixon couldn't have come after him. His impact on the Republican party is vast.

Despite all this? I sincerely doubt all but a few history buffs really know Dewey. Few people could rattle off a succinct view on Dewey's person, like the above paragraph, without the benefit of a Britannica or an encyclopedia. But virtually everyone could name his surname. And thus he lives on, though perhaps not in the way he'd like. Dewey lives on not in his accomplishments, his person, or his creed. He lives on through a silly journalistic snafu, an ebullient President Truman, and a clever photographer who happened to be in the right place at the right time. "Dewey Defeats Truman." It's a timeless photograph -- every history features it prominently, seemingly every American has internalized it, and the headline itself may be the most famous headline in U.S. history. Who Thomas Dewey has long been forgotten by most, but the fact of his presence has not been. And thanks to that photograph, it never will be.

On Sunday, the New York Knicks upset the Miami Heat and pushed their best-of-seven series to a fifth game. Is it premature to say that the Knicks really "defeated" the Heat? Perhaps. In a day, the Heat will likely blow the Knicks out of the water and leave New York's fans dismayed, disjointed, and disillusioned about their future. One game won does not a series make, and as the joy of playing the victor fades away, another lost season lies in its wake. The sadness will likely return. All the headlines, the joy, the exaltation -- all are ephemeral, as sports is in general. But stop short of saying that this moment is fated to be lost in time. Because I don't really think it will be. Keep in mind that the Knicks had lost 13 straight playoff games -- within that 13 they'd suffered two agonizing sweeps, a first round defeat at the hands of Vince Carter (of all people!), and were but a missed shot away from a third straight sweep. My favorite of the various cracker-jack stats on the long wait that Knicks fans suffered through would have to be this; out of the 478 players that played in the league this year, 422 of them began their NBA careers after the streak began. Infamous.

One victory in a gentleman's sweep means little, but when you contextualize the Knicks' now-infamous record and the historic struggles of the franchise, meaning begins to stir. In the grand scheme of things, it's unlikely the facts of the matchup are remembered well. But the ugliness of the series, the drama, the distastefully lacking performance of the New York stars are all as unimportant to the mass consciousness of Knicks fans as the personality and accomplishments of Governor Dewey are to the mass consciousness of the American populace. Just as the Governor lost the race and his place as a truly important figure in history, so too do the Knicks lose their series and their place as a truly important team in history. These dismal Knicks are important not for who they are, but for the moment they gave their fans -- they're important not as a collective team, but as the harbingers of a brighter future and as the motley crew that closed a dark chapter in the history of the franchise.

The New York Knicks have quite a ways to go until this team truly contends. They probably aren't going to win a title with this core. They probably aren't as close as many Knicks fans think, and this win -- in isolation -- doesn't mean they're going to stand a chance against the Heat next year without clever trades and large-scale roster tweaks. But just as the famous photograph has reserved Dewey's name in the hearts of Americans everywhere, this victory offers a short reprieve for Knicks fans. The moment -- fleeting, temporary, and short though it may be -- will live on in Knicks fandom beyond the point where this team is truly remembered or deserving of thought. If I can't fault Americans for remembering Dewey more for a silly photograph than his greater accomplishments, how could I fault Knicks fans for wanting to bask in this one glorious moment?

Perhaps you can. Me? I can't. Congratulations, Knicks fans. Keep your heads high.

• • •

We may add a piece or two to this Outlet later today. Keep an eye on my twitter at @docrostov for any pressing updates.

As advertised in our Prognosti-ranking series, 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. In this case, the previous few days. Should be a fun time. Today’s Outlet covers the depressing blowout of the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday as well as JaVale McGee's brilliant game against the Lakers on Friday.

• "Only at Nightfall: a Dirge for the Dallas Mavericks." by Alex Dewey.
• "JaVale McGee and the Imagination of the Imperfect." by Aaron McGuire.

Click the jump for the two pieces.

• • •

Only at Nightfall: a Dirge for the Dallas Mavericks

Alex Dewey

Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
--T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Last night their room-temperature pagoda of the Mavericks' weird, asymptotically aging superstars had its paper walls defaced and torn and its foundations set to flame. What remained was a distinctly depressing funeral pyre.

It wasn't sudden. The walls had bent and the supports had splintered before the walls fell totally. They tried, yes, but during the season, you could see the utter dependence of their offense on Dirk. Rick Carlisle lacked Barea or a functioning Odom or Chandler to go to, so the easy baskets, the garbage baskets, the restful baskets, were simply missing most nights. Their backcourt of Delonte and Beaubois and Terry and Kidd and Carter sounded great (all players you can respect if not necessarily love), but take energy, consistency, defense, and pick at most two for each player, and consider that you can only have two players or so at a time from the five. Yeah.

So the Mavs had a very good backcourt that nevertheless left a burden to the frontcourt (a burden of both energy and play-making). And unlike last season, the frontcourt couldn't deliver. Despite having legitimately fine personnel, the Mavericks found that without the dominant interior presence of the DPoY, their otherwise stout defense couldn't handle an all-out assault by a team like the Thunder with three penetrators with range and a physical frontcourt that wears you out, if nothing else. You could see the dependence of the Mavs' defense on crafty Shawn Marion holding down the perimeter (much credit to him), but this time it was one against three, and three won.The next line of defense couldn't handle the two inevitable leaks.

