Progress.

A little over three weeks ago, I was playing some pickup hoops with some of my friends. It was a little windy out and I was having a bad day shooting the ball. It probably would have been a bad day shooting the ball even without the wind. Something was just off. So mired in a shooting slump, I decided that the only way for me to score and make plays was to take the ball to the hoop.

On one play (and my last play for a while), I drove the baseline with my left hand. As I got under the basket, I tried to stop without warning in the hopes that the guy guarding me would slide past me just enough for me to sneak a layup attempt towards the hoop. As it so happens, the inside of my right foot buckled and rolled under my ankle. I had never rolled my ankle that way before – it had always been the traditional way of the outside of my foot playing limbo with my ankle. But this time, we decided to try something new.

Since then, I’ve been fairly hobbled and hoping to make progress. I figure I won’t be completely healthy until I’m able to slide a shoe on my right foot without the use of my hands and without any pain. Recently, I’ve been able to start driving a car again and I can pretty easily walk up the stairs in my house. I just can’t slide that shoe on or walk down stairs without feeling an uneasy discomfort that gives me a lot of trepidation with my next movement.

But I’m making progress day by day with an extra step here and some extra weight put on my foot there.

You could say the Oklahoma City Thunder made progress with the three-point loss to the Lakers on Tuesday night. They took what was for the most part a frustratingly mediocre game in the first part of this series and turned it into a two-point game with a Kevin Durant three-point attempt for a series tie heading back to Oklahoma. He didn’t make it. He clanged off the iron and eventually the Thunder had to settle for a missed Jeff Green three-pointer to try and send this game into overtime.

But the fact that they played horrible terrible HORRIBLE offense and yet still were within one big three-point shot from the league’s leading scorer has to count for something besides a second playoff loss. Everything at this point in this franchise-building project is a good lesson for future reference. In the first game, they let some of the role players like Derek Fisher and Andrew Bynum find ways to score the ball against them. In this game, they held everybody not named Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol in check.

Kobe and Pau scored 64 of the Lakers 95 points on the night but the big part of those totals was the fact that the two Lakers stars combined for 40 of those points in the second half. The Thunder adopted the philosophy of let the stars have their nights and shut everybody else down. And it damn near worked. Derek Fisher, Lamar Odom, Andrew Bynum, and Ron Artest combined for a 9/38 shooting extravaganza. They just couldn’t stop Pau Gasol in the post or Kobe Bryant in the anything he tried to do in the fourth quarter.

But this was a good next step for the Thunder to make. Limiting the role players worked. Getting Kevin Durant to knock down some shots worked. Defending the paint worked (17 blocked shots). Holding your own on the rebounding battle didn’t work (49-37). Getting other guys outside of KD to hit shots didn’t work (17/48 for 35.4%). However, the youngest team in the NBA took the defending NBA champs down to a decent three-point look from the NBA’s leading scorer with 15 seconds left in the game and down only two on the road.

The Thunder aren’t sliding the shoe on that foot yet. But they’re starting to climb up the stairs.

Playoff Paroxi-Notes

- Thabo Sefolosha may have needed a rest. Or he may have needed a new jump shot. Or he may have needed to sit on the bench so he could scan the crowd for all of the Swiss celebrities (what up, Martina Hingis?). Regardless, I don’t understand how he didn’t see any time other than the final 1:16 of the fourth quarter. In a period in which Kobe Bryant went off for 15 points, it would have been good to have your best defender on the floor for at least half of that time.

Instead, Jeff Green was given the assignment of checking Kobe and it showed. Jeff Green is nice in theory but he hasn’t been great in application during the first two games of this series. I trust him guarding Ron Artest or Lamar Odom but certainly not Kobe Bryant. His first step is too slow. His second step is too slow. And by the time he recovers, Kobe is already figuring out which ridiculous shot he wants to get on SportsCenter. Kobe got whatever shots he wanted and got to the line nine times in the final period. I’m not saying Thabo would have stopped him but he did force him to start 6/16 from the field. There were better options no matter what the reason for sitting Thabo was.

- Ron Artest has made life a living hell for Kevin Durant. We all remember what happened in the first game in which it looked like Ron was using Durant as his personal ventriloquist dummy. And in this game, there wasn’t a whole lot of difference. Durant went to the free throw line fewer times and ended up committing eight turnovers in the game. At the same time though he just found a way to make shots. He seemed to take advantage of other players getting switched out to defend him, like when he baited Lamar Odom into giving him too much space on a three-pointer. When Artest was on him and he wasn’t turning the ball over, he made some ridiculous turnaround jumpers. Durant will not be stopped in this series and it’s foolish to think he can. Artest is doing the correct thing in making him work for everything he gets. This is one of the most impressive battles I’ve seen in a long time between two individuals.

