Hey, everybody! This is the third edition of the STEVE NASH Power Rankings. The object of these Power Rankings is rather simple -- STEVE NASH is my statistical model for making team projections the season, and STEVE gave us some results about teams' SRS projections before the season. So -- during the season -- we've been updating these SRS predictions to reflect the week's results. Our new results are a rather simple re-weighting of STEVE's projections and the actual results of the season. These new results are then run through a Gibbs sampler to predict playoff probabilities, projected records, and other various stats. I apply the mean-regressed HCA estimates from Evan of The City to these new projections to calculate predicted home wins and road wins remaining in the season and add them to the team's current record. Keep in mind (once again) these are completely and utterly automated -- there's no human input on these rankings, at all. So don't lynch me, Wizards fans. Without further ado, here are the rankings as of the close of all games played on January 10th.

• • •

Courtesy of (again) Evan, I now know how to embed spreadsheets. This week's spreadsheet:

A few observations, as I continue to create a proper format for these ranking posts.

THREE UP, THREE DOWN

• UP: IND, DAL, UTA. Two weeks in a row for Utah, who ranks as one of the more interesting teams in the league right now for me. They have a relative dearth of quality wins, but they DO have one of the more impressive blowouts of the week with their scorched earth obliteration last night of the Los Angeles Clippers. Paul Millsap is playing all-star ball, and they're on the edge of a top-10 ranking on the defensive end. I didn't really believe STEVE NASH when it predicted Utah would be a fringe playoff team, but that's exactly what they look like right now, their 9-4 schedule notwithstanding. As for these other two? Indiana finally is starting to play up to their record, and though the model has been hesitant to declare what we've seen as gospel, it's finally starting to see them as a mid-tier playoff team that'll challenge for a top-4 seed. Mostly on the back of Hibbert. And finally? STEVE NASH apologizes to Mavs fans -- two thirty-ish point blowouts will make any model think better of your team, and the Mavs have finally eclipsed the 0.500 mark (handily, in fact) and are looking like a decent bet to make the playoffs, now. And they even have a shot at a division title!!!

• DOWN: PHX, SAC, POR. The Suns have been bad this season, and this week -- a dispiriting blowout loss to the Bulls, a 10 point sans-Nash loss to the Nets, and a respectable (but disappointing) 11 point road loss to the Spurs -- represents all facets of it. Not at all enough minutes for Gortat and Markieff, and some puzzling decisions by Alvin Gentry. He doesn't seem to have a good sense of what he wants to do with this team, and while he looked like a solid and decent coach in the Suns' exciting 2010 conference finals trip, his minutes distributions lately have been utterly counterproductive and if he bears any front office responsibility for not trading Nash while he had value he's not worth keeping as the team goes forward. Not like Sarver will do anything about it. Sacramento has been abhorrent, despite DeMarcus Cousins' improvement. And the Blazers? They had a pretty poor week, for a team that looked REALLY good to start the year. They had a more-embarrassing-than-it-looked 3-point home loss to the Magic, were victims to a murder at San Antonio in the middle of the week, lost a tight overtime game to a reeling Rockets team, and barely eked out a win against a remarkably bad Hornets team. They're still top tier in the West, but they look less like a world-beater and more like a solid playoff team with a punchers chance at making an NBA finals. Like the Grizzlies, I suppose.

• • •

GENERAL DISCUSSION.

In the spirit of fixing errors, I realized this week that the weighting mechanism I was using was maintaining week 1 reweights on our week 2 ratings. As a result, a few teams got the short stick in last week's writeup -- for instance Portland was in 5th when the model actually had them in 2nd in the West (hence their fall this week). In a related story, when calculating playoff percentages, the model was assuming there were only 7 spots per conference, not 8. I've updated the probabilities in each week, which doesn't really change the broad narratives I talked about, but does change some of the numbers. I'll try to go back and edit it at some point. Apologies for that error.

I would comment on interesting trends, but there aren't too many of them. The Spurs have been awful enough on the road that the model now predicts they'll end with a final road record of 16-17 -- which, given that they're oh for five so far, may seem like an almost charitable assessment. We see a pretty clear separation between the contenders and the pretenders in the East, with the Heat/Bulls/Sixers troika all ending up around 45 wins (which translates to around 56-57 wins in a full season). The Thunder are lapping the competition, record-wise, in the West -- their two biggest competitors (Spurs and Nuggets) both have had underwhelming low points to their starts, and it's tough to see either seriously challenging the Thunder when all's said and done. I thought, before the season, that the Thunder had about a 50% chance of winning the West. NASH has finally come to an agreement with me, it appears.

And in our weekly note on the matter -- NASH sees the season turning out, despite all the hype the East had entering this season, exactly like recent years in terms of how the lower-tier playoff teams look. The West has no less than three teams who project to miss the playoffs in the West despite better records than the Eastern 8 seed. The East has two playoff teams under 0.500 and the three worst teams in the league. For all the talk about the East coming back? Certainly doesn't look it.

• • •

I'd like to say more, but man, am I tired. I'm going to watch a few games and go to sleep. Night, world.

A few months back, when this blog first launched, I wrote a piece that was meant to be less a discussion and more a diatribe starring the work done by the Wages of Wins blog. It was the opening piece of our Juwan a Blog? series, and it currently stands as by far the most negative portrayal of any blog I've reviewed. Aaron and I both have strong opinions about what Wages does, and both its strengths and weaknesses. One strength, which we really could've done a better job of highlighting, is the sheer volume of intelligent people the WoW network has accumulated -- while we can disagree with their orthodoxy and strict adherence to their way of thought (which, obviously, we do), you can't knock the hustle, nor can you knock their intelligence. There are a lot of smart, smart people at Wages, and in my takedown of their methods, I didn't necessarily articulate that. So, please consider this articulated.

Here at the Gothic, what we hope to do more than anything is start conversations. When Aaron wrote his piece this weekend examining Kobe via Stavrogin, he didn't intend it to be the be-all or end-all of his writing on Kobe, or the discussion of his comparison -- he intended it to start the conversation. How valid is the comparison? How well does it fit Kobe, and can one stretch it further? Those are the questions we like to ask. When we created the STEVE NASH model, we didn't do so intending it to be a be-all and end-all of our statistical meandering -- we merely want to add another model to the discussion atop the various standard prediction models, and see if we can't get a few more ideas on the table. Like my pantheon, it's only the stepping stone to -- hopefully -- a some-day valuable index of the absolute best sportswriting the NBA has produced. More than anything, that's what we like doing here.

I say this all because Wages of Wins recently addressed diminishing returns on defensive rebounds in an update to their main metric, Wins Produced. Such a tweak might sound fairly standard, but they've previously exhibited stubbornness and an almost impossibly high standard for making even minor changes. By their standards, it's a huge deal. They also published a link to this very post, summarizing more well-written (and my own) critiques with links to the pieces. Again, that might not seem like a big deal that they posted it, but they didn't used to post comments like that. And the fact that they seem at least marginally earnest about starting a dialogue is fantastic. It would be intellectually dishonest to ignore progress to suit my existing narrative. So good on them. I thought it would be more fair to them as a self-contained blog if I could stop cluttering their comment pages and repost this as an well-linked, oft-updated summary of their primary critiques here on Gothic Ginobili -- ripe for their own responses, when they get a chance, and ourselves isolating things we feel should be addressed. This is that ostensible entry, if you haven't gathered already. Let's get to it.

• • •

Before I get into the critiques, let me note that apparent critiques of "style" are inextricable from those of "substance". This isn't because everyone that disagrees is trying to invent a hole in substance by calling Dr. Berri curmudgeonly. It's because just as Berri values the peer review process in and of itself, much of the Internet (especially among the stats/blogger niche) finds the closed-access, privileged nature of this process to be anathema to the open spirit of inquiry of the Internet. They feel that Berri's measured, stubbornly-academic approach has negative effects on the substance, context, fluidity, and ultimate ceiling of his research that has allowed others to leapfrog WP48. That said, while this is meant to be a compendium of critiques against WP, it's hardly for attention (we're kind of burying this between two pieces more important to us, to be honest) and it's not meant to be a purely negative. It's just meant to be a conversation-starter, and a positive force for the understanding of basketball through statistics and discussion. If we can raise the tenor of debate, we've done our job and that's the bottom line.

• In the spirit of this disclaimer, shall we start with my own criticism? (In their collective defenses, this was written before I knew about the team dreb% adjustment, which does begin to challenge my narrative to a real extent.) I argue that (and this will be a theme in all of these) the Wins Produced metric is perfectly reasonable but is not so reasonable that we have to throw out all our other reasonable concepts and metrics, and given Dr. Berri's stubborn and ideological approach to the metric, it's unlikely that WP48 will ever get to the point that justifies the arrogant, often lazy attitude of this blog towards its metric. It's not absolutely substantive, I admit, but I don't think it's fallacious, either. I read the books and I read this blog far too often, and I feel I've diagnosed the key "problem" that many individuals smarter than I have with their stat and their approach.

• Here are a couple of links that - in the first one - fantastically detail the state of basketball statistics from a well-reasoned, overarching point of view. In__ the second link__, the blogger EvanZ (a friend of the blog and of STEVE NASH; hell, dude even helped us find the last two links) posits and computes a strong, substantive +/- analogue to WP that (as far as I understand it) uses play-by-play data to award what is captured by the box score credit in a similar way to WP. Evan does change how rebounds, assists, shot attempts, and defense are weighted and it is a completely different metric, but his ezPM starts with (and is most apt to be apprecated by) people that get WP and agree with it to large extent but find it has troublesome components.

