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

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

And then you've got the Clippers!

• • •

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

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

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

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

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Storylines make sports.

Here's a speculative answer, Matt:

I've been reading "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, and here's one of my takeaways so far: Modern psychology - as Popovich likely knows from the advanced psychological methods of the U.S. military - has identified dozens of heuristics that cloud and guide the judgment of experts and novices alike. These heuristics all exploit the tension between the intuitive and rational minds and thereby allow - to use the simplest examples - irrational methods of advertisement and rhetoric to pierce into the rational mind, even to the point of predictability. What's more, the heuristics may be based on absolutely nothing: When you are asked to make an estimate of a quantity and an experimenter puts a totally random number on the sheet of paper before your estimate, your estimate is going to be heavily weighted by this, again, totally random number. This is just one example of how the mind is led astray by diversions to the fickle intuition, both in the random ether-streams of words and numbers of the Internet and deliberate attempts to sow the mind with messages by advertisers and public figures. Complicating matters even further is that (according to Kahneman) this tension between the intuitive and rational is also central to the great power of the mind.

I speculate then that Popovich deliberately tries to navigate this reality of the mind, and so gravitates toward incredibly intelligent, driven, attentive role players like Matt Bonner, TJ Ford, and Kawhi Leonard and gives them simple expectations and tasks that they can focus on with every fiber of their being while on the floor. It's no coincidence that the Spurs' execution seems so crisp: Popovich makes a constant effort to ameliorate the diversions to the intuition and to highlight the strengths of the prepared player's intuition. Popovich has incorporated the power and the frailty of human intuition into his every decision as a leader and demanded in turn that his players do the same.

This is why (for example) Popovich will stress repetition and practice and patience: there are all sorts of perfectly valid short-term reasons why his players may fail to execute or fail to learn or fail to be attentive in a small sample. Popovich doesn't - can't - control these myriad short-term factors, and in fact it's his counterpart's job on the other team to create as many of these short-term problems as possible for the Spurs. So he ignores them to some extent, chooses his battles, makes his rotations when he sees something disturbing, and then goes back to the film room.

Crucially, Popovich recognizes that he himself is subject to the same forces, and that he's not just playing a game of rationality: while his performance as a coach must not be guided unaided by his own brilliant intuition, he is subject to the same flaws as a decision-maker. He recognizes that the lifers in the coaching profession (such as Larry Brown and Hubie Brown) - for all their intelligence and experience - have a fatal flaw: They will often stress most about the things they can't control, whether or not those things are actually the most germane to focus on in scouting and winning games. And this stress will guide their intuition and advice and decision-making, creating an irrational bias: Coaches would rather lose on the randomness of 3-point shots than of a long train of creative mistakes such as turnovers and other "easy stuff" such as missing foul shots and layups, even if the probability of winning is higher for a given team with the latter mistakes. This isn't because the coaches are wrong or misguided: It's just that they're coaches by calling and approach their duty with a solemn conviction that if their players listen and execute the coach's best-laid plans, their teams will either win or only botch games for want of talent or luck.

Popovich (I imagine) has no such faith, and while he regards various coaches as being elite (take his effusive praise for Rick Carlisle, for example), he will also acknowledge at every stage of the game that it's a players' league, and will credit Tim Duncan et al. with the vast majority of his own success, and when Popovich actually brings up his own role, it's usually to apologize to his team for failing to give them a good or clear enough gameplan in some sense. What's more, he effusively acknowledges the power of random chance in determining outcomes: While he'll give credit to a team that wins on good shooting, he won't put much stock in the victory (or loss) if the shooting was pretty demonstrably a fluke.

And so with this fundamental skepticism and self-effacing attitude, we have finally that Popovich has no mystical beliefs about his role or the power of his intuition as a coach, which is minimal: to tinker with lineups, to bring the very best players to the front of the rotation, and to find an offense and a system of roles that allows his players to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses while allowing Popovich himself maximal flexibility to handle various game situations. That's the whole endgame: He uses games as practices for his players so that he can see what situations various players are most comfortable in, what tandems are most germane to winning, and how to approach his potential opponents in the playoffs.

And just as surely, Popovich uses these games as practices for himself, for his own intuition as a coach, because he realizes that his view of the game is as susceptible to the transient short-term stimuli of the moment as his most cherished theories of work and and basketball and effort. As much as any doubt he could ever cast towards his players, Popovich therefore has no problem casting the same amount on himself. After all, he is just a person that - like his players - is trying to maintain focus as a lot of people and things deliberately conspire to obscure this focus on the simple truths of a simple game.

• • •

With this speculation established, we come to Matt Moore's question. As part of Popovich's belief in the long haul and the approach of gradually developing the intuition, we might also suppose that the coach (before every season) gets his staff together and considers a whole lot of possible game and pre-game situations - for example, down by 12 against an inferior team with 15 minutes left or facing a mid-level non-divisional West team on a back-to-back on the road. Then Popovich and his coaching staff - along presumably with an in-house statistician - build a reasonable model for how they should respond to a large proportion of game situations. Then, an hour before tip-off and the media session, Popovich defines the sample space of the game before him and then draws from the I Ching 10-15 times, with more draws for back-to-backs and injuries and near the end of the season. Then - guided by this psychological anchor - the coach uses his intuition and what he knows about the situation to make slight tweaks to the result of the drawing and calls this a game-plan, which he then explains to the media as condescendingly as possible as if it were the product of incredibly simple and obvious planning.

There are 64 separate hexagrams in the I Ching. For Popovich, that great historian - who even encourages his team to discuss the State of the Union in team meetings - the I Ching is an obvious, well-trodden device for introducing randomness, with none of the dull silvery novelty of the Twitterverse. By weighting the hexagrams by the various distributions established before the season (and re-weighting at a mid-season team meeting), Popovich manages to maintain in a powerful tension the placidity and focus of a rational mind and the relentless unpredictability of an unhinged, creative intuition.