- I don’t want to keep harping on mistakes Jeff Green has made but it would be nice for Thunder fans if he decided to show up for the rest of the series. He is now 6/23 in this series because he can’t knock down open jumpers.

- Serge Ibaka is a man. He’s a large, intimidating man. He had six points, five boards and seven blocks like it was nothing. He’ll struggle at times but this guy is going to be All-Star material some day.

- The two most successful ways for the Thunder to score in this game were off of isolation plays (56.3% FG) and in transition (41.7%). Other than that, they were pretty horrible on offense. A lot of this had to do with the open, spot-up jumpers they were missing. They made just 6/18 spot-up shots and with three of those makes and 13 of those attempts coming from behind the three-point line. With all of the good looks the Thunder are getting, it’s hard to say that the offense is THAT bad. At the same time, they can’t hit their threes so maybe it’s time to take those looks and drive it to the basket. (These stats courtesy of Synergy Sports – seriously go sign up and enjoy your summer with this stuff)

You know, as you get older, pornography holds less and less appeal.

You’ve got a job. You’ve got a wife. You may have kids. Pets. World of Warcraft. Picking up the shattered pieces of your long-term investments and attempting to rebuild some sort of facade that convinces you your financial security will be assured when you’re too old to pee on your own.

Life gets in your way, you know? And the draw just starts to wane once you’ve got unfettered access to it. Sure, the base motivations are still there. But really, the internet has even taken away the thrill of a tabboo stack of magazines hidden in your old college steamtrunk. It’s become like eBay or videos of people dancing, only appealing to the certain adult desires we all have. And that can get boring.

But I have good news, basketball fans! You certain freaks obsessed with the orange roundball and hardwood paroxysms. Sure, it’s not actually going to feed into any carnal desires (we hope), but there’s a new name in hoopsmut. And it is Synergy.

Synergy unveiled its fan product today, and hoopsmut it is.

In all seriousness, this tool is going to revolutionize how we talk about the NBA. On the TrueHoop Network threads, we jokingly refer to it as “The Argument Ender.” Because that’s exactly what it is. “Well, he’s not that bad of a defender…” “Really? Because he allows a 60% scoring percentage on ISO plays. BOOM. ROASTED.”

And that’s just the numbers. If you say, “I don’t believe it. Those are just numbers!” then click on the number. Go ahead. Do it. It’ll take you to the video which shows you every play in that set, by team, by player, everything. Is your team looking for a fast shooting guard that doesn’t get murdered on the pick and roll? You can evaluate candidates and find which one is best of the available free agents. Trying to figure out how your team blew a 3-1 series lead with the size advantages they enjoy? Synergy can not only tell you, it’ll show you. It’ll revolutionize the way you look at sports. And if you’re not interested in that much work? It’s going to let us, your favorite bloggers, do the work for you. We can spend the time to really tell you how guys perform in situations, how a game broke down, play by play.

It doesn’t tell us everything. It’s not going to tell you about Thabo Sefolosha forcing Kobe to give the ball up to a Fisher three twice. It’s not going to account for how Amar’e weak screen led to the play’s break down and forced Nash into the turnover. But it’s going to tell you a lot. And it’s going to provide context. And it’s going to put us ahead of where we’ve been in terms of being able to really breakdown an individual player’s strengths and weaknesses, which are central to how the sport operates.

I’ve been rolling through the thing at times, and I’ll be honest, it’s so much I can only dip the bucket in. If I reach down and try and drink straight from the source, I’m going to fall in like the fat kid in Willy Wonka and get sucked up into a tube of Off-Screen play percentages. But know this. This changes everything. It makes us smarter fans, smarter writers, smarter people about the game of basketball.

And you can get in on the revolution, now.
.

Just a head’s up, the wrist problems remain constant. You know. With all the mouse clicking.

Have we learned nothing from Spike Lee and Chris Bosh’s girlfriend?

You don’t poke a bear with a stick. Particularly not when that bear is in the zone.

Says the aforementioned, metaphorical bear — one LeBron James — about his picnic-basket-stealing, forest-fire-preventing, here-and-there-and-everywhere-bouncing, too-cold-too-hot-just-right-porridge-eating, 1986-Super-Bowl-dominating, Man-vs-Wild-surviving (I can keep going if you want) zone:

“You just feel like every shot you put up is going in, no matter the difficulty or whatever the case,” James said. “There’s nobody that can guard you at that point in time. All you have to do is get to that spot you want to get to.”