• I don't know anything about Phil Birnbaum, but this response to the rebounding section of WoW's FAQ is very well-argued. Accounting for diminishing returns on rebounds as Dr. Berri et al. did recently is a step in the right direction, but as far as I can tell, these critiques of WP and rebounding are still absolutely valid as conversation-starters, at least, and best of all they actually start with the words of Dr. Berri, decreasing the amount of abstraction into which fallacies and sentiment can enter the conversation.

• Here are two disgruntled amazon.com reviewers (at least one of which runs a stats blog that I know of) sketch out their frustrations with the WP model.

• Nathan Walker argues (and, to be fair, partially rants) that there is existing, solid empirical evidence against the empirical value of offensive rebounds and the assignment of team statistics to player statistics is extremely shortsighted, looking instead for more sophisticated +/- models. This captures perhaps the most visceral statistical critique of WP: "We've already thought about this along the same lines. Who are you to call us more irrational?"

• D. Blum "eclectic reader" puts together a constellation of objections whose home planet is the loaded terms "Wins Produced" and "productivity" as used in the WoW books and blog. A lot of us can accept (because of its reliability) that WP measures something, and that something is often pretty close to basketball productivity. But using the term (with an associated absolutist approach) forces the metric into an uncomfortable Platonic standard which it doesn't seem to live up to for critics. Probably the strongest critique here is #3, which persuasively argues that WP's fixation on retrodicted correlation with Win% doesn't (by itself) indicate a robust statistic by creating an absurd - but illuminating - parody.

• The Problem with Wins Produced by dhackett1565 of Raptors HQ is a wonderful (and - as far as I can tell - mathematically sound) examination of the rebounding question by showing that WP is a degenerate (in the good, mathematical way) special case of a slightly more complicated formula. It illustrates that WP does make choices in its allocation of individual statistics not necessarily based on strict logic and correlation, and even purports to show a contradiction in how WP is awarded over the course of a single possession. (Personally, I don't see the contradiction yet. I'll update if I do.) I think this is an important step which shows both the elegance and the problematic simplifications of WoW. For me as a math major? Well, this one gave me a lot to think about. The rules and structure of basketball (esp. the demand for transition defense and the 3-second rule) make problematic the idea (seen in WP) of offensive rebounding as a regained possession without further context. Also, this link is a bit more respectful than the Amazon links, and really does try to get at both sides of the argument. Hat tip to EvanZ (@thecity).

• An Incredibly Long And Educated (though probably partially outdated) Look from APBRMetrics is, well, uh... an incredibly long and educated (though probably partially outdated) look from APBRMetrics. Unfortunately it's from 2004-5, but it features a lot of good content if you're willing to pore through it. Hat tip to EvanZ (@thecity). Again.

• Dave Berri's Dismal Science - An alternative conclusion to the WoW network's typical conclusion of the bounded rationality of NBA decision-makers, SilverBird5000 of Freedarko.com deconstructs the economics of the scorer's market in a world run by Berri's metric, reversing the causal chain between pay and quality to an extent, to argue (somewhat convincingly) that scorers are "overpaid" partially for the risk-taking activity of scoring as opposed to crashing the boards. I don't know that I agree totally, but it is at least reasonable and a solid interpretation.

All of us care (way more than we should) about getting it right, WoW and above critics included. That might sound trivial, but I think it's a good first step. Thanks for reading.

I consider myself a relatively well-read man, at least when it comes to Russian literature. I haven't kept up with my reading as much as I used to before college (which seems to be the case with any literate math and science major), but I've become really fond of picking up my old favorites and reading a few chapters every now and again as a reminder of why I loved them. That and short stories, which is the reason I've had a quite unfinished post on Popovich through the eyes of Solzhenitsyn bouncing around in the 48 Minutes of Hell drafts page for at least a month now. I'll finish it, someday. I promise. This is all relatively beside the point. I love Russian literature. I love the cultural sensibilities at play in many of the Russian greats, and the general cossack voice that seems to lend itself to the limits of character complexity and motivations that lie at the heart of work operating at the apex of literature.

Alex and I would both attest to having spent many long hours discussing amongst ourselves the best NBA analogues to some of the characters from our favorite novels. Who's the NBA's best representation -- both rhetorically and in their aesthetic realization of the character's themes -- of War and Peace's Pierre Bezukhov? Solzhenistyn's Ivan Denisovich, or even Cancer Ward's Oleg? Gogol's incarnation of the poshlost, in the knavish Chichikov? Lermontov's Pechorin, Goncharov's Oblomov, Dostoevsky's Prince Myshkin. All incredible characters -- are there any NBA analogues, of their ilk? There are, for some. Some are reaches. And others are Eddy Curry. But that's beside the point -- one could frame relatively entertaining and insightful posts around the eternal search for an analogue of each classic character I described, if they'd like. Someday, we may do that.

Today, though? Let's talk about Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin and Kobe Bean Bryant.

• • •

Last night, in a mostly ignored tweet, Doug Hastings stated -- in his usual semi-rhetorical way -- that it was almost irresponsible to analyze Kobe Bryant without discussing Stavrogin. I read the tweet, laughed, and immediately felt that I'd read the defining description of Kobe Bryant's approach to the game. I'll explain that in a bit, but assuming most of our readers haven't read Dostoevsky's Demons in the last year, I'll attempt to explain who Stavrogin is. Necessarily, there will be some spoilers (though I won't spoil "At Tikhon's", as that's one of the greatest reveals in all of literature) and if you're planning on reading it and can't handle being spoiled I'd proceed with caution.

Stavrogin may be the most intrinsically talented and intelligent individual in any Dostoevsky novel. Russian literature doesn't tend to have "perfect" characters, but on paper, Stavrogin fits the bill. Strikingly handsome and brilliant, Stavrogin is desired by every character in the book, for a time. He's the town's most eligible bachelor, the smartest man in the book, and (to the young nihilists upon whom the book is based) a lightning rod who they eternally desire as their leader. He doesn't necessarily want to lead, but the nihilist masses see him and his talent and believe him to be their savior. He has a face that -- to quote the book -- "reminded some people of a mask" in its perfection. It couldn't be that handsome, he couldn't be that talented, he couldn't look and feel like such a sterling specimen of a man. But he was all those things. On paper, in appearance, and in all ways of summarizing a person before you really get to their soul. Unfortunately, the soul is a tricky thing.

"Today as before, I'm still capable of wishing to do something decent and I derive some pleasure from this, but the next moment I want to do evil things and that also gives me pleasure."

-- Stavrogin to Dasha, p. 690

Stavrogin was a severely flawed man. As flawed as a man that fits all the descriptions above could possibly be. His talent insulated him from the concept of empathy, leading him to spend much of the novel exhibiting a complete and utter lack of a conscience. Or, really, a soul. There are conflicting periods in the novel -- some where, as he describes, he wishes to be decent and some where he wishes to be evil -- and in the end paint him to be a deeply contradictory individual. He shows both kindness and wickedness. He tells the nihilists he won't allow them to murder his friend to make a political statement, then stands idly by as they do so. He feels pain at his wife's suffering, then has her murdered. He is a classic Byronic hero, in a warped sense -- talented and perfect on paper, but bored of life. Completely indifferent to the friendships of others and driven to ennui and disrepair by the world that exists on a level lower than his potential.

Stavrogin shows no ability to make relationships, and no ability to cash in on his talent and potential in any way beyond his reputation. In a sense, one could effectively summarize that aspect of Stavrogin as a lack of motivation to assimilate with the less talented. Stavrogin never met a single person in Demons who he felt was his equal. Everyone was lower-class, a subhuman compared to Stavrogin's on-paper excellence. This lack of empathy and lack of ability to do anything but assert his own superiority when faced with interacting with lower-tier citizens reflects on his actions, but also on how he lived his life. Stavrogin takes on ridiculous, unnecessary feats just to see if they would affect his countenance and force him to feel. Stavrogin's extraordinary abilities desensitized him to normal stimulation. Stavrogin felt he needed to go one step further, for his own sake -- he couldn't simply duel someone he wronged, he had to fire intentionally in the air to mock his dueling parter's poor shot, then shrug and leave without shooting his dueling partner as he wallowed in his failure. He couldn't simply have an affair, he had to kiss the wife of a nobleman in front of the nobleman's face, at a party. He couldn't simply mock his heritage by marrying low, he had to marry a mentally challenged slave.

The acts of Stavrogin aren't acts of bravery or courage -- often, as in the duel (where he was nearly hit three times and intentionally missed his own shots as an inexplicable and mocking joke), they're the acts of foolishness and completely detached from reality. But foolishness isn't the right word for his primary motivator -- for Stavrogin, they're acts of curiosity. A man who feels he is above God -- as Stavrogin says in his culminating confession -- attempting to find his philosophical limits and his stance on good versus evil. And disturbingly discovering he had no limits to his depravity, no personal line between good and evil. He could not bring himself to feel as a rule, only for the most absurd of his sins could he come close to approximating what it was like to feel. Stavrogin did great things, and he did terrible things. And the scariest part, perhaps, was that he had no real motive behind them. He simply did them to see if he could ever do anything to affect himself.

• • •

As a person, Kobe is not Stavrogin. Nor anything close. Stavrogin is a depraved and challenging character, and in making this comparison, I'm in no way trying to make a personal judgment on Kobe's head or heart. He is not Stavrogin. But in his game, there are aesthetic similarities. And in the philosophy that guides his decisionmaking, the similarities would be (as Hastings said) somewhat irresponsible to ignore. As a basketball player, Kobe is similarly talented to Stavrogin. Molded from a young age to be a basketball star, Kobe's spent his entire life in pursuit of excellence for his talent. And psychologically, that slightly differentiates him from Stavrogin. Because Stavrogin is good enough that he needs not pursue anything tangible, or any validation of his skills. But this isn't to say Stavrogin is absent a pursuit of his own -- in his previously described attempts to find his limits, Stavrogin discovered he could not feel.