• • •

Or maybe it's that Tim Duncan's 35 and Tony's been logging a lot of minutes recently and Pop wanted to give them a lighter load especially on a back-to-back against a Portland team that's historically especially dangerous at home so that when the Spurs come back from All-Star Weekend the Big Three and Tiago are mostly healthy and ready to dominate or slog through the stretch run.

Whatever, something like that. He probably knew what he was doing.

At the Mavs game, they took some time to interview Jeremy Lin's high school coach. They tell him that Lin had described himself as arrogant and selfish before an ankle injury in high school changed his whole outlook. This self-effacement is too much for his astonished coach, who replies that - as you might expect - Lin was never arrogant in high school. Lin's being too hard on himself, his coach says. And you just shrug your shoulders and smile at another wonderful paragraph in an already wonderful story. Tim Duncan is my favorite athlete, and these are the stories that come out about Tim. And about Dirk. And about Nash. These are the good old stories we've already heard, presented in the expansive wonder of the new world that Lin has created.

Now, we know that interesting mini-story with Lin and his coach only because the crew at ESPN has interviewed the coach in the midst of a game and told him what Lin had said in another interview. The media is inextricable party to this story: They've aggressively found something by pitting two accounts against one another. This is the trend: People at ESPN and bloggers and beat writers have done the research and made the calls and done the interviews, and in doing so have created the contours for a phenomenon as surely as Lin's play itself has. The personal and cultural angles that bloggers have found in the past few weeks have been nothing short of tremendous, testifying successfully to the childlike wonder of sports.

What's more, it's an incredibly direct phenomenon, without gatekeepers to stop or redirect it. The quality of the best stories are now relentlessly pushed up to the front pages through endless links and discussions. It's all about the eternal search for good content. It's all about quality, readability, and clarity now, and the power of one's subject matter. It's all about honesty now, and the time spent with drafts. And in Jeremy Lin we've found the perfect story: Lin as subject matter has revitalized this narrative-filled-but-often-tedious midseason stretch in sports media. An incredible, singular feat. And it's why we've all fixated on how many angles there were: Because we knew intuitively that sports media would thrive in proportion to the incredible number of perspectives to write from.

But I think we're collectively at a different stage now.

• • •

I used to feel uncomfortable at parties. I used to feel that the brilliant lights of a dozen pairs of eyes were too bright for this pair, and I didn't want to wear shades. I would overthink and magnify tiny concerns. I would think myself right out of a social experience and I could hear the disappointment on the other end of the line when I said I wouldn't be going out. Even at this stage of my life, I feel the same sort of pressures at first: I literally close my eyes when I enter the room. This difference is that now - after a ten-minute perplexed silence - I open my eyes, I explore the angles and the people, and I find common ground and shared past with people I've known. By the end of a party I am enthusiastic. I am one of the contributory lights. I am a spotlight on the others, bright even to a fault, and they shine on me in turn. These days I drink a little bit more and I talk a little bit louder than I used to, but it's alright because I wake the next morning, revitalized by a full experience, and I don't need to go to a party again for awhile, because I am satiated, and there is no better feeling. It's a feeling I'm expressing now, hours later, but it was wonderful precisely because I didn't need to say anything, could acknowledge my happiness in comfortable silence, could simply feel that love of life with eyes closed and another day ahead of me.

Lin is going to run the point in the second half against Dallas, which will be starting in a moment. I'm getting chills, and I'm excited to see where this goes. I do believe we're reached that point with him, where we've drunk of the story and found words and a shared past, and we've probably talked a little too much. But it's alright, because of this perfect, comfortable feeling that has followed. That feeling is fullness, is satisfaction. But now I feel that we risk becoming oversaturated to the point of sickness. So let's keep a relative silence and see where the crafty point guard with so many angles takes us next. Oh, new stories will arise, new angles about Lin will come up, not all of them with such a fairytale quality. And we need to talk about them. That's what we do. But as the phenomenon becomes an established part of our culture and what is brilliant now becomes standard high-quality fare later, let's simply take these new angles as they come. Let's allow the story to develop with measured, contented patience, rather than in an active search for another plane of bliss. Let's stay where we are, because this is as good as it gets. Let's try to hold on to this feeling, to what we have.

Because we're no longer living in a world of novelty, of struggling to open our eyes to face the truth in its perplexing surprise. No, we've opened our eyes, and we're waking to the good old days of the future, and the next time a phenomenon happens, these are the days, this is the feeling we'll compare it to.

So, earlier today, the fantastic folks at Basketball Reference released to the public a marvelous database. It includes a highly interfaced and searchable play-by-play database for the past 10 years. This is, quite frankly, incredible. There's virtually nothing your heart desires that you can't search for -- player performance by the time left in the game, detailed stats of what happens when players make certain plays, team performance in certain situations... I don't think I'm being overly sycophantic when I say that this is among the greatest single advances in easily interfaced, searchable, and public statistical databases in the world of NBA statistics. There may never be any one or two people who mine the database for all the insight you can get from it. Ever. Long story short, it provides an easy way to answer certain questions, and the ability to learn how to raise better ones. To that end, I'll be doing a series of posts where I graphically demonstrate certain things that this database allows one to easily find. I hope that these will be useful to you. They're certainly interesting, if nothing else. Today's introductory topic as I sift through the data for interesting insights: how are assists distributed among the league's best setup men? Who are their most prolific partners? When in the game do they get them -- and what's the score when it happens?

Interesting questions. And it's easier to scratch at answers than ever. Let's dive in.

• • •

For this post, I'm producing graphs for the top 15 players in the league in AST% as of all games played on the 14th of February, 2012. Valentine's day! Because we love assists, here at the Gothic. For the data, you can go to our spreadsheet (or just search Basketball Reference yourself, obviously). I'm going to abstain from commentary in the post proper, because these graphs took a while to make and I think they speak for themselves quite well. I will commentate in the comments, if anyone wants to start a discussion. A few definitions, in case it's not immediately obvious. The charts are ordered 1 to 15 by assist percentage (or, the percentage of shots they assist when on the floor). Assists by margin refers to the margin of the game when the assist was made -- in theory, the "ideal" point guard would have more assists in a close game than in a game broken open. The assist target pie chart refers to, as one might expect, the players who completed the most baskets that the point guard (or the only non-point on this list, LeBron James) assisted on.