“Crazy shots,” Chicago’s Derrick Rose said. “It makes you want to be in his shoes the kind of stuff he’s hitting.”

Each one seemed personal too. Because after each made jumper in front of the Bulls bench — and there were seven — James turned and glared at the Bulls reserves as he backpedaled down the court. A few words were shared, but mainly a glare.

“They were talking the whole game,” James said. “Every time I caught the ball over there, they were daring me to shoot the ball. Telling me I couldn’t shoot, or ‘You can’t make jump shots so take the shot.’ So that’s what I did.”

His final stat sheet read: 40 points (on 16/23 shooting), 8 assists, 8 rebounds, 2 blocks, 1 steal and 2 turnovers. He scored 15 of those in the 4th quarter, including 11 straight for Cleveland in the closing minutes, during which time he stared down defenders, did his little tap-step, Savion Glover routine while holding the ball and buried jumper after jumper over whichever Chicago defender Vinny Del Negro decided should look stupid. It was pretty special stuff, even if none of the jumpers were particularly good shots.

Someone on Twitter who seems credible but whose name I can’t recall also mentioned that this was only the third time in NBA history that someone had gone for 40/8/8 on 65%+ shooting in a Playoff game. I’m not going to fact check that claim, so take it for what it’s worth. But I’m sure it doesn’t happen regularly. (He also did this, which actually does happen fairly regularly.)

Jamesian theatrics aside, the Bulls actually played a pretty good game and would have had a good shot to steal home court advantage if Bron Bron didn’t, ya know, go all Bron Bron on their heads. They only coughed up 4 turnovers compared to 14 in Game 1 and managed to grab a bunch of offensive boards (13, which were nearly a third of those available). They used those extra opportunities to get up 6 more shot attempts than they did in the first contest, even in a much slower game.

Throw in some good FT shooting, another good-not-great night from Derrick Rose and a much better effort from Joakim Noah (who put up 25 points, 13 boards — 7 offensive — and 3 dimes on a night where he had to step up following his Cleveland sucks comments), and the Bulls were right there with the Cavs. They trailed only 88-91 with 6 minutes left, and it legitimately looked like anyone’s game to win.

Then LeBron won it.

Three-pointer. Free-throws. Ridiculous driving finish. Dagger J. Dagger J. Swing pass out of a double for a trey.

Ball game.

For the Bulls, no one else really stood out. Luol Deng played a lot better, going 7/15 for 20 points after an ugly 5/15 performance in Game 1 and converting a huge three-point play to cut the Cleveland lead to just 3 right before LeBron went nuts. Hinrich and Gibson were both bad offensively, and Taj Gibson was effective but didn’t stand out much. Typical Bulls.

Jamario Moon was huge for the Cavs, sticking a bunch of timely threes, and this is something to keep an eye on during the next few games to see if he can continue being a reliable weapon. If so, that’s really good news for Cleveland.

But after him, no one else really did much on offense.

And, honestly, they didn’t need to.

I’m on a horse.

DeShawn Stevenson’s Abraham Lincoln tattoo wants you to make some noise. (via Deadspin with a h/t @sportsquota)

Thoughts on Blazers-Suns Game One:

• Shellshocked. That was the one word I wrote in my  notepad file for the first half, and it carried over. The Suns apparently read and listened to everything that we were saying. That Portland had no chance. That without Roy, they were toothless. We were dumb for saying so. They were inexcusably dumb for thinking that even if it was true that they could come out and perform like that.
• Amar’e is largely to blame, and we’ll get to him. But Nash has a hand in this as well.
• How can Nash have the blame after 25 points, 9 assists, and only 2 turnovers? He was one-half of the pick and roll failboat that set sail. The Blazers countered the pick and roll by going under the screen, fronting Amar’e, and sending a secondary pressure on Nash to force him to the other side.  And Nash went along with it. Instead of dribble hesitating to look for an oop or under pass to Amar’e, Nash circled around and tried to drive and kick. Over. And over. And over.
• On the other end of the floor, the Suns were prepared to let Aldridge shoot. Good strategy. but in a running theme of the night, the Blazers had things goin their way. And Aldridge killed them for 22 points. The main problem with the Suns’ defense was the mass confusion. Multiple times the Suns were simply bamboozeled as to who they needed to be guarded and where. They overextended, under-ran, and generally didn’t get anyone  in a Blazer face on multiple positions. The Andre Miller three was especially egregious to me. People immediately responded with “He only hit 16 all year!” And like I said in the Bucks’ notes, you have to choose someone to live with. But you don’t just concede. The Suns always seem to play okay defense for long stretches and then simply fail to get a hand in a guy’s face. Any attempt from Jason Richardson and Miller misses that shot, and you’re in a much different position.
• Anyone who says Jason Richardson had a good game is out of their gourd. I heard the argument that Leandro Barbosa, one of the few Suns who was forcing the issue on offense that Miller was eating him alive. Guess what? 33 points, you’re getting eaten alive by a F-Lion. But Richardson was not only tossing up bricks, but got lost on defense and looked clunky in the flow of the offense. Fail.
• For the Blazers, Bayless. Man, Bayless. You knew Miller was going to get his. The guy just gets buckets. What’s that? I said he was going to be a horrific bust as a free agent in preseason? I dogged on him for the first half of the year? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Andre Miller’s spirit animal is obstructing my hearing as it humps my ear.
• But Bayless continues his emergence. It seemed like the Suns finally had started to figure out the Blazers, then Bayless comes in and tears things up. Huh, speedy fierce small guard comes in and forces the issue and is the difference. Wish the Suns had someone like that. OH WAIT.
• Marcus Camby is the human equivalent of the AT-AT. That’s all I got.