In his fruitless pursuit of empathy, and in pursuit of humility, Stavrogin squanders his talents and commits remarkable sins. They are sins that make his final confessions the out-of-place final chapter of Demons (banned in the original Russian but was eventually unearthed and re-added by Dostoevsky researchers) -- titled "At Tikhon's" -- one of the most disturbing chapters in all of literature. Stavrogin's sins cannot be properly assessed within his moral code, until one realizes he never really had one. As an aesthetic complement to Kobe Bryant, you can't do much better than the unconscionable self-obsession of Stavrogin and his lack of human empathy. Kobe is not a player opposed -- on its face -- to winning "the wrong way." He doesn't mind taking half his team's shots, because he has no patience or time to spare for those of lesser talent. You watch Kobe play, and for every time a teammate shanks one of his perfect passes (as Kobe is a gifted and talented passer, despite his distaste for showing it), you can see in his mind the wheels turning. The mental note. The sense that -- for the rest of the game -- Kobe feels he can't rely on that player, even if the player worked hard and the miss was in no way their fault. Because they missed. In his mind, Kobe doesn't miss an important shot. A shot off one of his passes is important, to Kobe, and a player who misses it is a persona non grata.

Curious of what I mean? Look at some tape. Watch Andrew Bynum, and how quickly Kobe decides to stop passing to him every time he misses the ball. Watch as Kobe takes on ridiculous feats -- not in pursuit of feeling, as with Stavrogin, but simply because he desires the challenge. Kobe is notorious for playing through injury, and at this point, the parallel between his injury habits and Stavrogin's detachment from reality is too ripe to pass up. Kobe is essentially blowing up his future body in pursuit of revisiting his younger days. He's taking up too many possessions, playing too many minutes, and has no motivation to assimilate with the less talented Lakers around him in a coherent offense. He and his fans are desensitized to the reality of his injuries -- to the terrible arthritis he will live with for the rest of his life, the balky knee that will require incredible feats of medicine to stay healthy as he gets older, the tear in his wrist that would normally require serious surgery -- all in yet another attempt to challenge himself. To continue winning and scoring and being all-caps KOBE despite his age and the gradual decline of his game. The desire to beat father time, to leave the game on his own terms, to take as many shots as he possibly can even when it hurts the team.

Kobe's motivations, while generally malleable towards winning, have never been solely about the rings or the scoring titles. It's been a story written about Kobe, about winning on his own terms. A man whose career was solely about winning would never have let his game 7 meltdown versus the Suns happen. He wouldn't continue to take completely inefficient possessions and ignore the incredible second options the Lakers have always provided him that he more than any Laker fan seems to properly value. In a close game, you aren't playing the Lakers. You're playing Kobe, by himself, because winning isn't nearly as important as winning on his own terms. He has no conscience about the shots he takes and the damage he does to his body, because to him, this is a challenge. It's Kobe versus an army of imaginary haters, Kobe versus his body, Kobe versus Jordan. These are the standards Kobe Bryant often seems to hold himself to, in the game of basketball. This is his legacy, though he doesn't care much for it. Kobe doesn't care where you place him on a top ten list, really -- he cares only insofar as he wants to prove those that dislike him wrong. That's as far as he'll go.

• • •

Stavrogin ends the novel proper in a manner that, to the reader, continues to make him as inscrutable as a character could possibly be. In short? He kills himself. For a man so devoid of emotion, so lacking in human empathy, so impossibly detached from the world around him -- doing that really makes little sense. There are two primary ways to understand it. Either Stavrogin kills himself in one final self-destructive pursuit of something that makes him feel, or he kills himself because he's been lying on his face the whole time. Stavrogin does in fact feel. And his sins -- too weighty to disclose here, the reveal too important to the novel for me to spoil it for you -- finally weighed upon his soul enough that he could no longer live with himself.

When Demons was first brought to America, it was brought by Constance Garnett (an object of my loathing, but that's a subject for another day) under the title The Possessed. The Russian title is actually "bez-ii", a word that is loosely translated as a plural form of "evil spirit." The problem with the original translation is that it ends up completely changing the meaning of the novel -- the characters in the book are simply not possessed by forces external, and it's silly to think so. To think that is to utterly misunderstand Dostoevsky's point. Rather, the characters themselves are the possessors. They are the ones whose ideas and depravity possess the minds of the men that follow them. They are the ones to come up with their own philosophy, and they are the ones responsible for their own actions.

Kobe Bryant is not an equivalent to Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin, and they are not comparable on most levels. There is no need whatsoever to list off Kobe's sins, or even attempt that comparison. Because as a person, Kobe could never reach the complex and inscrutable level that Stavrogin arrives at as a character. But in his game, and in his utter lack of respect for his own future -- as a human being, not as a basketball player -- the parallel both to Stavrogin and the novel itself becomes noteworthy. Kevin Harlan can yell about Chris Paul having no respect for human life all he wants. He'll be right -- Paul's empathy is similarly lacking, for better or for worse. But Chris Paul's lack of empathy will never come anywhere close to the philosophical purity of a player like Kobe, and in his late-career return to his prime 2006-2007 game, Kobe seems intent on reminding everyone who the reigning king of detachment is. It is he, and no matter what kind of new talent enters the league, not a soul will ever match him.

Kobe's self-obsession and his desire and need for an eternal challenge will be his real legacy. And the way he has taken the Jordan dichotomy and altered it to fit his designs points to the original flaw in the title -- it is not Kobe who is possessed by his own designs, but Kobe who is the possessor of others. He has full ownership of all that he's done, and the mindset he's brought to this league. He is the one who has, to some extent, remade the league in his image. And he is the one who, when all is said and done, succeeded. At what cost? Good question, especially if you're one of his fans. Because worrying about his health is something that even I (a man who doesn't much like Kobe) have been partial to do. But please, don't kid yourself.

If he cared about that, do you really think he'd be playing on that wrist right now?

I am afraid of showing greatness of soul. I know that it will be another sham again—the last deception in an endless series of deceptions. What good is there in deceiving oneself? Simply to play at greatness of soul? Indignation and shame I can never feel, therefore not despair.

-- Nikolai Stavrogin's suicide note.

I don't like free throws. Let's start there. They're efficient, lovely, and essentially free points given how well most teams shoot them. But as a general rule I don't like them. They remind me a lot of football, a sport that (for all my love of sports) I have never been able to get very excited about. It's a stoppage in play that extends the game, often results from a sketchy call, and leads to boring no-effort full-court defense as teams return to their offense from the scene of the crime. And unlike play-stoppers like timeouts, there are rarely fun and interesting plays to be run after a free throw. There are rarely intrinsically interesting schemes. Just leisurely bring the ball up court, maybe rotate it a few times, and shoot an iso. That tends to be the play-of-choice on the other end after a free throw. And it's incredibly aggravating, from a strategic standpoint.

And really, a free throw is fine, considered alone. It's an occasional pause of the action to catch one's breath. They aren't always bad. And time-outs are fantastic, sometimes, for the same reason (and because the strategic laziness that tends to be prevalent on post-free throw plays isn't there at all). But too many free throws takes a great deal of strategy and the fluidity out of the game of basketball, and I find that aesthetically problematic. For a game whose lifeblood relies so much on the essential movement and flow of the offense versus the defense, and the strategic mores of the 10 men on the court, free throws are about as interesting and fun as a comatose dancer. It makes the referees more important than any player. And it warps the game around it, if it occurs too often.

Let's discuss last night.

• • •

In trying to adequately measure my dislike of free throw-driven games, I once took it upon myself to try and determine what the optimal number of free throws are for a game of basketball with good offensive execution to be enjoyable. I came up with an admittedly patchwork solution after watching a random sampling of games that fit certain criterion. If a game's free throw attempts are more than 75% of the game's field goals made, there are problems -- that is, if both teams combined for 75 field goals but combined for 55 free throws, it was probably a pretty uninteresting game to watch from an aesthetic standpoint (unless it's a defensive team that get into pseudo-offensive flows that are intrinsically fun to watch, like the prime Celtics, prime Spurs, or a Mike Brown team -- and even then, the offense was probably awful to watch). On the other hand, if both team's combined free throw attempts amount to less than 40% of the total made field goals in the game, it was probably a pretty fun game to watch -- the action probably came in a relatively uninterrupted flow, there were probably at least 3 or 4 key runs where teams went 5-6 minutes without a single free throw, and you're far less likely to get performances where stars shoot terribly but were "efficient" due to the volume of their free throws. Last night provided the starkest test case in a while for two games on polar opposite ends of this spectrum.

In last night's overtime thriller between the Rockets and the Spurs, the teams combined for 29 free throw attempts to 83 field goals -- that's 34.9% as many free throws as field goals, well under my Mendoza line for a fun offensive game. And it was -- both teams were making some great shots, with the Rockets even making a lot of great ones against solid defensive pressure from Tiago Splitter and Kawhi Leonard. The offensive flow was something to behold, and overall, there were scarce few dead balls that didn't result in a brilliant offensive play by Popovich. Even the last play of the game, one that I originally thought was a bust, actually was a reasonably clever slip screen attempt to get Tim an open elbow jumper. The Rockets played it well, and there were probably better plays in that situation, but despite the ugly result (a poor Danny Green runner as time expired) it was a relatively creative play. Sometimes the shots didn't fall, sometimes they did, but it was an incredibly fun game with a distinctive flow and an absolutely electric performance by both teams. It was a lot of fun, on the purely offensive spectrum. It's exactly the kind of basketball that most people love to watch.

