(Quick Note: I’m not quite sure what I spewed onto this page. I just know that Cleveland’s LeBacle left me confused and questioning everything I think I know about the current state of basketball and stardom. Consider this me trying to sort it out in my own head. It probably doesn’t make sense.)

When older generations speak of how today’s youth has grown soft to the touch and incapable of working hard for what they want in life, the younger generations often dismiss these accusations with thoughts of jealousy and exaggeration being hurled their way.

The “greatest generation” has had their tales woven by luminaries and great authors while our generations try to figure out how to make a quick buck as a YouTube sensation or the latest prize winner on So You Think You Can Turn Your Fifteen Minutes of Fame Into a Pension Plan. That’s not to say my and later generations don’t have those who are willing to work for success and glory. We are to a certain extent capable of accomplishing this. But at the same time, the idea of work ethic and killer instinct have been diluted into varying clichés while we try to figure out how to get more efficient.

Efficiency is kind of a funny thing. In essence, it’s what you want in your workers and fellow man. We build computers, cell phones and automobiles to be as economical and systematic as they can possibly be. We want more production with less effort in a way to show just how smart we are. But essentially, it’s a sign of laziness. Efficiency brings about thoughts of intelligence and getting the most bang for your buck.

In the sports world, we’ve been a part of this efficiency revolution because maximizing your assets is the best way to get the most out of your franchise and product. However, there is a fine line that can be approached by doing this. Being efficient is the best way to stretch your dollar and it’s probably the best way to ensure whether a player is worth the time on the court or not. But what if efficiency has ended up breeding lazy people who don’t have enough fight?

The NBA stars of today never just want a long-term guaranteed contract to solidify their financial freedom and job security. Guys like Von Wafer, Matt Barnes and Flip Murray are the guys who are the ones seeking elongated acceptance as a professional athlete. Instead, today’s NBA stars – and more importantly superstars – are looking for the max contract to be the cherry on the multiple endorsement deals and clothing line sundae.

Guys like LeBron James, Dwight Howard and Carmelo Anthony are born into this league with marketing stardom. They have an image to worry about both on and off the court as they turn their likeness into a certified cash cow. And there’s nothing wrong with this in anyway as long as it doesn’t get in the way of mystique and folklore.

The new American way is now “get as much as you can as early and often as you can.” We create shortcuts on our keyboards to help us complete tasks much quicker than normal. We turn our loved one’s phone numbers into a single button on speed dial just to avoid doing anything extraneous with our fingers. It’s human nature now to get away with whatever you can while conserving energy and effort.

After, Tuesday night in Cleveland it clearly extends beyond the common people and into the icons we follow.

LeBron James is a savvy enterprise. I don’t even think you can call him a businessman at this point. Like Jay-Z said, “I’m not a businessman; I’m a business, MAN.” With every play on the court, LeBron James stock goes up or down on the superstar stock market. He is a salesman first and everything else second. He has goals to be a billionaire athlete because for him, it’s not only a likelihood but it’s also inevitable. People love LeBron James. You probably hate him or can’t stand the way he composes himself and his calculated antics. Frankly, most of the time I can’t blame you because I’m helping you paddle that boat. But overall, people love LeBron James.

It’s what makes him such a profitable venture. The love he receives from the masses invokes an attractive jealousy that we pine for. If only I was as tall or as strong or as athletic or as skilled as LeBron James is, I’d be a global icon too! He projects so many endearing and infuriating qualities onto the television screen that you can’t help but form an opinion about everything he does. He keeps himself in the eye of the public because it’s his way to attract attention, coverage and Twitter accounts posing as his body parts.

But what we’ve seen during the most adversarially challenging time of his career makes me think he’s no different than any other human being. It’s times like this that make you question his desire (lord knows Woj just did) and work ethic for the greater good of basketball. Guys like LeBron, Dwight and Carmelo have blatant flaws in their respective games that you just assume will be ironed out with age and experience. We predict they’ll add the missing pieces to their skill set puzzle to help complete the animal we all want them to evolve into.

And here we are with LeBron’s back against the wall, challenging his desire and bravado once again. The worst thing that could have happened to him was the 48-point explosion against the Pistons in 2007. It accelerated the process in which we allowed him to develop. It impossibly piled on expectations that the hype machine had planned on producing as his career progressed. Instead, we expect greatness from him now and any sign of failure is a point on his license to be amongst the sports historical greats. In a way, it was the premature leap that could have possibly stunted the needed growth to do the things we want him to do (expand his game, learn to win, become a killer).