An interesting aspect (and one that I highlighted by using the team's secondary color to emphasize) of point guard play is what percentage of assists came from players outside their top 5 targets -- or, how many of their assists came from (usually) players they share less time with. Ricky Rubio is the best guard at taking advantage of the "others", with more assists coming to players outside his top five than any of those five individually. On the other end of the spectrum, Kyrie Irving has only registered eight assists outside his "main" five targets -- partly a reflection of the dismal quality of those others at finishing plays, perhaps partly an indicator that Kyrie's chemistry with the outer fringes of the Cavaliers pales to that of Ramon Sessions. The why is not our object, here, only the what. Assists by quarter is relatively self explanatory, and at the bottom of each infographic, you can see a demonstration through bars of how many of that guard's assists came on three point shots as opposed to two pointers (one area where Deron rules all comers).

All that said, here are the rest of the graphs. Enjoy.

• • •

Hope you enjoyed this trip through the seedy world of "hand-making infographics in Photoshop". For my next trick, I'll pass out in bed! Adieu, readers.

With Basketball-Reference stepping it up, our old post ideas are obsolete. Have you seen that Twilight Zone episode with that librarian? So - in light of this development - I thought it would be fun to give away all our old post ideas so that someone else could find something to write from them.

• • •

January 2011 - The Small and the Powerful

It's 2015 and there is unrest in the forwards (and trouble in the threes). You see, Richard Jefferson and Tim Duncan may have been besties on the Spurs, but with their recent retirements, who knows what will happen to their friendship? Making things worse is that they unwittingly booked the same outdoor shelter to host separate barbecues! You see, Tim has invited every significant big, and RJ has invited all his small forward friends. Wacky antics ensue as the two - clad in gigantic toques and barbeque aprons bearing slogans* - compete for the tweeners and point guards that have tagged along! Culminates in a living chess game which ends badly for the wings when RJ can't see the entire floor because he is four inches too small. Checkmate!

*"Kiss me, I'm from the U.S. Virgin Islands" and "RJBBQ"

• • •

January 2005 - Jeremy Lin Will Dominate the NBA

Who saw it coming? I did, way back in January 2005. But I punted and didn't write it. This was a fictional tale, set in February 2012, and written as a factual article discussing and analyzing the impact of "Lindemondium". In my version, Lin cycles through every single team, even the Knicks, and is rejected by every one of them. Finally, just before moving out to Europe, he meets Mike D'Antoni (of course, as coach of the Suns) in a parking lot and challenges D'Antoni to a pick-up game. D'Antoni protests, "Why, there isn't a basket!" Jeremy Lin points to a small hole in a chain link fence, 28 feet up, and D'Antoni nods knowingly. Lin wins 30-5, and D'Antoni pegs him as a replacement for Steve Nash, and Steve Kerr signs Lin on the spot. But Robert Sarver - without even consulting his management - trades Lin to the Melo-Amar'e-Tyson Chandler Knicks for nothing but cap space. D'Antoni gets upset and follows Lin to New York. The rest is history: Lin dominates the league, Steve Nash gets pretty upset about the whole matter, but thinks Lin's story is pretty inspiring, and then the Spurs win the championship for their eighth consecutive season.

• • •

January 2003 - Kwame Brown Will Dominate the NBA

Who saw it coming? I did, way back in January 2003. But I punted and didn't write it. This was a fictional tale, set in February 2012, and written as a factual article discussing and analyzing the impact of "Browndemondium". In my version, Kwame cycles through every single team, even the Knicks, and is rejected by every one of them. Finally, just before moving out to Europe, he meets Mike D'Antoni (of course, as coach of the Suns) in a parking lot and challenges D'Antoni to a pick-up game. D'Antoni protests, "Why, there isn't a basket!" Kwame Brown points to a small hole in a chain link fence, 28 feet up, and D'Antoni nods knowingly. Brown wins 30-5, and D'Antoni pegs him as a replacement for Steve Nash, and Steve Kerr signs Brown on the spot. But Robert Sarver - without even consulting his management - trades Kwame to the Melo-Amar'e-Tyson Chandler Knicks for nothing but cap space. D'Antoni gets upset and follows Kwame to New York. The rest is history: Kwame dominates the league, Steve Nash gets pretty upset about the whole matter, but thinks Kwame's story is pretty inspiring, and then the Spurs win the championship for their eighth consecutive season.

• • •

January 2001 - Richard Jefferson's Internet is Down

Richard Jefferson - fresh off an appearance in the NCAA title game -is far and away by general acclamation the best player in the upcoming 2001 draft. But he also has a bad Internet connection, and a big research paper due tomorrow! Bear down, RJ! As RJ strolls around town with his laptop, dribbling a basketball looking for an Internet connection, he meets a bunch of GMs auspiciously along the road, and he tells them of his troubles. But all they can seem to focus on is his terrible handle! RJ gets his research paper done on time, but in doing so has lowered his stock to a mid-first round pick! His little Internet problem has cost him millions on his rookie contract! He ends by wishing he had just bribed the school with the huge donation he was going to give them anyway. Or, better yet, had simply asked his reasonable professor for a weekend extension on his paper! Dag namit!

Note: Yes, I predicted that Duke would beat Arizona in the championship two months beforehand. But - again - I punted and didn't write about it! Dag namit!

Dear Burke Nixon,

Recently you pointed us to your blog (Dear Dikembe: Open Letters to the NBA). The blog's premise could strike someone - like me, for instance - as quite strange. Oh, it's interesting: on Dear Dikembe, you incorporate all the myriad reports and information out there about NBA players into your own experiences as fan and teacher. And then, when you have something interesting to say about a player, you address him directly in a long, open letter (like this one), generally made from long, open sentences (like this one).