Then we have last night's overtime... something, between the Clippers and the Heat. Now, I wrote about the Clippers and the Heat the other day, and why I dislike both teams. This game was a great reminder of basically every one of my points. It was absolutely excruciating to watch. And when, post-game, I checked my numbers to see if they passed the FTA/FGM "bad" game Mendoza line of 75%? Sure enough, the teams combined for 57 free throw attempts to 68 made field goals. For those counting at home, that's 83.8% -- on average, for every 5 made field goals, there were 4 free throw attempts. That's ugly. Incredibly so, in fact. LeBron James himself had 17 free throws, more than the Rockets attempted as a team and just as many as the Spurs attempted despite the Rockets ending the game with two desparation fouls to get a chance to win. The percentages from the line in that game were disgusting (the Heat shot 58.8% from the foul line, akin to the Heat being a team composed of nothing but Shaquille O'Neal at every position on the court), but it wasn't the percentage that made that game such a slog. It was the utter lack of offensive creativity for the Clippers (and, really, Blake Griffin's insistence on pretending he can make a 20 foot jump shot), the constant bailout calls by the refs, and the fact that with so many non-transition post-free throw dead ball possessions, the Heat rarely got a chance for Coach Spolestra (an excellent play-calling coach) to actually do his job and call good plays.

Why does it matter, really? Simple. The amount of press being spilled from the Rockets-Spurs game is minimal. Virtually nil. It's just one of many games in the regular season, even though it happened to be quite possibly the best played offensive game of any so far. It was beautiful basketball. The ESPN game, on the other hand? Postmortem is that it's a glorious struggle, a smashmouth display of basketball grit, a game with more Olympiads on the court than any other we'll see this season, et cetera. Realistically? It was a slog, and one of the most uninteresting games of the season -- on both ends -- from an aesthetic standpoint. Sports media has its successes and it has its flaws, but the conflation of a game's theoretical "importance" with aesthetic ideal has to be one of the most aggravating.

Repeat after me. Just because a game has a bunch of great players on the court doesn't mean it's a good game. Just because three of the five best players in the world were faced up in crunch time doesn't mean the game was fun. A great game takes a lot of factors coming together and a whole lot of luck. The Heat-Clips game was just about as bad a game as you could possibly have when you pit those two rosters together. Instead of properly placing it where it belongs -- a forgettable regular season tilt between two teams that were playing absolutely horrible basketball in no way reflective of their talents -- the media feels the need to spoon feed a narrative warping the definition of a good game just enough so that this game fits. Well, it wasn't. It was awful.

Call it important, call it a close one, and certainly call them stars. But don't you dare call it a good game.

• • •

Instead of a programming update, I have a depressing website note. In updating WordPress, the powers that be evidently saw fit to completely and totally delete our old theme. As it was a theme I made by hand and hadn't backed up anywhere, this is an incredibly awful turn of events for us. I've been incredibly busy and frankly don't have time to mess around with this today (or this weekend). So, for now, we have a pretty awful-looking temporary theme. Our apologies. Hopefully in the next two weeks I'll have time to rebuild our old one. Really incredibly mad about the whole thing, if anyone has a smart idea for getting it back, I'd appreciate it. Anyway. My lunch break is over. Back to the daily grind. Have a good day.

EDIT: Great news! One of our readers was able to recover our old CSS from their internal firefox cache. They sent it to me. After I re-implemented it there was only some minor code shuffles I needed to do to fix the theme. So we're good as new, and the theme is actually backed up and saved this time. So, hooray! I love our readers. For real. You guys are fantastic, and in this case, saved me from hours of excruciating re-work to try and rebuild the old theme. Thanks a ton.

Hey, everybody! This is the second edition of the STEVE NASH Power Rankings. The object of these is rather simple -- the ratings intend to take the predictions that STEVE NASH spat out before any games were played and update throughout the season with what teams have shown so far. The long and short of it? They're a simple re-weighting of current season SRS with the STEVE NASH projections then ran through our Gibbs sampler to predict playoff probabilities, projected records, and other various stats. Upon re-weighting, I apply the mean-regressed HCA estimates from Evan of The City and calculate predicted home wins and predicted road wins remaining in the season and add them to the team's current record. Which leads to the STEVE NASH end-state projections of what this season will look like -- an odd way to do Power Rankings, but hey. We're an odd blog. Without further ado: the updated NASH rankings. Keep in mind (once again) these are completely and utterly automated -- there's no human input on these rankings, at all. So don't lynch me, Mavs fans. Without further ado, here are the rankings as of the close of all games played on January 10th

• • •

Courtesy of (again) Evan, I now know how to embed spreadsheets. This week's spreadsheet:

A few observations, as I try to create a proper format for these ranking posts.

THREE UP, THREE DOWN

• UP: OKC, PHI, UTA. An interesting group, these three. The Thunder's rise in the rankings has less been the model becoming convinced of their dominance (note their predicted SRS is just 3rd in the west, barely ahead of the Lakers) and more based on their simply continuing to win games. The model currently predicts the Thunder will go just 31-24 to end out the year, but their torrid 9-2 start has them in pole position to win the West's top seed. In Philly's case, it's simply the model updating the preseason projection (6th seed and a 0.500 record) to match what we've seen already -- a team that has destroyed all comers and looks far superior to most teams in the east. Utah is an interesting case -- nobody really knows WHY they're doing so well, but they're doing pretty incredibly well at this point, and need to be taken seriously as an actual threat to make the playoffs. Not that they really want to make the playoffs, as that'll set their rebuilding back a year, but still.

• DOWN: DET, HOU, MIN. Less interesting. All of these teams had terrible weeks -- Detroit got blasted by a team ranked rather low in the NASH view of things, and Minnesota continued to punt winnable games with low execution. And, you know, get blown out by the Cleveland Cavaliers. That doesn't help. Houston, on the other hand? They're coming off of a remarkably dismal performance against a poor Charlotte defense, and (like the Wolves) continue to barely-show-up for games they should have in hand. Kyle Lowry being out is the main driver, but really, their atrocious defense falls squarely on McHale's broad shoulders for imposing a terrible system and refusing to properly leverage the pieces he has to make a coherent whole. Just a disappointing team overall, and while NASH still has it in the playoffs, you have to assume the picture gets darker fast if they don't shape up.

• • •

GENERAL DISCUSSION.

This week, in an effort to fix a few errors in the last edition (the spreadsheet is updated, tho the image that accompanied the post isn't) I enacted some changes. First, I reweighted the predictions post-generation in order to have a season with the correct number of games won and games lost. In STEVE NASH's case, it was predicting teams would win about 930 games this season and lose 1050. That may seem like a wholly reasonable prediction given how dismal many of the games have been this season, but that isn't actually possible. I also added a home/away component. The rankings are now well aware of how many home/away games a team has played up to this point, and generates its predictions with some help from Evan's aforementioned HCA rankings. So those are some model improvements that are immediately evident. The "previous week" part of the rankings is a re-ran version of week #1's rankings to account for these changes. They aren't all perfect, but they're improving.

Overall, the picture is rather customary of what we tend to see in the regular season. The model predicts that the worst western team (the Sacramento Kings) will still manage to post a better record than five Eastern teams. Which is crazy, silly, but completely expected given the paucity of talent on those particular five eastern teams. The West is wide open, though the Thunder have finally pulled away from the pack in the NASH rankings. Even though it projects the Thunder to end the season with an SRS below San Antonio and Denver, the Thunder now have around a 30% chance to win the West in STEVE's estimation. And beyond the Thunder, the West is stuck in what essentially amounts to a holding pattern with four teams tied for second. The Spurs and the Nuggets are projected at 41 wins, with the Lakers and Blazers both projected at 40. On the plus side for fans of those 5 teams, no team in the West looks remotely as good as any of those five, giving each of those five greater than 90% odds of making the playoffs. Beyond those five, a remarkable 8 teams have > 10% chance of making the playoffs -- from Minnesota to Houston -- which points to how incredibly wide open the Western playoff picture is right now.

As for the East, it's as starkly contrasting as the West is open. The Bulls and Heat are easily the two best teams in the East, and there's an 80% chance that one of those two teams gets the 1 seed. The Sixers are still on a starkly upward trajectory, and rate out as the only other 40 win team in the conference right now. Beyond them? Only 9 teams have a >10% chance of making the playoffs (as opposed to the West's 13) and there's an incredibly stark dropoff after the 3 seed, with a bunch of middling teams vying for just-over-0.500 records (including the disappointing Celtics and Knicks). The only real drama that STEVE predicts comes from Milwaukee's quixotic playoff quest -- despite their awful turn without Bogut earlier this week, they still project out as a 0.500 team the rest of the season. If they can get some luck with injuries and their defense resumes form, STEVE believes them to have a great shot at knocking either Atlanta or Indiana out of the playoffs.

And that's about all we've got for you today. Go back to bed, STEVE NASH.

• • •

That's all for now, friends. We'll be back tomorrow with, most likely, the resumption of our Player Capsules series. Perhaps some other stuff. We've got a lot of content coming down the pipeline for you all, it's just a struggle to find time to get it all done. But we'll live. Hope tonight's games are fantastic, and we'll see you next week as STEVE NASH is proven wrong in hilarious fashion about the Mavs once they go on a 20 game win streak (in one week) and lead the league with a 243.2 SRS in seven days' time. That's how it goes, sometimes.

According to Aaron, the end of the Lakers-Suns game was a vintage Mike Brown performance, featuring crucial defense down the stretch and a 16-1 run without Andrew Bynum. Which is crazy. I didn't watch it, but I'll trust him on that one. We've both have seen more than our fair share of MB defenses. But in any case, today at the Gothic we're not going to talk much about the games tonight but of two key players from these games. These players both have the weird property that their talent levels and aesthetics reflect certain (very specific) qualities upon their teams, only to find their teams reflect these same qualities back upon them. It's kind of complicated, and strange. So without any further ado, let's talk about our two Richard Jefferson and Chris Paul.