Thoughts and exaltations from Game 1 of Hawks-Bucks.

• If there is an overriding theme to this weekend, no better summarized than in Bucks-Hawks, Game 1, it’s “the first barrage will kill you, even if you withstand it enough to volley your own.”  We saw Cleveland blow doors off, only to watch Rose and company pick those doors up and use them as shields as they charged back into the saloon. We saw the Lakers’ calvary make mince meat of the Thunder, before Westbrook dragged a man (Fisher) off his horse and evened the keel too late. We saw Orlando look like world-beaters for 24 minutes before the Bobcats beat their world in for another 24. And we saw this game, where the Hawks detonated and surged every being in the building with electricity, only to burn out to the floor while Jennings strapped some gauze on and went back to work.
• That run in the first half was a blitzkrieg, capped by the Josh Smith alley oop. There was just too much Hawk. Everything that could have possibly gone wrong from a coaching and matchup standpoint did for the Bucks. Delfino on Josh Smith? Disaster. The only effective translation was Mbah a Moute on Joe Johnson, and that’s a waste considering the situation the Bucks are in.
• Let me explain. In every playoff game there’s gotta be someone you’re going to live with. It’s the playoffs. These are all good teams. SOMEONE is going to play well (unless you’re Phoenix, apparently). For the Hawks, you live with Joe Johnson. That’s who you accept. Because if he’s hitting shots, he’s hitting shots, and if he’s not, he’s not. LRMAM may have played great defense on him (more shots than points), but that was probably going to be the result anyway. Meanwhile, in moving arguably your best defender and one of the few guys left with size sans Bogut to the back court, you give the Hawks the golden ticket. That team gets its bigs involved and you’re in a world of hurt.
• The comeback was, of course, Jennings, who was back to Pterodactyl with Wings of Fire mode, but Salmons was the lost non-hero. He got that elbow pull-up going. There are a  lot of 2′s in the league that like that shot, that love that shot. But only a handful who can reliably knock it down. So when Salmons can do that, it gives them a big leg-up, because he’s an odd defensive assignment for the Hawks. Not a bad one, just an odd one.
• The debate is going to be if the Bucks should go small. That’ s suicide.  The Hawks make their living by creating multiple possessions per trip, with an ORR of 28.17, good for fifth best in the league. You surrender the glass and you’re looking at too many weapons. Atlanta has the fourth lowest pace in the league, Milwaukee’s in the middle range. So the hope of speeding up the game is only going to be so effective because the Bucks aren’t that good at it to begin with. I’d actually opt to go with a bigger line-up for long stretches. Kurt Thomas, once he got going, did a much better job on Al Horford. Combo him with Ilaysova for a 4-5 hybrid, and pair him with Mbah a Moute. You can actually probably get away with an Ilyasova-Moute 4-5 for some stretches. Horford’s a tough rebounder, a smart rebounder, but not a gigantic one. You’re not giving up size, so stretch the boundaries a little bit, especially with two of your better defenders.
• Jennings is flirting with Bombs Over Baghdad (read Ballard if you’re confused). He nails those pull-up step back threes and it’s “a big time player hitting big time shots.” But taking them too early in the shot clock without working for a better one and he’s driving dangerously close to the edge with no guard rail. Long ill-advised threes are low percentage shots that lead to long rebounds which lead to transition plays against arguably the most athletic team in the East. But you need Jennings fearless, need him to take over. It’s going to take that kind of performance to make up for the talent differential due to injury (curse you, basketball gods!).
• I don’t know what to make of Horford. In the first half he was headed for a playoff re-arrival (Celtics ’08 was his arrival), and then smoked out in the second. Just drifted. Horford needs to be a beast in this series. Let the rest of the team cruise a bit and get the work done.
• I have railed against Skiles playing Ridnour all year, and yet I feel like he short-timed Ridnour in this one. I’m almost tempted to suggest a Jennings-Ridnour-Salmons-Moute-Ilyasova lineup, but I just said they shouldn’t go small.  The point is that the Bucks have some versatility. Maybe the secret is to not to commit to a lineup. Keep throwing new things at the Hawks and see what sticks.
• LRMaM cannot shoot 5 shots if he’s going to shoot 80%. He’s got to be willing to assert himself, and Skiles has to support that notion. They’re going to need points from somewhere, and whoever’s got the hand on any given day has to ride it. Your biggest, most reliable option is out. Time to get inventive.