What's odd about this premise is a bit hard to express. I write fictional pieces all the time about these same players and it doesn't feel strange and I can't really account for the difference between our approaches. Maybe it starts with the asymmetry of the fan experience: While this is so obvious it's barely worth saying, it's rare when fans are themselves objects of fandom (and especially rare when it's by the same celebrities they're fans of). So - for the most part - public fandom of players simply doesn't go both ways, or if it does, the "mutual" part is usually overly generalized for the players ("my wonderful fans") and overly individualized for the fans ("Marry me, Dirk"). It's a glaringly asymmetrical relation. King-Subject, King-Jester, Patron-Artist, etc.

And you, Burke Nixon - presumably the same Burke Nixon most well-known for authoring an interesting short story that won first prize in a short-story contest according to my cursory research - are not LeBron James' idol or even someone he acknowledges personally. I'm not in this group either (and I've never won a short story contest, either!). It's simply unlikely that LeBron James would decide to write you a personalized letter. And of course, this is assuming that LeBron had found your letter in the first place, which is mathematically unlikely. After all, why would he find you of all people - I could ask - instead of the hundreds of other incredibly articulate writers writing the same types of things, many presumably with the same or better acumen in marketing? And even if he did write something - to you - it would most likely not be in an open, long-form letter that would satisfy and add context to your original piece. Finally, even if he did write something in exactly the right format with some interesting substance, the letter would be bogged down by the self-censorship and self-promotion that comes with status as studied public figure: All his words would be shaped in various ways by his media empire and pressured by the possibility of litigation and ridicule. So yeah, responses are not happening, probably. Not systematically, at least.

But I also don't think you're shooting at a dartboard with a blindfold. I think you do want a response from these athletes, but you're also acutely aware of these asymmetries that make response unlikely. And I don't think one response by an NBA player would vindicate your enterprise by itself *. Finally, I don't think you're wasting your time. You write with lucid prose and apparently sound mind and a lifetime of earthy experiences. I suppose I could assume that despite all of this, you're consumed by delusion or you lack a theory of mind or you're otherwise possessed by something else that would allow you to miss the simple unlikelihood of a response. I mean, I've read enough blogs that it's tempting for me to explain away Dear Dikembe's entertainment and literary value by saying that you'd just missed the point entirely and fallen into an interesting obsession -- as I'm wont to do myself. And that would be a fine, neat, simple explanation, and there are enough intelligent people that fall into this trap that it's plenty plausible. But I can't in good conscience tell you that you missed the mark a little bit, or that you have all your ducks in a row but are swimming on the wrong lake, so to speak. No, I can't say anything to denigrate or marginalize what you've done. I can't make it strange, as strange as the premise is. Which is in itself incredibly strange.

Instead of missing the asymmetry of fandom or refusing to acknowledge it, you've met it head-on, and from there you've subverted this asymmetry to your own ends. By recognizing that a response from an NBA player is really incredibly unlikely, you are able to make statements that are so direct and uninhibited that you completely avoid the inherent strangeness of fandom in your writing. Yes, you may be a fan writing to athletes, but thanks to your format and your recipient-may-care approach, you don't write like a fan. I'm not saying you're writing as an anti-fan - that is, something like a surly, gossiping beat writer, a cynical analyst, a player-hater, a detached stats guru, or all of the above. No, that's not it; it's just that you're writing from an subjective angle that is - by design - absolutely independent from your fandom or lack thereof. Even when you're talking about, say, Ricky Rubio and how much you enjoy watching him (is there any sentiment more typical from the perspective of a fan?), your form is essentially an unblinking monologue of a fictional conversation with Rubio, which turns out to be subversive of a bunch of unstated conventions about fandom. "I like watching you, Ricky Rubio, and I'm assuming a specific soccer metaphor will help you understand some aspect of where I'm coming from here." That's the beginning and end of the social conventions pertinent to fandom in your work. It's as simple as anything, and it clarifies everything.

What I'm saying is that you've achieved with your form what all writers aspire to: You have a form where you can simply think out loud, with no middleman. I'm not trying to deny a potentially extensive editing process, I'm focusing on your end product, which is incredibly direct.

And while I didn't think of this originally, re-reading this review a few days later I can't help but notice the similarity to another sort of open letter. You see, it looks like Tim Duncan has you beat by about fifteen years stylistically. Check this out. That's a comparison that has to be made, right now. Almost straight out of college, Tim Duncan decided to take on a rather collegiate assignment, just before he got his first NBA title: He psychoanalyzed himself for a magazine (nothing is more collegiate than that without adding "for his ethnic studies requirement"). On some level I feel that "The Psychoanalysis of Tim Duncan" largely explains Dear Dikembe: Tim Duncan in the comfortable position of explaining himself in a fun essay, being bound only by basic social conventions, has a style and an earnest exploration that directly mirrors your own style. The only obligation Tim had was to describe himself using anecdotes and ideas he'd had, and to do it in an interesting way that would keep his readers reading (it is literally impossible to tell if he had a substantive editor for his piece). The only obligation you have is to be real: to obey the most cursory journalistic expectations of honesty, sincerity, and organization, and to do it in a way that keeps your readers reading.

You just write naturally to these athletes, set everything on the table, and let the sentiment flow. You ignore or acknowledge only abstractly the fame and fortune of your recipient, but also acknowledge directly their existence as a well-documented personality, as a creator of beauty, as a moral actor with the possibility for redemption from sin and for going against their stated values, etc. You focus on certain details of flesh and spirit, and thereby establish slightly-constructed-and-fictionalized versions of individuals that exist on the same metaphysical plane as you do, so as to compare. And then you do compare yourself and your experiences with the athlete in question, and the end result is a set of sentiments common and interesting enough that anyone can enjoy them.

Don't get me wrong: The differences between author and recipient - in fame, objective achievements, and towering athleticism - are still there, palpable as the words themselves, but at some point - as the words pile up - the letter leaves only the artifacts of fandom and the artifacts are tightly-honed observations that do nothing other than to help the rest of the piece to testify to the larger sentiment of the letter. I'm much more familiar with open letters in the realm of politics, and it's an instructive comparison: An open letter to a politician is usually a fertile excuse to censure or commend that politician and the issues and values the politician is made to embody. In Dear Dikembe, the same trick is given literary and journalistic function in basketball culture. Open letters give us a way to directly access and then testify to our own stated values and the well-documented values of that athlete in order to propose a synthesis or a fertile juxtaposition in the minds of our readers. That's what jumps off the page. That's the power of the open letter.