• • •

SAS 103 - MIL 106; A decent game that we will ignore to discuss RJ instead. [Alex]

I woke up screaming today. It's ironic: being the first night after buying extra pillows to elevate my awful-breathing throat, it was possibly the first good night's sleep I've gotten in years. Perhaps it's only because my head was elevated that I was able to muster the strength in my vocal chords to start screaming without even waking. Of course, then I woke up. Screaming.

So, let's talk about Richard Jefferson, because before all of this I was having a dream that Richard Jefferson was the best player on the Spurs. It was a wonderful dream at first, and even well-supported. His remarkable resurgence has been a breath of fresh air; RJ has elevated the Spurs, keeping their heads above water despite the tough loss of Manu Ginobili, their best player. It's no coincidence: RJ -- despite his ostensibly small role -- is playing wonderful, versatile ball. Jefferson's a great player in set plays, and shoots well above the percentages needed to call a player an ace or a sniper. Spurs fans call him "Rebound Jumperson" and call his famous jumping rebounds "RJbounds". He bought in, and Spurs fans have returned the favor. And he's even played more than adequate defense, recently.

Somewhere along the line that paragraph describing my dream turned into nothing but lies and half-truths. And as I realized it, my sleep was disturbed by screaming. It was a nightmare, all of a sudden. That's the last time I watch "Eraserhead" alongside a marathon of the 2011-12 Spurs season to date. But it's also the last time that dream - in its recurrence - will be at all pleasant. This dream will become a nightmare. The soundtrack to this "dream" will now be "One More Red Nightmare" by King Crimson.

Because it is actually a nightmare.

Why? Because RJ's relative quality and aesthetics are usually a sort of anti-canary in the hoops mine for the general quality of his team. And there are far too many days when he is and looks like the best offensive player on his team. Aaron has a theory about how RJ looks. In short, it follows that when RJ looks like a fourth option that can get hot with oops, finishes, and smart dribble-drives while rebounding decently despite average, banal, helped defense? He's probably on a contender, or a team that's better than its record. When he looks like a superstar, a prime-Ray-Allen-at-the-SF-with-more-hops-and-speed, that means he's on a 30-win team where the players around him are so bad that his volume-producing ways make him look far better than he really is (Bucks, Nets). To use the starkest example of why this is, jumping for a rebound dramatically (really his aesthetic signature) only looks really good when defense and effort are a scarce luxury on his team, and that only happens on a bad team (or the Hawks). Dribble-driving past a good defense to the rim a few times looks great, but doesn't really bode well for a team if he's the third-best penetrator, so he doesn't do it very much.

When he doesn't do these things (or when he does them less) his game looks markedly worse, but in the end the team wins more. Because, you know, prime Richard Jefferson is their third-best penetrator and that means you aren't looking at a bad roster or a poor allocation of possessions. The fact that this season he's looked like a minor superstar on so many occasions -- or at least the Spurs' best offensive player -- is severely troubling for the Spurs' prospects. It will give us sleepless nights. Manu may give us fits when he (on rare occasion) shoots us out of the game or (more commonly) threatens to do so, but at least he doesn't give us -- as they say in medical circles -- screaming-mad insomnia. RJ looks like the Spurs' best offensive player right now. That, Spurs fans, is the literal definition of a nightmare.

(By the way, obligatory context: RJ seems to be one of the nicest, smartest, most reasonable people in basketball, and before his infamous contract extension, the Spurs asked him to spend his summer completely reformulating his game down to the fundamentals, despite a widespread reputation as an above-average, great scorer, and he did it. He put in the hours. And when he returned (extension in hand) he really helped the 2010-11 Spurs offense work. So really not a knock on RJ, who I respect and enjoy as a person: he's just the messenger. The scary messenger.)

• • •

Q: What high school did Chris Paul go to?
A: Intensity High
Q: Heyo! I seriously dislike Chris Paul, though.

LAC 97 - POR 105; __A decent game that we will ignore to talk about Chris Paul instead. [Alex/Aaron]__

Actual, mildly edited conversation from during this game:

Alex: Let's talk about Chris Paul. CP3 is so tense.

Aaron: I'm going to be honest. He's been playing awful basketball for 3 or 4 games now, and the fact that his one or two good plays a game still inspire people to say that kind of annoys me.

Alex: I'm not saying he's playing especially well. Or well at all. I'm literally saying he is full of intensity. He is 'tense as a wound-up ukelele.

Aaron: That seems like a really weird sentiment to me. Really odd.

Alex: What do you mean? He's yelling at people constantly, jumping up from fouls, having to be slightly restrained, working the refs, working his teammates, working, working, working. Besides, how is that a weird sentiment? A weird sentiment would be that he avoids looking at the camera when he's glaring because he would break that camera. That would be a weird sentiment. [Alex's Note: One that I actually, literally believe.]

Aaron: I can't disagree. That's all true. But I think -- to some level -- I just sincerely dislike CP3's current game. As fun to watch as it was, years ago. I mean... I appreciate him. He's undoubtedly a great (and formerly MVP-level) player, but...

Alex: Then why? I could understand if it's because he's like LeBron with this media presence and branding BS, but. Gamesmanship?

Aaron: Because I hate his attitude, I hate his demeanor, I hate the way his aesthetics warp the perception of his game to push it beyond its actual quality -- and it's really fucking good. And yes. His gamesmanship. That's mainly it. Maybe entirely it. His dirty, excessive gamesmanship. At his peak he's underrated, but he hasn't been at his peak in years. Byron Scott destroyed his career with his insane practice regimen. And honestly, CP3/Blake is the absolute most annoying duo I have ever seen on one team. At least in terms of arrogant/dirty players who -- while great -- haven't really proven anything yet beyond their own greatness. They are great. In Paul's case, transcendent. But the aesthetics of their games can't overcome the way they approach this Clippers team. I can't stand watching the Clippers. It's like the opposite, in every way, of the collective Popovich-reflected Spurs attitude or Steve Nash. Maybe it's Vinny. I don't know.

Alex: That makes a lot of sense, but for my sake, I appreciate greatness for its own sake. More than that, in fact. I enjoy it and what it does to the game as a whole. His aesthetics may warp the perception of his game to fans (which is bullshit, yes), but they also warp the perception of the game to being more important and significant as far as his teammates and opponents are concerned, and he raises the tenor of the game in doing so. Sure, he may call attention to himself with a burst of light that isn't just about basketball, but the light is real and casts a shadow and a reflection from everyone else. When he loses despite making every right decision, despite working over everyone possible? That feels important. When he wins because of the same? That feels important. CP3 is important partially because he's important, and that's unfair, yes. But as a viewer? There is a real, substantive difference in the end product.

Aaron: See... I don't totally agree with that. It makes a difference to the lazy viewer, perhaps. (Not meant in a mean way -- it's not a bad thing to watch basketball in a "lazy" way, it's a matter of personal preference. Not a value judgment. Bear with me.) But to the observant, careful viewer who takes in every play, who sees Paul get absorbed in their dirty knocks, the wonder of his overall play is somewhat lessened and arguably erased by this attitude with which players like him and Blake approach the game. Effortless preening dominance without the results to back up the hype, I mean. The Heat are about 20-30x better than the Clips in this sense alone, because goddamn, they're arrogant as hell... but they back it up, and they don't let it control them. LeBron has, in the 5 Heat games I've seen him in so far this year, once neglected to get back on defense so he can argue a call. Blake does that 5-10 times a game, minimum. Same with Paul, so far.

And really, that's the story with Heat versus the Clippers. So far, the Heat don't really make a habit of showboating in-game on every other possession. They don't try and kill opposing players with dangerous screens and the old "tug on their jersey, endanger them midair" tactic. They don't do the sneering preening that Blake became slightly obsessed with late in his rookie year (and has continued this season). They don't punch Marcus Camby midcourt then cry foul so the ref T's up Marcus. The Heat don't do the dirtiest stuff. And their coach -- who, despite my hatred of the Heat, I very much respect -- demands effort and excellence. Unlike Vinny Del "No Creativity-ro". [Alex's Note: This nickname is now GG canon.] Now, this isn't to say I love them, obviously. The Heat are bad. Really aren't a ton of fun to watch. Free throws galore, occasional preening, the off-court arrogance, et cetera. But their coaching, their execution, and their relative lack of being self-absorbed on the court make them markedly more fun to watch if you completely decontextualize them and the Clippers as teams, during the games themselves. I really, really hate what the Clippers do to the game of basketball. They are a team that define preening, and a team that make all the ore than the Heat. more than the D'Antoni Knicks. more than Shaq. They just turn basketball into a petty game where arrogance and dirty play become synonymous with "intensity"

This is especially irritating when there are players like Nash who are intense without being dirty. Manu is intense without trying to kill Andre Miller every trip up the court. Even Wade, who's intense by drawing a shitload of undeserved fouls (which is incredibly annoying and sometimes completely unwatchable) -- even he's better than Paul and Griffin. There's just this general air of disrespect around the Clippers. They don't respect their opponent. They play dirty. And what's worse? They aren't even effective in doing so! They're a bad, mismatched team that plays lazy defense and reflects Vinny Del Negro's worst instincts. I should love seeing a talent like Paul and a talent like Blake fly across the court. I should love this team. I mean, hell, I love Mo Williams and I can enjoy Reggie Evans every once in a while. But in the 4 Clippers games I've watched so far, I can't say I love them. I can't even say I like them. I hate watching them together, in fact.