We want fight from our stars through adversity and through boredom. We want our legends to be wired in a way that makes them want to crush anything and everything in the way of their goals. Michael Jordan was the poster boy for all of this. People didn’t want to be like Mike because of his basketball skill or his athletic ability. We wanted to be like Mike because he had the mentality we all envied on top of the physical accoutrements. He was a killer and so determined to win that nothing else mattered. When we see a seemingly unstoppable force like LeBron, we want him to be cut from the same mold.

But losing a pivotal Game Five on your home court by more than 30 points doesn’t exude this type of inner-animal. LeBron assumes greatness from himself because that’s all he’s ever known. He’s almost always been the best basketball player on the court throughout his lifetime. He has his own expectations of how he should perform. For the past eight years of his life, he’s been playing a part he thinks he saw on television.

LeBron James is dangerously becoming the basketball embodiment of Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman. He is charming and charismatic in a way that should disarm just about everybody. The existence of greatness lies within both of these protagonists. But honing and demonstrating this greatness seem to be their downfall. They both assume they can manufacture this greatness whenever they want to but it’s simply not that easy.

Domination is a state of mind that is either there or isn’t. There is no faking imposing your will on someone as you get deeper into the playoffs. There is not a way to fake hunger, especially when the competition set before you has real hunger. The Celtics have a hunger that derives from not wanting to be too old to win. The Magic have a hunger that comes from tasting success last season and wanting to prove everybody wrong that it was just a fluke. The Lakers have a hunger from the most singularly focused individual we’ve seen of the past 12 years. But what do the Cavs have?

The Cavs have LeBron James whose focus and hunger seem to be more marketing scheme rather than something to fear. His failures create a reaction of bewilderment, I told you so’s and trepidation that anointing this self-proclaimed “king” was an honor we should have never agreed to. We don’t want to see vulnerability from him.

Now we wait for Game Six and possibly Game Seven to see how he responds. If he’s what we’ve built him up to be, I’d imagine that Game Five of the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals will look like nothing more than a Mike Wilks production.

But if the current, perceived culture of laziness and an unwillingness to fight for his victory rears its ugly head in LeBron, then the conclusion of this series may truly be a current adaptation of Death of a Salesman.

I don’t know if you heard, but Goran Dragic won the MVP Award on Friday night. He scored 26 points — all in the second half and 23 in the fourth –  in the Suns’ decisive Game 3 victory over the Spurs, and was thereby coronated as the league’s Most Valuable Player, the Suns’ new starting point guard, and the sovereign ruler of the great state of Arizona.

Witness history in the making:

For a bigger view, click here.

During rising action, the basic internal conflict is complicated by the introduction of related secondary conflicts, including various obstacles that frustrate the protagonist’s attempt to reach his goal. Secondary conflicts can include adversaries of lesser importance than the story’s antagonist, who may work with the antagonist or separately, by and for themselves or actions unknown.

“The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.”- Abraham Lincoln

We close the third act of our tale with the most unfamiliar of turns. The unknown to many but familiar to his kin, comes forth in a blaze of fury with rod and whip in hand, and drives the horses beyond the horizon. We approach the climax of our story, suddenly, much faster than we anticipated, stunned at how this progressed. Seriously, this has gotten out of hand, fast. We’re now facing a reality where the Suns… the SUNS, led by Steve Nash, could sweep the San Antonio Spurs, led by Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili. It’s a bizarre landscape, and I find myself seeking shelter. I had abandoned all hope for a Suns victory in this game long ago, as soon as the buzzer sounded to end Game 2. No way a Spurs team lets one go at home down 2-0. And then they won.

Behind Dragic.

Dragic was taken with a draft pick acquired from the San Antonio Spurs and looked absolutely lost his rookie season. He seemed like  another lost draft pick by the Suns to many (and by many, I mean me, who constantly mocked the pick). And Dragic was insane tonight. He started heating up, and then this happened:

BOOM.

That kicked off a surge of confidence where Dragic essentially took over the game. He relentlessly took whoever was guarding him to the rack, and thanks to a bizarre strategy by Gregg Popovich to religiously switch, he found hmself guarded by players who had no business trying to check him on the outside. Like, oh, say, DeJuan Blair. There was a play late where the Suns set the offense in motion, made three perimeter rotations and when Dragic was chased off the three, he didn’t settle for the mid-range J. He lunged straight for the rim and banked it in off-glass. He was fouled on the play but no call was made. Instead of complaining to the refs, he simply sprinted up court.

Parker needs to be addressed here.