Literature embodies more than can be embodied by your format of open letters, but Dear Dikembe makes me wonder just how much of the fan experience consists of these unwritten - heck, unvocalized? - sentiments towards athletes and the implicit expectation that our athletes respond, at least on the field of play, as if they'd heard us.

As someone who has obsessed about the art and science of reasoning and process (stated in another way: math and computer science, which just happen to have been my majors), it's fascinating to me that it all starts with your having a more direct approach than mine to the same problems I've had with - for instance - writing reviews of blogs written by people I actually know. So I've learned something from your sparse, ten-entry blog, and I can't say that to everyone. I think you're doing well, and I hope you can continue to do so with the same intelligence and personality. Best of luck to you.

-- Alex Dewey

* Though surely if this occurred you would be forgiven for looking in the mirror and pretending to pick yourself up at a bar by way of self-congratulation: "Damn, [insert own name], you fine: I say, 'Damn, you fine.'" is fine pick-up parlance; you can borrow that one, but only to yourself and only for this one specific circumstance. Don't use it, say, to try to pick up a police officer who is at the moment writing a citation within earshot. It would be literally true, of course, assuming that police officer had your exact name.

Story based off Dave Murphy's Sager series, most recently Blue Velvet.

"So, this is my station." Craig Bartholomew Sager gesticulated with one hand while loosely adjusting the wheel with his other. "My jams, so to speak. I've never gotten a chance to talk about them with anyone, and I'm glad you're here to listen. Now, that's kind of funny. 'Here to listen' is just one word from 'hear' to listen. That's how listening works!"

Robert gave Sager a sidelong glance. "Isn't that the same word?"

"Hah, no, one is location-dependent and the other is something you do. You know? Here versus hear. They're homophones... Shaq always laughs when I use that word. But I learned it back in elementary school when things were different. It's a good word."

Robert raised an eyebrow. "Okay, Mr. Sager."

"Call me Craig. Anyway. You'd think this is any old local radio station, right? That's what you'd think. Right?" Robert nodded. "Well, you'd be right. Because this is my radio station from back home."

"Is it a tape of a radio station? I noticed your tape deck is on. I got kinda confused."

"You're smarter than the average bear, Robert. Yes, this is a tape of my local radio station I made back in the day, in the lean years. It's wearing down, but there's something comforting about it. I'd make a new one but I can't bear to give up Jim, here. He's the radio personality. He's dead now. But this, back when he was with us, is simply a great tape. Closest any man can get to perfect. Listen." Beaming, Sager turned up the dial.

The sound was cracking to an almost unlistenable extent. Atop the degradation by time inherent in any old cassette, the tape had an incredible amount of radio interference and random forest sounds. Which confused Robert, but not enough to ask why. As for the tape's true owner, none of that really mattered. He'd listened to the station his entire life. If there was interference, it was only covering up a catchphrase he already knew. He didn't need crisp audio to get it all stuck in his head. And that was the point, to let it stick. For Robert's money, though, it was virtually impossible to listen to. He winced at the volume.

"Isn't this a bit loud? And scratchy? Your tape has to be dying by now. You should tape a new one."

"Whoa now, Robert, don't be rash. Just because the tape is fading doesn't mean it's dying." Sager smiled his toothy grin as he turned the knob down. Robert prepared to riposte, but Sager interrupted him with laughter. "Hah! You hear that, Rob? It's his catchphrase. 'Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift. That's why it's called the present.' Untrue, you know, but I think it's a lot deeper than it sounds. Always have. It's a great line, really, and that's what Jim is known for. Er, was known for. He's dead now." A song started playing, with a telltale drum beat. The organ started. Sager started bobbing his head.

Robert knew the score. "One of my favorite one hit wonders. Brandi, right? Looking Glass?"

Craig turned it down a touch more, so he could speak. "Yes, sir! Such a great song... 'and there's a girl / in this harbor town / and she works / laying whiskey down / they say Brandi... fetch another round, she serves them whiskey and wine...' hah, man. Those were the days. I usually sing along to this one. I'll refrain for your benefit. But lord, the memories. Back in high school, there was a girl named Brandy. I used to tell her, you know, 'you're a fine girl' and nudge her. She always rolled her eyes. The song is beautiful, though, I never understood why she did that. If I knew any songs about a faceless Craig that were this good, I'd be blaring them to the world as a constant reminder. How about you? Ever listen to 'Me and Bobby McGee'? That was a great Robert."

"That wasn't a Robert. It was a girl named Bobby."

"Oh. Well, did you ever hear the song? I've always loved it."

Robert had. But he shook his head, and took great pains pretend he hadn't. Sager frowned. There was a few minutes of discomforting silence between them as the song proceeded. It stopped abruptly, a commercial break. "You know, Kenny always wondered why I didn't just burn a CD with these songs on it. I don't think he really gets it. There's something impressive about the radio experience. The commercial breaks are always so perfect. They keep you from getting too wrapped up in your song, they keep you grounded. They're what I imagine home would be, if I had one." Sager chuckled uncomfortably. Robert sighed. "I mean, I guess I have a house. But it isn't a home yet. Someday it will be. You'll see. And I imagine it'll be just like these commercial breaks. Is that what your home is like, Robby?"

He bristled. "Not really, no."

"Oh. That's... disappointing, Robby."

"Mr. Sager, my name is Robert. Don't call me Robby. Please."

Sager sighed. He turned the stereo back up. Eventually, Sager told the story of how he'd made the tape. As a young man he'd taken a radio out into the woods, unbeknownst to him on the edge of the station's reception. He'd placed the radio next to a tape recorder, and left it there for the requisite forty five minutes as he hunted. He'd return, flip the tape, and go back on the prowl. There were birds chirping at irregular intervals, distant gunshots, and a deer ambled by on crackling leaves. The tape's quality -- so distasteful to Robert's ears -- suddenly made a lot of sense. And as it turned out, Sager hadn't simply made just one. This was one of many tapes. He had gone through the process of making the tapes at least thirty times.