In short, I have a proposition for you. There's no one "right" way to play basketball. However, there is a monotonically WRONG way to play basketball. The Clippers embody that -- they play the game with no respect for their opponent, no respect for the intelligence of their fans, and no effort to play in a way that doesn't hurt the game and cheapen the sport. They play as though defense is nothing more than dirty hits and stealthy grabs, and as though arrogance and self obsession is the platonic ideal for a team of stars. They run lazy set plays and coast on their talent. Their coach runs their stars so many minutes that they take shortcuts and put in lacking effort for much of the game. In all forms of the game, they play under their potential and under what a "good" team would do. And that's why I hate this year's Clippers team, to this point. They aren't fun to watch, they don't respect their opponent, and they coast like no other. That's not good for the game, nor is it good for any of the players involved. In my view.

... And as if to prove my point, as I wrote that, Billups kicks Wes Matthews in the balls. Wonderful job, Clippers.

Alex: I respect that, and you're right: They're an annoying, dirty team, especially in combination.

But what about when Chris Paul was carrying the Hornets (who actively, strongly stood behind him for the MVP in 2008)? What about all those times he's devastated very good (and more talented) teams by unreasonable margins? When he was at his peak, his ego was more than compensated for by performance, and now because of his knee injury, only traces of the talent remain and all the arrogance remains. But it could be said that Paul signed the death warrants on the Spurs and Lakers dynasties. Just because his ego hasn't caught up with his lessened abilities does not invalidate what he's done, which is more than merely to prove his own greatness. He was arrogance; he was dirty; he was all of the above, but he was at heart a great competitor. And that hasn't changed.

The problem with CP3 is partly ego but it's also exogenous: Now he's surrounded by people that he doesn't need to pump up, that he doesn't need to build up by setting an example, people for whom building up is probably worse than just harshly and loudly criticizing all facets of their game and asking to reciprocate the honesty. And being around these people accentuates the cheaper, dirtier parts of CP3's game. His rage and swagger is real, not just the rational trolling for points and possessions, and I admire that. But when you put him right next to the living embodiments of veteran cheapness (Billups), arrogance (Blake), and unwarranted hype (DeAndre Jordan -- not his fault, of course), you start to make these unpleasant comparisons directly. And it doesn't exactly help CP3 or make him seem like a franchise savior as much as one more unpleasant piece. The fact that he also has done a lot to dislike off the court (the oddest trade demand cycle of any superstar yet, and his recent insane levels of branding that exceed even LeBron's at least in terms of relative accomplishment) doesn't help an already cynical person.

Now, all that said, I think the "lazy/careful viewer" dichotomy is a bit silly. [Aaron's note: It really is. That was the wrong word for that. I'll leave it in, but I have to emphasize that it's not the right word.] People value different things in the game, and look out for different things, and that's one of the great things about basketball. If someone is looking for "swag" with nothing objective to back it up, that's kind of dumb, honestly indistinguishable from celebrity culture, really. Celebrity for its own sake. I get that. But what about the fierce, unrestrained, total embrace of competitition, with or without visual evidence? Is there really nothing of value there to an astute viewer in Chris Paul's game? I don't think that CP3 corrupts the game of basketball, nor is his style the end-all and be-all of the game of basketball. It's just one more dimension that he displays to such an extreme extent that it's instructive, entertaining, and inherently interesting when it matches up with another extreme like Nash, Manu, or Duncan.

Now, you and I personally love the Spurs' unselfishness and unpretentious attitude (along with their "we'll do what we do and if we don't win that's how it goes" approach), and I see what you mean about how the Heat conduct themselves comparatively. I also recognize that CP3 (and, before someone else says it, Bruce Bowen) is arguably the complete opposite of that. While I wouldn't exactly encourage kids to be like him, it still has its value to me as a viewer (though it's value lessened by his surrounding team, as you and I have both said now).

• • •

Epilogue to Clips-Blazers:

Aaron: Fair enough. Nothing to add. I think we're done with this Clippers stuff. Let's move on.

Alex: Okay, then we'll edit and publish it later, probably.

Aaron: You're doing Spurs-Bucks?

Alex: Yeah. "I woke up screaming today." First sentence of the RJ thing. Thoughts?

Aaron: Did you really wake up screaming? Jesus.

Alex: Well, I was building to a parallelism with your RJ theory, you know, where the quality of his teammates -- ...

Aaron: Stop. Can we establish whether this really happened before we go any further on it?

_Alex:_ ... No, no we can't.

_Aaron:_ Fine. Too many adverbs in the third paragraph. Get rid of "all at once." Hanging comma in the second. Patch it, please.

• • •

Thanks for reading.

A 19 year old boy was shot and killed on Sunday. Over shoes and a coat. They were a $200 pair of shoes. Three or four men, at a bus stop. It was a shade after 2:30 in the morning. According to police reports, the men rolled up in an SUV. They got out. Shots were fired -- some by the assailants, and some by another person whose identity is currently unknown. They stole his shoes, his coat, and nothing else. He leaves behind a pregnant girlfriend, his almost-finished high school diploma, and a family that loved him. He is dead.

I repeat: a boy lost everything over a pair of shoes.

• • •

There's a concept related to this that became -- for a very short period this summer -- ubiquitous in the NBA blogosphere. Malcolm Gladwell wrote an excellent article about it for Grantland. I refer to the concept of "psychic value." Essentially, psychic value is the mental value we assign to things beyond their actual worth -- it's what makes a Van Gogh worth far more than the canvas and the paint it's composed of, and what makes the hilarious signed photo of Matt Bonner being guarded by Shane Battier in my living room more valuable than any other photo of Matt Bonner I've ever seen in my life.

It's also the reason that, upon losing the clipboard I'd used as a drawing board and notepad since the age of two in one of my class buildings, I spent almost a year keeping in touch with the building's janitors trying to find it. I basically did their job with them for a week, searching desperately for my beloved clipboard. And I called/visited often after I ended that stage of the search. I told them (and my friends that were wondering why I was mopping floors and cleaning classrooms) that it was because there were important papers on the clipboard. Really? There weren't anything but sketches and loan paperwork. Nothing I couldn't redraw, nothing I couldn't re-print. The papers didn't matter. It was the clipboard. Even though it was, again, a broken wooden clipboard from the early 90s. So many hours of my life, quite literally wasted. I don't really regret it. Because if I'd given up on it, I'm sure I'd feel even worse about losing it than I already do.

The reason I mention all this is to highlight just how far psychic value can make you go in pursuit of your psychic desires. If you value something enough, you can quickly become obsessed. Which (admittedly) isn't always strictly a bad thing. I certainly can't say that. Obsession can be good, in a backhanded sense, if it's in pursuit of excellence. I've certainly spent much of my life obsessed with the pursuit of success. Being good at what I do. Being appreciated, content, et cetera. In sports, we tend to idealize obsession from our heroes and laugh about it in our villains -- for instance, Tim Duncan's offseason workouts with Danny Green and James Anderson were an awesome story to me. The story of Kobe staying after a game and taking umpteen-hundred shots was (on the other hand) an object for laughs. Begrudging respect, but laughs all the same.

But this obsession -- the extremities of psychic value -- is essentially why David Lee Robinson is dead.

Really. Let's get some perspective here. An SUV costs quite a bit of money. Even a used one. A new one can run you anywhere from $25,000-$40,000 -- assuming it's heavily used, that's still going to run you up to $10,000. SUVs are expensive. Handguns? According to the Washington Post, it costs about $833.69 to get a handgun in Washington D.C. I doubt they went through legal channels, but it's still a $500 and up proposition to get yourself your own handgun even through the seedier means. Or perhaps they stole both, though I'd never deign to assume theft, even in these situations. Because I don't know the people who robbed and killed David Lee Robinson. I don't really want to. But the fact remains -- they definitively owned both those things. Far more valuable than the shoes by any metric of economic value, no matter how they got it. And they still felt that a 19-year-old's shoes were reason enough to rob a man, and reason enough to pull a gun on him. Reason enough to end his life. That's the psychic value that they -- and a non-insignificant number of people -- assign to sneakers. Jordans. Nice kicks.

There is a line that separates this kind of a sad, distressing obsession from the normal obsessions that we experience and thrive upon in our everyday lives. It's really a hazier line than we'd like to think, when you get to the fringe cases. Try drawing the line between the obsession that drives a man to value a pair of sneakers over the life of his fellow human being and the obsession that drives a fan to make furious and serious death threats against Otis Smith and his family. The line between this ridiculous crime and the obsession that drives Charlie Villanueva to threaten to kill Ryan Hollins (and later charge the Cavalier locker room searching for him). There are darker spots in the NBA. Things that we'd rather not talk about, much less consider ourselves a part of. And for the most part? These aren't your everyday fans or your everyday players I'm talking about -- most of them are, like you and I, in it for fun alone. We watch and play this game because it's fun. It's a way to make a great, amazing living. A wonderful time sink. It even helps people.

But here we are. Nobody should ever value a thing like a pair of sneakers over a human being. Hate humanity all you'd like, but love your fellow man -- at least above a pair of kicks. We can be fools and louts and all sorts of things. We can do terrible, awful things as collective masses. But value people as people, not objects or concepts or items. We are tangible. We are real. We are human. In the end, to the man that killed David Lee Robinson, his victim was worth less than that. Less, even, than the shoes on his feet. And there's not a damn bit of good that can come out of that.

I really don't really know what more to say. Rest in peace, David Lee Robinson.

I was hallucinating all night with a deathly combination of caffeine, tylenol, and the strangest sleep schedule ever. Technically, I'm not sure if I should've been up, much less writing anything. But Aaron would like us to take a new direction with The Outlet, and apparently, stepping into this new direction involves some growing pains in the form of hallucinogenic metaphors. Take my words with a grain of salt, my organization of concepts with a lot of leeway, and my concepts themselves as canon. I am going to attempt to describe the 2012 San Antonio Spurs, as they appeared last night in a thrilling game against the Warriors of Golden State.