I pointed out last game that Dragic had the ability to rattle Parker. And it continued in this game. Parker’s obviously is hurt, dragging and trying to play through plantar fasciitis. But he’s still capable of slicing up the Suns if there’s not a perimeter defender that can check him. Dragic can. And did. Dragic blocked the Parker baseline floater that I’ve seen Parker nail on the Suns about a million times. And for him to absolutely take over on the other end, with no one able to check him, that gave the Suns a counter they’ve never had.

For years it’s been “if the Suns get Nash to have a good game, and STAT takes over, and they hit their threes, and they don’t get killed on the glass and if puppies turn into rainbows and if you clap your hands, they can win.” While with the Spurs, it was “they’ll get consistent performance from the Big 3 throughout the series and a few games where an unlikely player steps up. But their defense will consistently keep them in games.” And thus, we have the formula fully reversed and used against itself.

I cannot say enough about how much fool’s gold Matt Bonner is. At PBT, I introduced the Matt Bonner Blown Assignment Drinking Game. It’s a quick way to the hospital. What’s worse, you can actually see the Spurs cheating on their own assignments, going to try and cover for Bonner. “I’d better be ready in case Matt isn’t where he needs to be.” And yet, he played 20 minutes! At what point do you not recognize how big a liability he is on both sides of the floor, even if he is knocking down the three, and go with a more versatile player for minutes? Huge fail for Popovich.

We now face an uncertain end to our story, because if any team, if ANY team, can come back from 0-3, it’s the Spurs, and if any team can surrender a 3-0 lead to the Spurs, it’s the Suns. But the Suns have now come back twice from double digit deficits to win by double digits. We see history being unraveled before us and the light of the Suns piercing the shrouded wasteland. This will either become the final and most crushing defeat of the Suns by the Spurs, or the final, unequivocal redemption for Nash’s Suns, regardless of their Western Conference Finals result. To go from lottery to besting the Spurs? That’s better than their wildest dreams. And as the action rose, they found themselves believing in that ideal.

The future is not set. It is what we make for ourselves.

Just stellar, stellar stuff here from Kevin Arnovitz and David Thorpe of ESPN. They break down Timmy’s defensive breakdowns both visually and verbally better in three minutes than most people could do in a whole book.

Thorpe talks about how the Spurs are attempting to stop the Nash/Amar’e pick-and-roll by having Timmy smother the ball handler while at the same time taking away the lob/pass. This, for those of you who have never tried it, is an incredibly difficult thing to do. You’re asking one NBA player to guard two NBA players. Because of Duncan’s still-underrated greatness — particularly on the defensive end — this is something that the Spurs have previously always relied on. And it’s something that, much as his nickname Groundhog Day would suggest, was always able to do. Like clock work. How? None of us mere mortals have any idea. That’s between him, Pop and the basketball gods. But being the best power-forward of all time and all, Timmy was indeed able to pull it off consistently throughout his career.

Now? In 2010?

Well, he’s old. And he doesn’t react quickly enough to do it anymore — at least not when the two offensive players running the screen/roll are Steve Nash (one of the quickest, most elusive, most decisive ball-handlers in NBA history) and Amar’e (one of the most athletic, high-flying big men in NBA history).

And David Thorpe says that it’s time for the Spurs to recognize this and adjust their defensive strategy:

They’ve asked [Duncan] to do something that very few people in history could really accomplish, and he’s no longer able to do that. San Antonio now has to make a change … The old Tim Duncan would have been able to smother Nash’s shot — or make him shoot it so awkwardly that he wasn’t going to make it. Now, in that exact moment when he has to make a decision, he is left grounded and can’t react. And that’s why San Antonio now will have to do what the rest of the free world has to do, which is they’re going to have to ask him to take one guy away or the other.

It’s sad to see greatness decay.

But it is inevitable, Mr. Anderson.

The exposition ends with the inciting moment, which is the incident without which there would be no story.

“It is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of complex phenomena which appear to be things quite apart from the direct visible truth.”-Albert Einstein

We witness, in act two of our intense narrative, the inciting action, where the tone is set for our fair tale, the players fully established, and turns safely guarded in mystery. Our story is not the continued clash of pace versus defense, stodge versus vigor, nor some sort of coming-of-age for Amar’e. Instead it’s about unity, the centralization of effort from man to man, because for the first time, since the game which ended under the cloud of THE HIPCHECK, the Suns have pushed the Spurs against the wall and landed a haymaker. They’re not dangling off a cliff, but that breeze at their back ain’t the gentle sea.