The internet is a big place. Lots of stuff out there, kiddos. And while the whole HP crew will continue to cover the Playoffs here (see below), we all write about basketball at other places as well. So from time to time, we’ll drop some link-dump updates to the other outlets where we drop knowledge.

Here are all the non-HP Playoff posts we penned this weekend:

• Matt Moore on Celtics vs. Heat Game 1. Relatedly, Matt also wrote on the Kevin Garnett suspension, Joakim Noah calling KG dirty and KG saying that “Q was talking nonsense”
• Matt Moore on Mehmet Okur’s ruptured achilles
• Rob Mahoney on Mavericks vs. Spurs Game 1.
• Rob Mahoney on the general awesomeness that is the Mavericks/Spurs series in video form and in written form. (More here on the same topic)
• Rob Mahoney on Cavaliers vs. Bulls Game 1
• Zach Harper on Nuggets vs Jazz Game 1
• Zach Harper on Cavaliers vs. Bulls Game 1
• Zach Harper on The Weekly Fix podcast previewing the East Playoffs and the West Playoffs
• Me on JR Smith adding to his “Book of Swish” legacy
• Me on the Lakers flipping the switch, Mega Maid-style
• Me on the Talking About Practice podcast talking playoffs with Kelly Dwyer

In addition, there is obviously also a boatload of Playoff coverage right here on HP proper, so to help you better navigate, here’s a table of contents-like rundown of backlinks in case you missed anything this weekend or just want to revisit it for some reason.

General Playoffs

Paroxysm Predictions

Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Chicago Bulls

Game 1 Recap: The Bulls Prep for Losing Games 2, 3 and 4 by Losing Game 1

Boston Celtics vs. Miami Heat

Series Preview: The Unknown (This Is Not an M. Night Shyamalan Movie)
Game 1 Recap: The Celtics Remind the Heat that “Defense Is Out Backbone”

Atlanta Hawks vs. Milwaukee Bucks

:(

Orlando Magic vs. Charlotte Bobcats

Series Preview: Don’t You See? We’ve Already Won

Los Angeles Lakers vs. Oklahoma City Thunder

Series Preview: Think David vs. Goliath Only Both Have Slingshots
Game 1 Recap: Thunder and Lakers Show You How to Not Play the 1-8 Match-up

Denver Nuggets vs. Utah Jazz

Series Preview: The Trailer Looks Great
Game 1 Recap: Nuggets Offense Asphyxiates the Jazz Will to Score

Phoenix Suns vs. Portland Trailblazers

Series Preview: Any Camel Chiropractors in the House?

Dallas Mavericks vs. San Antonio Spurs

Series Preview: We Meet Again Old Friend

This was one of the most frustrating games I’ve ever watched and I’m not even a fan of either team. So I can only imagine what it was like for Lakers and Thunder fans.

For a while, it looked like the Lakers were going to do what we all expected them to do. They were punishing the Thunder inside. They were trying to teach them a lesson. The lesson was “we’re happy for you that such a young team was able to make huge improvements, win 50 games, get Matt Moore cake and be one of the most surprising defensive teams in the league but we’d like to show you that none of that means anything unless you’ve got size and power and we’re going to show you that we have size and power.”

Here is essentially the first quarter reenacted by our friends from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia – Mac and Dee.

(NSFW – language)

The Thunder were just getting abused inside by Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum and there was nothing OKC could do about it. Sure, Nick Collison and Serge Ibaka were able to do decent jobs on the Lakers’ bigs in stretches during this game but when the Lakers concentrated on pounding the ball inside, it was complete domination.