• • •

It's been five games into this long and deadly season. The Spurs are in dire straits entering their sixth. How dire? Well, permit me a long metaphor: their conductor is dead - or, for those who care, on indefinite leave with injury - and all his replacements will not do, for they all lack the normal conductor's competence and fluidity and artistry. Now at the concert tonight, the orchestra plays disjointed, suddenly-half-remembered cues; the first violin steps up to conduct and finds again how hard it is. The program director asks if they even want a conductor tonight, if this is to be the alternative. All the while, from the stands, the injured conductor watches intently, moving the baton discreetly in his seat despite injury, the clipped bird flapping his wings and concerned at what he sees.

In spite of all of this, the audience applauds warmly. They've been to other concerts; they know the backdrop of injury; they know what music these people are capable of making with the right conductor. But the audience cannot endure the harsh tones much longer. Because they know the score. The conductor's void is palpable and hangs over every missed cue and every fourth beat that stumbles or rushes a bit to the next measure. Still, they clap. It's not just sympathy that moves the audience. The people in the stands also clap because they know that the orchestra is trying its best. That they've tried so many different, seemingly random conductors tonight, to everyone's muffled amusement (the third-chair trumpet reveals to the audience's laughter that he'd taken some conducting courses in college as he steps up). But a careful eye will also note the muffled horror on everyone's faces: How long can an orchestra like this - even one so brilliant - survive (much less thrive) without a good conductor? They've got the lanky, funny-looking drummer with the headband running the show now, getting assists from the wide, jolly bassist, and that's all well and good, but this is an orchestra not built for the most part on philanthropy or corporate sponsorship: this is an orchestra mainly built on its own acclaim and attendance. Built on its own recognition as the champion of orchestral accomplishment. And the way things are going, it won't command an audience much longer, and it certainly won't reach the end-of-year awards except on momentum alone.

This is an orchestra that will soon be silent, and at the intermission the silence to come hangs palpably over their fans.

But something is different when they come back from the intermission. All at once - after a pep talk from the program director - it seems they're starting to change the rigged game to one that they can win. They're using their acknowledged talent to find new paths to the heart of the music. They're taking matters into their own hands. If they can't find a conductor, well, as the concert has gone on, it turns out they know the score a little better than they'd thought. As their vestigial memories of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky return, they split the melodies up into chunks and deliver by committee.

Their program director, exhausted by apprehension and futility, had foreseen his opening in that pep talk and told them: "If you have something to deliver for this measure, then do it. If not, just stay out of the way. Whatever the case, stay on beat. Defend the first beat and make sure we get back to it at the end of the measure. Above all, the more the merrier. Attack the piece! Feel the music's direction and react, damnit!" Not in years has the program director gotten so livid, so animated, so soulful in willing his orchestra to action. And they respond, in time; they're attacking the piece, getting right to its heart, and the audience knows it. Making mistakes, but using each mistake as an opportunity for finer concentration. To build something better for the next measure. Dvorak's "New World" symphony has sounded much grander and more cohesive in other, better orchestras. But in their improvisation, they're rediscovering the emotional heart of the symphony: the long, grinding, arduous journey for innocent truth and affirmation, and then, at the end, a celebration for what has been regained and the journey that led there. They've made that journey, and they celebrate their "New World" that suddenly feels so easy by the end.

They've won.

No, they aren't going to be able to do this piece many times again. And they all know their orchestra is still in peril without its great conductor. But for a night they've staved off insolvency and shown their audience what it is that makes us look for music and its salvation in the first place. And, a bit merrier, they prepare for tomorrow's encore. The show must go on. And perhaps they can do it on their own, for a time. Perhaps the entertainers still have a few vintage nights left.

• • •

You know, I'm not a big fan of writing about the creative process: It's usually forced and overwrought (see above). But I had to say something, had to put it into my own words, because all I know is that the Spurs without Manu played in a way that evoked the unmistakable joy of rediscovered creation, and whether they won or lost, whether I can put it the right way or not, it's a thought worth remembering: An aging team that played an encore of "Summertime" and was bathed in light.

Hey, everybody! This is the first edition of the STEVE NASH Power Rankings. The object of these rankings is pretty simple -- the ratings intend to take the predictions that STEVE NASH spat out and update throughout the season with what teams have shown so far. I am rather busy, so I'm going to delay an explanation of how exactly we're going to do this until next week's edition -- this week, I'm merely going to post the rankings, some observations, and my thoughts on teams under/overrated in them. As a basic note: they're a simple re-weighting of current season SRS and the STEVE NASH predictions then ran through our Gibbs sampler to predict playoff probabilities, projected records, and other various stats. Without further ado: the updated NASH rankings. Keep in mind these are completely and utterly automated -- there's no human input on these rankings, at all.

• • •

Click the image for the spreadsheet itself, where you can also view the model's updated predictions by conference.

A few key observations:

• THREE OVERRATED BY THE MODEL: Spurs, Grizzlies, Jazz.

  Well, what'd you expect? The model doesn't know that Manu is out for two months, to this point, and the Spurs were quite a bit more impressive in their first five games than the 3-2 record would suggest. The model still predicts them to win the West, though at only 1.5 rounded wins ahead of a whole gaggle of teams at the 37 win mark. The Grizzlies, as well, are overrated -- they'll start to come back to Earth soon, but without Randolph, their big man rotation runs about one man deep. Which is awful. Marrasse Speights will help, but he's no cure-all. The Grizz have looked awful so far and Randolph's injury couldn't have come at a worse time. And finally, the Jazz -- they've looked quite a bit worse than a 30 win team thus far, and they've faced teams with key injuries and players in absentia (Lakers with Bynum out, Bucks with Bogut out, et cetera). They're likely to come down in a few weeks. I'd expect the Spurs to be down to 2nd or 3rd in the West in a few weeks (barring me adding a Manu adjustment to push them down sooner) and the Grizz to a well-below 50% chance at the Western playoffs pretty soon.

• THREE UNDERRATED BY THE MODEL: Blazers, Mavs, Sixers.
  
  The Blazers are rather self explanatory -- they've been playing like the best team in the West (and arguably the entire league) so far, and it really isn't that close. The Mavs looked atrocious to start the year but are beginning to round into form, and with games this week against the reeling Spurs, the depressing Hornets (sans Eric Gordon!), the Pistons, and the way worse than expected Celtics? They could relatively easily pull off a 4-0 week that has everyone completely forgetting about their early season struggles. The Sixers have impressed, but I'm not sure the model or anyone else is properly rating how great their early season has been -- they have yet to play a home game (or, shockingly, a single game against an Eastern conference team) and yet they're 3-2 on the year with a load of refuse ahead. Their home opener is on Friday, and I'm guessing they'll beast it. This team isn't getting nearly enough credit for the insane performance they've had so far this year.

• COMMENT: WHITHER DOMINANCE?

  Just an interesting note. This model is designed to regress towards the mean, it's true. So the win totals probably are going to get beaten pretty handily by the end of the year. But it's actually rather fitting with the season thus far -- there simply hasn't been a fully-put-together dominant team in this season yet. The Thunder were 5-0, yes, but they won them on incredibly narrow margins and weren't dominating anyone -- the Mavs and the Blazers both took advantage, and they look thoroughly mortal as the favorites in the West. The model certainly wouldn't call them favorites (though I would) -- the Blazers, Nuggets, Lakers, and Spurs (had Manu not gone out) all looked to be stronger picks for the West's regular season champion at this point in the season. The Heat, on the other hand, have impressed about as much as expected, but STILL haven't really solidified their hold on the East because the Bulls look absolutely stellar a few games into the season.

After years in the Association, stately, plump Richard Jefferson inevitably slid over from the bench to the scorer's table as a color commentator. By the end of his career, at the end of the bench, constantly making amusing, self-deprecating chatter, he had practically already busted his chops as a commentator. On the bench he'd say things like:

• "Tim Duncan still runs like a deer. Now, can someone get me the license plate of the guy that hit him?"

• "Ah, the starting small forward. I remember when that was me! President Reagan was in power, and we were all bemoaning Reaganomics at the end of the bench, when Red Holzman tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Kid, you're starting tonight.' I was 35. I was three years older than Red. I was actually a shooting guard but I had been eating ice cream all summer because I'd thought I'd never play. I played 20 minutes before I nearly had a heart attack. I never started again."

• "LeBron James is still the most athletic player in the league at 30. He never developed a great perimeter game like Jordan or Kobe, but he never had to. He can just steamroll his way down the lane and bank it in for an and-one after drawing two fouls on every starter on that one single play. And then he can rest for the rest of the half while his team builds a lead. Then he does the same thing in the third quarter and steamrolls over garbage time and gets a triple-double in 15 minutes and his team wins by 30. It's sick. It's not even basketball. But you gotta respect the champs."

And so on. His teammates laughed, but they also noted that whatever he said rung of truth when they looked back at the game. And so it was that when he called a game as a test run for his alma mater, Arizona, they hired him on the spot, finding him funny, reasonable, and knowledgeable. Eventually, of course, it was these same traits (and the vetting experience at Arizona) that got him a spot calling color with the local professional team, the Phoenix Suns. After the offseason (filled, for Jefferson, with research on the newer players he hadn't played with), Jefferson was ready to show he could cut it as a commentator in the big leagues.

• • •

His first game - on opening night of the regular season - was to call a game between the Suns and their hated rivals (and his former team) the San Antonio Spurs. The Suns' organization - under new management - was excited about Jefferson and the new direction he'd be taking their color commentary, and even brought in legendary retired commentator Gary Bender to give Jefferson some tips before tip-off.

"Now, Richard, it's important that the fans like you from both ends of the court. You understand that?"

"Of course, Mr. Bender."