You could see Jason Kidd giving us shades of his prime this season (seriously, he could probably get a 9-10-10-10 line in the right circumstances) and Delonte West (of course) doing his straight-up-baller act, but it just wasn't enough and the frustrations - there from the beginning of the game - only mounted to a palpable sense of anger over a lost season. I was, truth be told, a little bit happy about it as it happened. I am a Spurs fan. I should celebrate, right? Jason Terry infuriated me for some reason - as he often does - by cutting the lead to 13 with a signature awful 3. But it stopped soon enough, and I can't say that I feel like gloating or even celebrating.

It was a simple equation: There just wasn't enough firepower and there wasn't enough extinguisher. And as for Dirk? Wanting; pyre, ensue. Durant's game-winner in Game 1 was a fluke, but Game 1 as a whole was the larger fluke, and I feel legitimately sad to say that the Mavericks in retrospect didn't stand much of a chance in this series, and that they were about as good as their record. I thought they had more in the tank, but there it is. I have some nostalgia, now - which is to say, in the adage, mild depression - over the once-great Mavericks now fallen. And though I tried to talk myself into celebrating their demise, I couldn't do it. I now hope they have a decent offseason for their troubles. It'd be worth it, just to continue this wonderful, maddening rivalry whose days are clearly numbered.

• • •

JaVale McGee and the Imagination of the Imperfect
Aaron McGuire

It's officially the postseason without reason. On Friday night, JaVale McGee outplayed Andrew Bynum and led a not-at-all hot shooting Denver Nuggets team to a big win over a lackluster Laker effort. Did anyone expect JaVale to do what he did? Anybody? As we all are aware, JaVale McGee is far more well-known for childish mistakes than any success he's ever had in his career. The boorish pursuit of a hilarious triple double, the blooper-reel mistakes, and the customary boneheaded decisions that make virtually everyone watching him wonder if he's got a full set of marbles. Last night, though, was quite possibly the best game of JaVale's career. Given the circumstances. Sure, he's had his fair share of big nights before -- a 28-18-5 game against the Warriors, a 21-15 against this year's Spurs, among others. But tonight? He was just so amazingly effective. Fun to watch. And more importantly? Fun to root for. He put up 16-15-2-2-4, injust 28 minutes. Such a ridiculous line.

Which is an underrated part of this game -- JaVale killed the Lakers when he was on the court, but Karl almost gave away the game by benching JaVale for extended Mozgov minutes. As an aside, I regret taking the Nuggets over the Lakers in our Prognosti-Rank series. I thought it was 50-50, but forgot the golden rule with George Karl. Unless his team has a distinct talent advantage, NEVER pick him to win the series. You'll be disappointed. Karl is a fun coach, but in a close series... his adjustments befuddle, he'll lean on crummy veterans too much, and he'll simply stop using his brilliant playcalling talent that led him to write several excellent books on the subject. Karl is the single most frustrating of the great coaches in the league today. I find him personally very engaging, and he clearly has all the coaching talent and know-how one needs to lead a team to an underdog win. But ever since the early 2000s, he just... freezes up, come playoff time. Stops calling plays in close games. Benches players when they start building confidence. It's aggravating beyond reason.

But I digress. What really struck me about tonight's game was not simply the level to which JaVale played but the way he recontextualized all his faults into things that actually helped the Nuggets. That, more than anything, is what made this game such a joy to me. He didn't box out particularly well (a very JaVale move), but he still skied for rebounds and ripped them out of the hands of Bynum, Gasol, and any Laker wing who happened to catch the ball. He didn't go for the halfway difficult (but customary) layups -- he used his athleticism to acrobatically spiral around the defender to the other side of the basket and finish an absolutely brilliant (and devastatingly unguardable, when he's making it) lefty hook. And he still had -- as expected -- a completely unnecessary boneheaded move that, at the wrong time, could've cost the Nuggets the game (referring, of course, to his attempts to be a point guard running the break that resulted in a turnover). Even with that, though. It was hilarious, it was off a steal anyway, and if that's his only turnover of the game... you really have to live with that. And again. IT WAS HILARIOUS.

JaVale's success here never seemed like something he can't do on a regular basis. I don't know if he'll follow through, but this game set the bar for what a helpful JaVale can look like. And that's what it boils down to. I don't know how consistently he can give a team this kind of a workhorse effort. But for one night (at the least) JaVale McGee has taken the myriad of things that make him such an irascible, imperfect player and turned them into strengths. He has taken the legendarily scatterbrained growing pains he spent years frustrating Wizards fans with and recontextualized it -- his bonehead moves, his constant turnovers, his over-exuberance blocking the ball may not have been the struggles of a player who'd never put it together.

Perhaps it was just the overflowing imagination of an imperfect, growing player trying to do things that -- at the time -- we could make little sense of. Perhaps the problem with JaVale has never really been JaVale himself, but the way we understood his trials. Or maybe he's just a hilarious, flawed player whose overlapping strengths and weaknesses will forever perplex even the cleverest of analysts. Whatever the case may be, I'm excited for this series to play itself out. And I can't wait to see the next chapter in the baffling playoff debut of the incomparable, indescribable, and utterly inscrutable Pierre McGee.