Thing was, the game was mince meat. Easy to swallow Spurs domination. And then Jared Dudley took cover completely for a quarter and things were never the same. Dudley crashed the glass and brought with him the same attitude back to the Suns they had in Game 1: “We will not be bullied, we will not be frustrated, we will not be out-worked. If you defeat us, it is because you hit contested shots and things went your way again. But we’re not losing by beating ourselves. Not this time.” And the Suns responded.

I had several conversations with Graydon throughout this game, and after the third I called and told him “The Spurs are making super athletic plays and the Suns are lying in the weeds, tracking them by making the extra pass and running efficient offense. Where the hell are we?!”

The final five minutes though, were absolutely insane. There was no sense to it. None. Channing Frye picks up his fifth foul, and the Spurs fail to capitalize on it. The Suns run the pick and roll, the Spurs take six tries to figure out a solvent for it. The Spurs turned to George Hill’s perimeter game… and it worked. But The Suns had every answer, including two huge Amar’e Stoudemire rebounds. That’s right. Amar’e Stoudemire collected huge rebounds down the stretch. Please collect your bottled water on the way to the bomb shelter.

The role reversal in this game is what has Spurs fans stunned today. It was the Suns’ blue collar bench coming in to outwork the Spurs. It was Goran Dragic doing a remarkably great job on Tony Parker for the first six minutes of the fourth. It was the Suns fighting back from a deficit. It was the Suns overcoming the Spurs’ athletic dunks by Richard Jefferson with well-timed passes and cohesion. In essence, the moon flipped to the ground, did a handstand, smoked a bowl, and then ran away with the spoon.

Up is down, hell is heaven, and the Suns have their first 2-0 lead over Duncan’s Spurs.

There is not a person, not a single one, that thinks this is over. But what has happened is relevant. Because if the Suns are to defeat the Spurs, it has to start with something. It has to start with confidence, and they have that. They took a shot from San Antonio, a Tim-Duncan-rocking, Tony-Parker-midranging, George-Hill-treying shot and beat them on the glass and from the arc.

The point where it was over? Alvin Gentry sent Amar’e Stoudemire and Jason Richardson to join Steve Nash on the bench early in the fourth quarter. Popovich stuck with Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, and re-inserted Tim Duncan. From the 9:30 mark of the 4th quarter until 5:47, the Suns faced the Big 3 with not a single one of theirs. The result?

+1.

The Suns bench unit outplayed the Big 3 plus Jefferson and George Hill. Even if it’s just a point, it means the Big 3 came back in rested and ready to work the pick and roll. Which they did, to the tune of one of Amar’e fiercest dunks and a final +5 run to put the foot to the throat. The same foot that’s been missing for so, so long against the Spurs.

Another interesting sideplot to that stint without Nash was this: via Synergy Tony Parker, two turnovers, 0 field goals with Goran Dragic defending.

Goran Dragic was the counter to Tony Parker that Nash wasn’t. Let that one rattle around in your brain. Dragic has the youth to maintain speed ahead of Parker, and is bigger than Nash to keep a physical edge on LeBaguette. It may have only been for a game, but Dragic’s work on Parker deserves considerable notice.

Meanwhile, everything Matt Bonner is not, Channing Frye is. Confident, able to knock down shots with a defender closing, a good inside defender, capable, actually belonging on a professional basketball floor. If the hope is that Bonner will counter Frye, the early results indicate a knockout for the Suns.

All this, and Lopez still didn’t play.

There is plenty to be concerned about. Ginobili is still creating havoc, and while the Suns have done a good job of focusing on not allowing layups at the rim like the Mavericks rolled the red carpet out for, the weakside clean-up by Duncan is pretty devastating. There’s still a lot of work to be done, and all of that is before the fact that George Hill is getting his feet under him and knocking down threes, both of which can be devastating if they become consistent. But also recognize that after all the talk of D’Antoni’s super-tight rotations and their failure to win in the playoffs, Popovich only had seven players play double digit minutes last night, and one of those was Matt Bonner. So really, he only had 6.25 NBA players play double digit minutes last night.

So now our scene changes and we begin the rising action, wherein the conflict is introduced. Whether that conflict will be the vicious response of a wounded Spurs team in front of a home crowd or the crescendo of Phoenix’s finest hour on the road, we honestly don’t know. The question as to the result of this series has been re-opened. Hope, glorious hope is on the horizon. But beyond it lies the same dark cloud of history. As I told Graydon, “All this means is the Spurs are bent on finding a new way to kill their souls.”

Fin. Act II.

It seems as though I stumble upon a new basketball advanced stats site every week.  I found statsbynumbers.com after it was linked to in the APBRmetrics forum last Tuesday and I’ve been very impressed with what I’ve seen.  So far, the founder of the site has uploaded the post season data and will be publishing regular season data soon.  Each box score on the site is packed with data found in the play-by-plays, some of which you can’t find anywhere else.