But the Lakers weren’t content on their steady dose of playoff basketball they kept giving to the Thunder. They were intent on trying to knock down bad shots. Derek Fisher took A LOT of shots early and it almost seemed like it was by design. I felt like they were messing with OKC by saying, “we know we can beat you so we’re going to let this guy shoot for a while.” And this has been my problem with the Lakers all season long. We know they can dominate and we think they should dominate. But they keep making things harder for themselves. They keep taking bad shots instead of going out and getting much easier shots.

They had 14 points in the paint in the first quarter. The Thunder had 13 points total. And yet, the Lakers finished with just 34 points in the paint. They had 20 points in the paint at halftime. However, they just wanted to shoot jumpers, make threes and show off their skills. Sometimes, all the skill in the world doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have power.

The Thunder on the other hand must have seen the Lakers interior presence on offense and had it scare them away when they were trying to score because all they did early on was take bad jumpers. It wasn’t until Russell Westbrook realized that he had a corpse in a Derek Fisher jersey guarding him that the Thunder really started attacking the basket. At a certain point, it looked like Westbrook was intent on having some layup practice because he was relentless in attacking the hoop.

With this Lakers team, that’s what you have to do. Slap them in the face and let them know you’re probably going to be here for a while so they might as well take you seriously. Yes, Andrew Bynum is too big for the Thunder. Yes, Pau Gasol is too skilled for the Thunder. Yes, Kobe and Odom can get inside seemingly whenever they want. So what?

The Thunder needed to realize much earlier they should attack the basket. Perhaps it was first playoff game jitters for this team. I’m not quite sure what the problem was. But you could tell Westbrook was often the only guy who wasn’t afraid to mix it up a little.

Sadly, the most intimidated person on the court seemed to be Kevin Durant. I don’t know if Ron Artest was whispering disturbingly illegal things into his ear when they were standing next to each other but something rattled Durant. He tried to persevere through it by getting himself to the free throw line. After all, he got there 11 times. However, Ron’s defense was pretty spectacular in taking away Durant’s strengths on the court.

Durant was almost always out of rhythm on his jumper and having to take a contested shot. Artest was physical. He was rough. He hounded him constantly and always made contact with Durant whether he had the ball or not. A couple of times, it backfired with the way Durant gets you to get your arms in the way of his so he can go up for a jumper and initiate a foul on his defender. When he wasn’t doing that, Ron made life difficult. I don’t really blame Durant for it either. He was too passive for his team’s good but he didn’t necessarily shy away from taking shots. He just wasn’t in rhythm. He settled for a lot of much deeper shots than you’d like. He needed to get things going towards the basket and instead was forced into settling.

The weird thing about this game is you’d look at the low score from two decent offensive teams and expect it to be a sloppy affair. I think it was just poorly executed and a little lazy in the efforts by both teams. Both teams actually took good care of the ball. There were not a lot of poor dribbling displays or bad passes. Just rushed shots that were far more difficult than they needed to be. You should never have a Lakers game in which Ron Artest and Derek Fisher combine for 23 shots (7/23 overall).

I’m just disappointed that it took so long for the Thunder to see they belonged on the court with the Lakers. You’d like Russell Westbrook to take control early from what we saw and prove to his team that they can hang. He’s that type of player with a strong personality. He’s not afraid of anybody. Unfortunately for him, he was being too much of a point guard and not assertive enough. I’d expect him to go on a tear for the rest of the season in a similar way to what we saw when the Thunder were playing well.

And I’m disappointed in the Lakers for not sticking to what was working and just letting Bynum and Gasol dominate. Bynum was fierce. He realized he was the biggest and strongest guy on the court early and stepped up to the challenge of breaking the will of the opponent. But the Lakers wouldn’t let him continue his feats of strength. Andrew only took ten shots in the game and only had four attempts in the second half. Bynum and Gasol combined for 32 points, 25 rebounds, and seven blocks.

In the next game, some things need to change:

- First, the Thunder need to get Kevin Durant in motion. He’s essentially a wide receiver who is getting jammed at the line and needs to find a way to get some room to operate. For the first half of next game, I’d put him in motion and treat him like Reggie Miller running off of screens. With his jumper, he can be deadly coming off of curls and double screens along the baseline. He’ll square up his jumper and use his height to make it virtually indefensible. This will get Artest off his back and allow him plenty of breathing room. If the Lakers jump out on the screen, it can leave a slip to the basket by the screener and get some easy scoring opportunities for Green, Ibaka, etc.