He would tape the station, listen to it, and if a song he didn't like came on he'd throw the tape back in the recorder and tape over the whole thing with a new recording. It had taken him months to find that perfect one and a half hours, completely absent any song he couldn't stand. Robert wanted to note how crazy that was, and how absolutely strange it was that Sager would go through that in an era where he could game to perfection the quality of a compact disc. He would've liked to. But something told him he shouldn't. Instead, he allowed his uncomfortable silence to make his point for him. Eventually, Sager stopped talking.

The interference that every man about to die understands came on the radio. Sager lit up. "Aha. So, we have the coup de gras of the cassette. Suzanne, by Leonard Cohen. Robert, have you ever ha--..." Robert cleared his throat and tapped the window, wholly interrupting Sager's reverie. "Oh, is this your stop?" Robert nodded. Sager pulled over to the side of the road, stopped the car, and looked at his driving partner. He handed him a business card. "Well, thanks for the company, Robby. If I can call you that now. One can go a little stir-crazy on the long drives, apologies for the chattering. Good luck out there, it's a rough world. Keep in touch."

"Goodbye, Mr. Sager. Thanks for the lift."

Robert was a hitchhiker. As Sager merged back onto the highway, he found himself alone once more.

I wasn't really planning on watching Jeremy Lin's whole game tonight, if I'm honest. I've missed much of his play this week with a tough slate at work and a lot of extracurricular preparation for Valentine's Day next week. My intention was to watch the first quarter, wait for the inevitable letdown, and switch to Cavs-Bucks or Clips-Sixers or another game I expected would be competitive and interesting. But the game began and Lin's insane start essentially broke my ability to cognitively process what was before me. Jared knows. Watching Lin play wasn't simply like watching a player in the midst of a strong and inspired hot streak. It wasn't like watching Earl Boykins light up the defending champions for a new career high. It was different. Strange. Foreign. And I realized I was watching something that -- even if it was the only great game of Lin's NBA career -- was going to be deserving of analysis and introspection. So let's dig into the curious game and talents of one Jeremy Lin.

• • •

Lin's game isn't particularly inexplicable. This is what troubles many about him. He's got decent size for an NBA point, suitable passing skills, and a talent for driving lanes. He's a good slasher who sticks the finish more often than he shanks it, and seems to have a decent control over the glass with his shot. Which is good, because if you're a slashing point who can't bank, you're bound to get shut down as soon as teams start playing you tightly -- his banking skill will become more and more relevant as defensive bigs sag to him and try to lessen his space. His percentages will drop off as he regresses to his mean talent level, but I could see him remaining a 10-15 point scorer with the skillset he's displayed to date. But one thing that's bugged me in the prevailing Lin hype is the assessment that he's got a cerebral and incredible passing talent just because he came from Harvard and is a "student" of the game. That's too simplistic, too easy, and far too lazy. There's more to it than that. Just because he went to Harvard doesn't mean he always makes the smartest play, or has the best passing talent. He certainly doesn't.

Lin tries for the highlight pass more often than not when the lunch-bucket pass would do just fine, and while he's decent at seeing opportunities, he distinctly lacks the passing talent of a young Kyrie Irving or Ricky Rubio type point guard. Don't get me wrong, his passes are almost always the correct pass, in terms of correctly assessing the options on the floor and running an offense. And in the D'Antoni system that's going to lead to a lot of decent offense. But Lin's not a master of the on-target pass. As a teaching example, take some time to watch Kyrie and Rubio pass around the offense. Keep track of where the ball lands off their passes. More often than it doesn't, it lands precisely where they want it to land -- Kyrie's assist totals aren't fantastic yet, but if you watch how he aims his passes and how targeted they are in their release, you see the ball reaching his target's palm in motion, shadowing his target with an exceptional fluidity. You watch how he can get the pass to where the player barely needs to move to gather it. That's what Kyrie does, when his passing is on -- and while it hasn't led to gaudy assist totals, he's far beyond the passing talent his numbers would indicate. Rubio is on another level. I don't really think we need to discuss that. Lin's passing isn't really like that.

It's effective so far, but it's not entirely Lin's doing in the same way Rubio and Kyrie take full responsibility for their incredible passes. In the D'Antoni system players drill heavily on how to trick defenses into getting them open. Players in a D'Antoni offense tend to be more open than players on any other type of offense with the possible exception of the current twilight Spurs for that very reason -- it's by design. His passes aren't on target, necessarily, nor are they as fluidly attuned to the motion of his shooter. But they're the right passes in the macro sense of his spur-of-the-moment choice, and in a good offense, that's all that really matters. Which is the real key, and the reason this is so odd to watch. The reason his passing is effective in the Knicks offense is rooted in something utterly unrelated to his schooling, and a talent that can't really be taught -- it's the split-second decisionmaking. Utterly disparate from intelligence, his degree, his background, et cetera. It's rooted in his ability to make snap decisions. You don't really develop that from intellectual rigor, you develop that from hard work and twitch-trigger practice until you naturally attune yourself to making the right play.

• • •

In short, his intelligence has little to do with it. It's instinct. Perseverance. That sort of thing. The players that tweet about it and talk about it seem to understand -- Kobe isn't a man who tends to stray far from the narrative, but he too understands the basic fact that Lin's talent has little to do with his schooling and everything to do with the work he put in to get his game up to par. The "Harvard" narrative is a lazy one from a lazy media conglomerate that adores lazy thinking. But Lin's play is certainly interesting, respectable, and as a rotation player in the NBA it looks quite sustainable. The thing that really confuses me, and gets me scratching my head is the heights to which he's soared in a single week.