"Please, call me Gary. I mean, do you really understand that half your audience on TV is rooting for the other team? That a third of your audience comes from Europe and China? Do you understand that you are representing your country, your family, and all that sort of thing, Richard? Do you get it?"

"Yeah, I do. It's a total honor. I get it, Gary."

"Well that's good to hear, Richard. A lot of you guys just want to push your own favorite players, favorite teams, and so on. But there's more to it than that."

"I know. But of course, I'm glad to hear you tell me so."

"Well, anyway, I was at my home a few months ago and I just happened to catch your first game between Arizona and the Oregon Ducks."

"Oh, yeah, that one. Any tips?"

"Well, you made me laugh, Richard. That's important."

"Cool --"

"But you made me laugh only because I'd been talking to athletes for 40 years, Richard. As a fan, it didn't work so well. My wife didn't like it all that much. She's the harshest critic, of course. I'll do the best game of my life and she says "I switched over to the Portland network because I just wanted to hear someone competent call the games." "

"That's hars --"

"She's joking. It's a joke, Richard. It's very funny."

"Oh, haha."

"But she seriously, honestly didn't like your style that much, and she knows her stuff."

"Darn. Well, what can be done? Do people just naturally get better?"

"Not really on their own, no. It's not something where with practice you're suddenly good at it. Every sport has its own rhythm and every game has its own beat, and you're working for the fans on that beat. The more considerate you are of what people want to see and hear, the better you'll be, but that doesn't come with repetition."

"It's tricky, isn't it?"

"No, it's not hard at all as long as you have concentration. It's the most natural thing in the world. React and respond, over and over. Sometimes you'll surprise yourself with your response, but don't think about it in the moment. You're from Arizona so you've heard of Vin Scully, right?"

"Yeah, I wasn't like a Dodgers fan, but it was kind of hard to avoid hearing him and hearing about him. And then, when I'd been a pro for many years, I lived in San Diego. Vin came out of more cars than the Padres game, and if you listened to it for a few minutes it was obvious why."

"That's what I'm talking about. He uses a sense of humor, and a personality, and a voice, and the crowd noise, but at the end of the day he's just giving the fans what they want to hear. You've got funny, you're a likable person, you can think on your feet, Richard. Now put it all together and deliver for fans. Don't just make jokes. I can't really tell you more than that. But I wanted to tell you the problem you have to figure out day by day."

"Well, thanks, Gary. How's retirement, anyway?"

"Well, we have a garden, and it's been nice to slow down a little bit. But... put it this way, I was going out of my way to catch a Wildcats-Ducks basketball game, you know? It's a little tiring, and I'm glad we got out of the house for a little bit. Overall I like it, though."

"Haha, yeah. It is relaxing but sometimes you just want to be busy."

"Oh, that reminds me, Richard. One last bit of advice: One thing you can do to really reach people is to point out things like tough effort. I know you guys think of energy as just another variable, another plus or minus. And that's fine, but to fans? Effort or its lack really speaks to people. It's kind of poetic and brings the game home to people. It's one of those big questions in life, and you can see it right on the screen. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I didn't really think about it, but you're right, Gary, and it's important. Thanks."

"Okay, well, we're going to go sit in our box, Richard. Best of luck."

"Thanks, Gary. Give your wife my regards."

And then Gary Bender departed, and Richard felt the powerful tension of a stimulant now, as tip-off was less than a quarter-hour away, and Suns-Spurs games always had decent ratings. A lot of people that he could make happy, a lot of people he could impress, a lot of people that knew him and what he was about. Many of them, as Gary told him, were Spurs fans and he felt the powerful, anxious weight of responsibility. But he thought he could carry it.

• • •

The Spurs were an organization steeped in class and tradition. So Jefferson - still reasonably well-liked by the management and coaching staff there (who'd liked his character even before they brought him in) - received a warm introduction before the game and the ring ceremony. Now mic'd up for the game, RJ began to talk a little about the Suns roster, largely an undersized group of scrappy vets that weren't going to win more than twelve games probably. An aging Anderson Varejao suddenly brought to mind what Gary had said. The words flew out when his play-by-play man gave him a lob.

"I want you guys to watch this Anderson Varejao, tonight, if you aren't excited about the season. Suns fans might not be familiar with the new signing, but he's hardly new to those of us that played in the Eastern Conference. He does so many good things for a basketball team, and over and over in his career he's sacrificed his body for the good of his team, not just his team as in the number of wins they get, but in terms of his team as people that have to get up every morning and bang their knees 10 times a week, which is the reality for an NBA player. Because they look at Andy and they see someone that bangs his knees 20 times a week and gets a little slower every year, and they know that if Andy can give twice what they're giving, they can give an extra 10%, and so they do. And if in 20 years they don't move quite as sprightly because of Andy, it's because they'll have done more and they'll have more to be satisfied about. That's gone unnoticed, and maybe that's something I can call your attention to."

His play-by-play man looked at him during the commercial break with a mixture of awe and astonishment.

"Was that alright, Jim?"

"That was more than alright, Richard, but we have some superstitions here so I won't say much more. Keep it up."

• • •

And now the ring ceremony was beginning. The Spurs (now in their second year without him) had been relatively busy, having won their fifth title in staggering fashion the year before: Each of their four playoff series went the full seven games (that had never happened in the league), and in every series they were outscored by their opponents (which only happened rarely for one series, much less four_)._ But the Spurs made up for it with the tenacity of warriors and the clinical intelligence of surgeons. Now the Spurs' "Big Three," certainly (and finally) too old to contend at this point, were taking one more half-year on the payroll at the minimum salary, largely as a victory lap through the league and the franchise that that they'd dominated for so long. The gold, beautiful rings were unnecessary ornaments; the five rings were the halos of respect and dignity around whatever lineup they had in at a given time, and those would last for many years.

After the ring ceremony, an intoxicated Spurs fan two rows in the stands said, "RJ, you're my hero, can I get an autograph?" and RJ obliged. When he got it, the fan proceeded to rip up the autograph and say, "No one idolizes RJ. No one. This is worthless to me! Ha ha ha," to which the surrounding fans mixed mocking support and classy jeers. After all, it was true. No one idolized RJ. But it still was pretty weird to say.

Things might have been different, and it's the funny thing about these Spurs and Jefferson (known to players and coaches alike by the childish initials "RJ"): Several years ago and on the good side of 30, RJ was once touted as the player that would bring the Spurs "over the edge:" In other words, the player that would take a very good collection of talent and inject it with the youth, intelligence, and experience that would grease its path towards a title (or at least toward contention). But it never happened: RJ's first year was lost and disjointed, and for the rest of his tenure RJ become associated (a little unfairly, a little justifiably) with the word "disappearing," especially "when it mattered." And despite his Spurs continuing to post very good records and getting into the playoffs as a real threat, they never seriously looked like the best team in the league come playoff time, and when the fans looked for answers they saw in RJ an $8-10 million albatross hogging the salary cap space, they saw upstarts (on the same roster) with more upside and talent than RJ. Most of all, they saw someone that was likable, reasonable, and nice as a front for a non-entity that made bank by saying all the right things and never putting the insane effort in that was expected of him as a highly-paid professional athlete. And there it was and RJ had probably heard the drunken fan's sentiment a hundred times in various media.

But suddenly, perhaps from pride in his defense of Anderson Varejao, RJ (unlike the previous hundred times) suddenly got really prickly and angry.

"I've never wanted to be your damn idol, and if I ever had, I'm resigned to where I am. But did I ever hurt you? What gives you the right?" With muscles tensed from anger as much as pride, RJ suddenly realized that the post-ceremony commercial break was ending in a few seconds. So he waited, and his grimace turned into a smile as the camera focused on him and his play-by-play man. And RJ continued his thought on Anderson Varejao.

"You know what? I just had somebody rip up my autograph telling me that no one idolized me. Well, you know what I said about Anderson Varejao? Maybe Anderson Varejao was nobody's hero. No one in their right mind would want to grow up to be a tenacious, clumsy interior presence wide by a seven-footer's standards and whose grace and tenacity were obscured by a funny-looking mop of hair. Nobody grew up wanting to be Anderson Varejao. And yet everyone that played or practiced with him tells me he's a great player, tells me he makes them want to work harder. Doesn't that count for something? All I wanted to do for people was make my teammates laugh, and, on occasion, win a few games! And dag namit, I did it! Sometimes I was injured, sometimes I was ineffective, but I was always there for them, and I wanted you guys to laugh. Tell me that's not worth an autograph, if you're already collecting the inscriptions of heroes and gods."

But they'd already cut to commercial long before RJ had ended, and he noted that the play-by-play man looked like death on the other side of him.

"Nice try, RJ, and you can say that again if you want, but try to be a little more... self-deprecating..."

"Aw, dag namit! Self-deprecating? Dag namit. Crap."

"Perfect. That's great self-deprecating humor, right there."

"Damn it! I mean, I just wanted people to know how hard someone like Andy works. I didn't mean to build myself up. But I want them to watch Varejao tonight, is all I meant."

"That's fine. But it has to be in the rhythm of the game. Prove your point by pointing out when they do something worthy of respect. As you know Andy's going to at least once. Then give your whole spiel. And even if he doesn't give you an opening tonight, he will sometime later in the season. He'll get his if you're willing to give it. It's a long season and you'll find the time to say anything you care to. Gary always found time. Everyone I've worked with - play-by-play or color commentator - found the time to say everything that was in their head. The problem is that it's not enough to fill 48 minutes. It's filling the time that's hard."

"Well, then, we just had a ring ceremony, can I talk about my Spurs for a few minutes? Size 'em up, talk about what they mean, and so on?"

"Go for it. You'd better, in fact. It's a good idea. We're live in 10 seconds!"

• • •

To be continued...