Once you can get Durant in a rhythm with his jumper, the rest of the talent will take care of itself. The Lakers will either have to double team and deal with a disadvantage in the middle of the floor or keep the single coverage and let Durant carve up the perimeter. I think the more attention that has to be shown to Durant, the more likely you can find scoring space for Jeff Green and Nenad Krstic for mid-range jumpers. I doubt the Thunder shooters will continue to struggle with wide-open looks.

- Second, the Lakers need to get Kobe on the low block and allow him to dissect the defense more. I’m talking more cutters, more screens away from the ball and more patient post moves like the first one he put on Russell Westbrook in this game. He was so patient and just waited. He faked the fadeaway jumper a couple of times before going into the deep post, pump-faking again and then scoring over Green. Kobe can do that whenever he wants. I’d like to see it more.

- I want Jeff Green to see what Lamar Odom does and try to copy him. Green should be driving and dishing a lot more. He’s so versatile. I don’t think he should be settling for jumpers quite as much.

- The Lakers need to push the tempo off the long jumpers they’re forcing the Thunder to miss. Two fast break points is a horribly low numbers, especially since the Thunder are so bad at transition defense. Lakers need to look for easier points.

Overall, both teams can’t really be proud of this game. The Lakers held their serve at home so they get to take the win but they can’t be happy with the way they played and the way they couldn’t put the Thunder away. The Thunder should be of the mindset that the playoff jitters are out and now it’s time to play some basketball.

Look, I don’t like to go around tooting my own horn. Or playing my own trumpet. Or whatever the kids are saying these days. I mean, if I spent the whole day walking around pointing out how awesome I am, I wouldn’t even have time to sleep. Or eat. I would barely have enough hours left over to turn down all these models that keep asking me on dates.

But Game 1 of the Celtics/Heat series was what I told you it would be. (I’m not special. Everyone was saying this.) Two good defensive teams mucking it up, Dwyane Wade being really, really good but getting no help, and the Celtics getting their unspectacular-yet-Ubuntuesque offense together just enough to have a lead when the final buzzer sounded.

Starting at the start, Flash was an animal. He shot 4/5 on his way to 9 points in the first quarter, of which he played every second, and got the stat-sheet stuffing thing going by adding an assist, a steal and a block. Miami, perhaps relatedly, led by one after one and legitimately looked like the better team. We were watching the Heat score much easier than they should be capable of — in the TD Banknorth Garden no less — and Tony Allen was looking like the best player on Boston’s team. Not a good sign for the leprechaun crew.

Then things got really yucky. Dwyane went to the bench and his mates couldn’t score. Fortunately for them, neither could Boston, as we were all treated to an action-packed 15-13 second quarter best characterized by Ray Allen’s pre-All-Star-break-like 2/7 shooting in the period. Blah.

But the difference in this one was that the Celtics figured out how to score again in the second half while the Heat decidedly did not. 10 points in the fourth for Expiring Contracts Collective. That’s not a bingo.

It wasn’t just them sucking though, even though they definitely did that a lot and Dwyane over-dribbled way too much. More so, the Celtics played excellent defense. Tony Allen played the best game I’ve ever seen him play, keeping Wade in front of him and fighting through enough screens and denying him the ball on the wing aggressively enough to chew up some shot-clock. 24 seconds really isn’t that long, so if you can keep Miami from throwing it easily to Flash on the wing and make them instead rotate the ball to Option C, you’re really helping out the team. Tony did all that and more. It’s really weird to type that sentence.

More than anything done individually, however, it was the team rotations that stymied the Heat attack. The Boston front court played together on a string, and the Celtics quickly adjusted to ready themselves for any extra pass or drive attempt that might come their way. No matter what Miami’s plan of attack was, the defense was prepared. And once Boston figured out that Miami only has about three different styles of attacking, they were borderline impenetrable.

It was some really pretty stuff in the midst of a really ugly game. Even Paul Pierce was stepping over in time to take a key charge late in the fourth. Glen Davis similarly did this against Wade at one point, which coincided with a great recovery/shot block by Tony Allen, although the Large Infant was called for the block. Apparently his double-chin got Dwyane on the chest.

That’s all that really happened.

Dwyane was great (11/18 for 26 points along with 8 boards, 6 dimes, 3 steals and 2 blocks) but no one else on Miami was (Q was alright and JO protected the rim pretty well). While on the other side, no one on the Cetlics was great (aside from Tony Allen), but the team was very cohesive and successful defensively.

As for the little minor scrap, KG will probably get a game off. No one really did anything particularly noteworthy in this mean-mugging and chest-bumping brouhaha, but Garnett did toss that elbow pretty hard and pretty high on his way out the scrum.