After the game, I checked my Facebook -- twenty of my 469 friends had already posted something about Lin, and at least three of those twenty were people who I'd never seen watch a game of basketball in their life (and no, none of those three were asian). There's something about Lin that's galvanizing to those who watch him, some special aspect that pervades his play and allows him to rise from his status as a human being into a concept. A physical manifestation of hope. The Obama of hoopin'. After all. It wasn't just the Facebook bomb I saw when I checked my feed. It was the litany of athletes (Tiago Splitter, Steve Nash, Manu Ginobili, Danny Green, Kobe Bryant, David Robinson, and many others) who are talking about him. With David Robinson -- a man who still goes to tons of Spurs games and stays involved in the organization -- openly stating that Lin has supplanted any Spur as his favorite NBA player. What the hell are we watching? I don't really know. It's Lin's world, we're living in it, and I know for certain I'll be watching this a lot closer going forward.

I'm so glad this season exists.

At a Bobcats home game, a father and his young son are sitting in decent seats:

"Watch that one," the father points at a player, "He's Gerald Henderson. Gerald plays good defense, and that doesn't always make it to SportsCenter, but he wins games for us. He's our unsung hero. Watch how he stops that frivolous chucker, Jamal, from moving past him."

"Wow! That's great!" the child says, as the jump-shooter Henderson is guarding (whom the father correctly believes to be Jamal Crawford) jacks up a terrible fadeaway three that by a miracle of chance goes in. "Was that supposed to happen, dad?"

The father grinds his teeth a little bit. "No, but sometimes it happens anyway. The point is that he's not going to do it too many more times like that. He's inefficient. He can't keep that up. Gerald's defense is great. Watch, pay close attention." But Crawford has the hot hand and - after a Bobcats pass goes literally nowhere - seconds later hits another contested three to the muted disgust of the crowd. The father rubs his temples. "I guess you could say that basketball doesn't always mean the good guys win," the father says grimly, looking on at an increasingly lopsided Blazers blowout.

"Are the Bobcats the good guys, dad?"

"I would say so, yes, more often than not." As the father says this, Gana Diop is at the line. "Except for him, son."

• • •

The game was growing tiresome. "They may be the good guys, but the Bobcats don't seem very good at the game of basketball. This is kind of boring."

"You're right, son. They don't hit too many shots. But a lot of them try really hard, and put their best foot forward. That's important. Listen, I can't make you like the Bobcats, son, but I can tell you why I like them and hope you follow in my footsteps." The son's ears perk up. "Now, there aren't many things that are great about our Bobcats. Not much right now. But a few years ago they had a wonderful basketball team, my boy. Did you know that once there were other Geralds that were even better at winning games than Gerald Henderson?"

"Like who?"

The father - being by trade a fantasy writer in the mold of a cheaper and less reasonable Tolkien - now chooses to structure the tale of the Bobcats in the only way he knows how. "Once there was Cr'azhwals, called 'Crash' by the masses. But his full name was Gerald Cr'azhwals and he was known as a fighter around which could be built a great army. Truly, he was a great Gerald."

"Wow. Were the Bobcats a great army once?"

"Yes. They were amazing. See, at one time, basketball was far more important to the people of Charlotte, son. Our whole lives and families depended on being able to put the ball into the hoop."

"Whoa!"

"Yes, and back then they didn't use basketballs. They shot arrows with poison tips and every warrior had a quiver of flaming arrows. The best archers got more arrows. They didn't use hoops; they used their opponents. Their opponents were their targets."

"Cool! Why don't they do that anymore, dad?"

"Well, because the world is changing, in some ways that are good and others that are bad."

"Oh," The child said with disappointment. "So then was this Crash the best archer?"

"No, not at all. In fact, others usually had to stand in the line of fire so that he could pull his bow taut. But that's not what he did. See, the other armies would live and die with their best archers. These were the aces of an army. And through the dark magic of grit and hustle, Cr'azhwals made these aces into braying goats."

"Wow!"

"The people in Charlotte would rejoice as Crash - on gilded wings - would take the rations of intruders and make them their own. We called those steals. Crash would take the weak arrows of intruders from the sky and split them in two. We called those blocks. If the arrows had foul poison, he would avoid contact with the poison. If the arrows were aflame, well, all the better to cook his newfound rations."

"So wait, Cr'azhwals had wings to fly with? Is that right?"

"Yep. Of course, he could jump so high he didn't need to fly. They were for show."

"Whoa."

"Yeah, some of the aces like Piers the Devil or the Snake Lord Kobe would come to intrude upon the fort. Cr'azhwals would fly down to them, and when they would outstretch their arms, he would outstretch his arms in kind. When they would move to their left, which direction do you think he went?" The father moved his hands in parallel to convey the question.

"To his left?"

"Haha, no. Crash went to his right, like a mirror on his man. Crash was a mirror for the best archers, sending their best shots back, and if one of those great archers from the other armies had a weakness, Crash would pummel them into dust."

"Wow! Crash was great, wasn't he?"

"Yes. The masses of Tcharh Lott were safe with Crash on our side."

"... what? Do you mean Charlotte?"

"Yeah, Charlotte.... but that's just basketball. What made Crash truly great was that he gave us in Charlotte some hope and made the other Bobcats feel like they were part of something. Sure, Cr'azhwals' army was feeble in spirit but with Crash at the front they had no fears."

• • •

In the stadium, the PA announcer tries vainly to get the crowd back into it with the obligatory chants of "DE-FENSE!" and "Go, Bobcats, Go!"

"Son, do you hear that? Do you hear those chants?"

"Yeah. But no one's chanting."

"Well, when Crash was here they did chant. They came to the games and they chanted, because they knew that they could always have a chance to win with Crash. 'Bobcats! Go Bobcats!' they would cry, as Crash led them from their sleepless coma of fear into the restful power of triumph. Say it with me."

"Bobcats! Go Bobcats!" they cry out at once, to the amusement of nearby spectators, who join in with one part irony and two parts masked yearning for Cr'azhwals. Just then, Gerald Henderson seems to get badly injured. The trainers help him leave the court. The crowd is silent for several minutes as the ballboys clean up. "Not another Gerald..." someone behind them mumbles. The father sighs.