At least he’ll get to rest that knee.

And hopefully this added tension will boil over into the Game 2 Kendrick Perkins/Udonis Haslem fisticuffs that everyone wants to see. It would be scowl-rific.

The Bulls will probably have just as much chance in this series if they game plan based on the above video as they will if they actually try to figure out scheme in which the players who wear their jerseys can beat the players who wear Cavs jerseys. Because none exist. The talent differential is simply too great, and the Bulls offense is simply too incompetent. They just can’t score regularly — they didn’t in Game 1 and they didn’t all season long — and that’s not particularly helpful when you’re matching up against the 6th best defense in the NBA.

In order to win a single game, the Bulls will need to get both inspired effort and dead-eye shooting from just about every member of their 8-man rotation, which consists of Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah and six other mediocre-at-best basketball players. In Game 1, they got neither of those things. Thus, they lost. Stellar analysis, I know. But it’s the truth. No one played well, aside from their second-year point guard for small stretches.

On the good side, Rose made 13 shots on his way to 28 points, piled up 10 assists and grabbed 7 boards while also creating some good open looks for his teammates on some drive-and-kick action and having at least one extended stretch of high-level play in the third quarter. Good stuff. But on the other hand, he missed 15 shots (to finish 13/28 overall), turned the ball over an inexcusable 7 times and, worse still, got to the line only twice. That’s just not going to get it done. Especially considering he played weak defense and allowed himself to be screened out of the play much too often.

But, aside from knuckling up and playing better D (which, let’s face it, wasn’t the side of the floor where Chicago really lost this game), what more would we have Rose do? He certainly needs to get to the line more, but it’s not like he was settling for jumpers and not penetrating. He drove plenty. He just didn’t finish enough or force enough contact, both of which are probably a helluva lot easier said than done when Cleveland’s entire interior is rotating to where you’re going to be before you even get there since there is no one on Chicago’s roster capable of burning them with the outside shot. When there is nothing to respect aside from Derrick getting to the cup or dumping the ball off to a big if the rotation is sloppy, the defense is just going to collapse and contest every inside shot with multiple guys. Some of Rose’s interior looks weren’t bad shots, per se. They were just tough looks and off-balance floaters that he isn’t used to taking since he normally doesn’t have to be that creative once he gets by an initial defender.

So, sure, we can look at Rose’s 13/28 night and say “you have to shot better … you can’t waste so many possessions.” Or we can look at Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich’s collective 9/25 shooting and say “I guess a Rose drive into the teeth of the defense that ends up in a turnover isn’t all that much worse than what would have probably happened otherwise.” Throw in Taj Gibson’s 4/10 night and a 4/9 evening for Noah, who I really can’t recall doing anything useful on offense (zero offensive boards, for instance), and it’s not as if the possessions wasted by Rose were likely going to be better utilized by anyone else in this failure pile in a sadness bowl that is the Bulls’ 27th ranked offense.

The nugget of potential effectiveness I did see that perhaps the Bulls should pursue a little deeper is Hakim Warrick in the post. Warrick played less than 10 minutes, so we probably won’t see much of him in Game 2 either, but he converted a little turnaround move over some good defense by LeBron in the second quarter. Then they went right back to him on the block and, while unsuccessful with the shot, he got another, similar good attempt up. Them being the Bulls and them being coached by a terrible, terrible, terrible coach, they of course never tried this again, but it looked like something that might provide four or five fewer wasted possessions in Game 2. And this is coming from someone who thinks that Hakim Warrick, for lack of a more poetical or adult word, sucks.

As for the Cavs, they were the Cavs.

Jay-Z style, what more can I say? Andy Varejao was diving into the stands and grabbing 15 boards. LeBron was impressively putting up a mediocre-for-him 24/6/5 line with a couple nice blocks (which were broken down in an awesome yet, as SLAM’s Marcel Mutoni put it, “pause-worthy” Sports Science segment about his swatability during half time). Shaq was being his average, large self. Mo Gotti, a name that I only use in an ironical, Black Mambaesque way, was getting buckets (8/14 overall and 3/7 from three). Jamison showed why his acquisition easily makes this the best team LeBron has ever played for by knocking down half his attempts (7/14) even when his outside J wasn’t falling (only 1/4 from deep) and collecting 10 boards. And Anthony Parker and Delonte West existed.

Yup. That’s the Cavs.

And at this point, the only thing the Bulls should be doing is investing in brooms. But, hey, at least they get to play 86 games while the Raptors only got 82. So there’s that.