The child is undaunted. "Were the Bobcats the best army around? The best army in the world?"

"Haha, nope. There is no one in the history of the human race who would ever say that, son." The child finds some unmistakable disappointment in this, so the father tries to mitigate his statement: "Oh, but the Bobcats were the best at something back then. They held the fort of Charlotte like no other. They defended our city from arrows, and Crash was at the center of it all."

"So... how do you know so much about the Bobcats, dad?"

"Well, the truth is very simple: I was once a Bobcat, but they sent me down and told me I would never see combat for want of ligaments in my knee and tenacity in my heart."

"Really?"

"That's what they told me. But it was really just my knee," the father shakes his fist slightly in anger, "I loved the Bobcats and fought as much as I could. I was once a Bobcat and I watched Cr'azhwals in the sky and drew strength from his energy that flew like his hair in all directions."

"Like Goku or something."

"Close. That's close," the father considers, poring through his mental catalog of small children's programs to find the Saiya-jin hero, "but remember that Goku never had to fight other people. At least not as an adult," the father says, surprising himself with this bit of context, "No, Goku always fought aliens or something. Cr'azhwals not only had to fight, but he had to make things right on Earth afterwards. His teammates sometimes despaired, but he brought them back. Always did."

"Whoa."

"Yes, I hate to say it, but our home in Mint Hill - just outside the sacred fort - doesn't feel quite as connected to Charlotte so long as the Bobcats suffer without Crash."

"Huh, now that you mention it Mint Hill is pretty boring."

"Boring but peaceful. There is peace in our little town, son. Never forget that. Don't take it for granted."

"Yeah, but it sounds like Crash was pretty awesome. I love the Bobcats."

"That's more like it!"

• • •

"So, like... did Crash ever get beaten?"

"Yes. When the Bobcats were on the prowl, the fort of Tcharh Lott would weep from news of afar: For when he was away from home, Cr'azhwals had only his Bobcats to feed and to feed from, and his power waned, son. The legions of archers he could neutralize shrunk to but a single able-bodied soldier, and the legions descended on their intruders the Bobcats."

"That's... too bad, dad."

"Yes, it was. But we knew Crash would get 'em back when he was defending our home. The people of Tcharh Lott learned not to despair of news of Crash from afar, and to wait for their hero to return. For he always did."

"What happened to Crash?"

"Nothing, for awhile. It was good, for a time. Flanked by General Felton and the yeoman Emeka Okafor, they held their fort against armies of strength and numbers. When Crash cut his wings on a certain devil's sword (we called the devil Byeh'Nom), the Bobcats gained power from Crash's encouragement."

"So Crash got hurt really bad?"

"Yeah, but he got better after that. He wasn't quite as fast, but Cra'zhwals recovered." The son nods in understanding and subtly alters his mental image of Cr'azhwals from that of Saiya-jin to that of an Android. After all, Saiya-jins like Goku only got stronger after recovering from injury. "Crash was such a tremendous warrior, though, and one year he even got us to the Tournament of Armies, reserved only for the upper echelon of great armies."

"Did you win?"

"No. But we showed them that we belonged. Ten Bobcats strong," the father says, a tear in his eye, "But then the darker days came. Then came the Lean Years... I cannot finish... No, it is too painful."

"What happened in the Lean Years?" the son asked, recognizing his storytelling father's feigned reluctance to finish.

"Well, since you insist...," the father continued without further pause, "Oh, how I remember the election with despair! The people of Tcharh Lott yearned for power in the wake of The Tournament of Armies. Seeing numbers and strength that they felt had been denied them, they elected a new admiral."

"A new admiral?"

"Yes. The new admiral was a great, aged warrior that had seen the days of wine and roses, had seen more armies before the great Bobcats, had decades ago ended a drought in Tcharh Lott's province (North Kyral) by filling vats with opponents' blood and asking of his fellows "Now, will you have drink?" and they had laughed."

"Who was the admiral?"

"His name... was Jordon."

"Was he a good leader?"

"He was a great leader. Great and powerful, like the Sith. Great and terrible," the father said with trembling voice. The child quivered with fear. "Jordon said that this would be a lean time and rationed his men and horses and food. For the greater good."

"Oh no!" cried the child.

"Jordon saw that - in his vision of constant intrusion and constant defense from intrusion - Cr'azhwals would not fit."

"Nooo! He killed Cr'azhwals! Why, Jordon?"

"Well, no, he just sent him away. See, Jordon saw a port on the Placid Sea and said you may have 'Crash' for no fewer than a thousand horses and Nic Batum."

"Who's that?"

"Oh, Batum's alright. Not as good as Cr'azhwals, that's for sure."

"Damn!... Darn! So they did it. Jordon traded Cr'azhwals away for nothing but the greater good and Nic Batum?"

"Yes, precisely. Well, they couldn't get Batum, actually. So they just settled for the horses, but the port refused to send them. So for naught but flotsam, Jordon sent him away. And in one day - or how it seemed! - Cr'azhwals departed from our fort forever. I can still see the Placid Airship, flying him away as we waved until Admiral Jordon would not have us wave again, and suddenly our warriors - our precious Bobcats! - seemed as depleted as our souls would feel in the terrible Lean Years. Suddenly, in his mad rush for frugality, Jordon had made our army into Lean Bobcat$, spelled (in secret vulgarity, under cover of friends) with our common currency."

"What?"

"Dollar signs. We spell the Bobcats with a dollar sign for the 's' sometimes."

"Oh...."

"Because Jordon only cares about money. Get it? Eh?"

"Oh. That makes some sense. So... what happened to Cr'azhwals in the Port on the Placid Sea, dad?"

"Portland? Oh... I mean, he fought very well for them. They say -- when the Bobcats' arena gets quiet - that you can almost hear Cr'azh, blocking another arrow."

"Whoa. I think I can hear him."

"Yeah. You might even say he's right there," And the father pointed to the Blazers' Gerald Wallace, laughing with his teammates in garbage time of a massive and completely uncontested Portland win.

The son instinctively saluted Crash.

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