In today’s post, I’m particularly interested in the Time Of Possession box.   Haven’t seen this in an NBA box score before.  NFL, yes, but this is new territory for basketball analysis as far as I can tell.  The number tells us how long each team controlled the possession for the game.  For example, in the box score from Suns-Spurs Game 1, we find that the Spurs had possession of the ball almost 2 minutes longer than the Suns did (24 mins 51 seconds vs. 23 mins 09 seconds).  Simple stuff but has some interesting implications for our understanding of pace.

Typically, when we talk about a team’s pace, we usually refer to the number of possessions in a game and then we aggregate those possessions over the course of a season to get a team’s average pace.  So the Golden State Warriors play at ludicrous speed and their average possessions per game of about 103 reflects their lead foot in the automotive proverbial sense of the phrase.  Contrast that with the Blazers who play at a slow crawl (90 possessions per game).

But on an individual game level, the possession total has minimal interpretation value.  If a regulation game lasted 100 possessions, we know it was up-tempo but we wouldn’t know who stepped on the gas.  We can make judgments from our prior knowledge of each team’s typical pace but often times that misses the mark.

That’s where Time of Possession comes in. Turns out, time of possession can vary wildly in the same game.  In Game 3 of the Lakers-Thunder series, the Lakers had the ball 5 minutes and 38 seconds longer than the Thunder.  That’s a half a quarter’s worth of time!   Like I said, statsbynumbers.com only has this year’s playoff data up on the site but that didn’t stop me from digging deep into the numbers.  For each game, I gathered each team’s time per possession and their total time of possession listed.

Who had the quickest one-game pace of the playoffs so far?  That would be Denver when they lost by 3  to Utah in Game 2 of their series, averaging just 13.7 seconds per possession in that contest.  Here are the top ten fastest of the postseason:

That Utah – Denver series was fast wasn’t it? They both like to play up-tempo basketball so it’s not a surprise to see track meets when they went head-to-head.  Also interesting was that Chicago’s time per possession in their Game 4 was slower than Cleveland’s Game 2 dud against Boston even though Chicago saw seven more possessions.  92 possessions may seem like a methodical pace but actually Cleveland did their best to speed up that game.

I expected the top ten to be filled with teams on the wrong end of a blowout since, anecdotally, teams down big like to get quick shots off to extend their breathing room.  But we have some close wins here as well as some routs.

How about the slowest performances of the playoffs?

Lakers opened up that Oklahoma City series by running through their sets and not letting their youthful opponents dictate their style of play.  Eventually, the Lakers were going to find their holes in the defense through patience and crisp passing.  In this one, the Lakers had the ball for over four minutes longer than the Thunder.

Portland was the slowest team in the NBA and they certainly didn’t give in to the Suns up-tempo style of play in Game 5.  On average, the Blazers drained the shot clock to 6 seconds remaining on every play in that game.  Didn’t expect to see two teams lose by double digits near the top of this list but the teams themselves (Charlotte and Portland) didn’t shock me.

Watching Game 7 of the Milwaukee – Atlanta game was like taking an Ambien.  Also, it’s worth noting that Game 3 of the Lakers – Thunder series featured some of the slowest and fastest tempos of the playoffs with the Thunder winning the battle by 5 points.

Comparing the two lists, we find that about five seconds separated the fastest time per possession to the slowest.  We don’t have regular season data on hand to look at the Denver vs. Portland games but Phoenix sufficed as a tortoise vs. the hare matchup– Phoenix had a faster average pace than Denver during the regular season.

Let’s take a step back and look at the fastest average time per possession of the playoffs.  Remember, this is a small sample, especially in the case of Charlotte who played just four games in the playoffs.

Phoenix finished the regular season with a faster tempo than Denver, but only by a nose.  In the postseason, the Nuggets actually paced the field before their first round exit.  Some other notables on this list include Boston matching Phoenix and Lakers not letting the fast pace of the Jazz and Thunder rush their triangle offense.

I’m not sure time of possession will stick in our basketball vernacular anytime soon but it undoubtedly adds some valuable information.  As we’ve seen, the number of possessions can mislead us into thinking that each team followed the same speed, which simply isn’t true– just look at Game 3 of the Lakers vs. Thunder series.  With more data in the regular season, we could analyze how teams respond to dissimilar styles of pace more accurately.  In general, do teams mold to their opponent’s pace or do they proudly go in the opposite direction? How does a coaching change affect their team’s tempo?  Which teams keep their tempo most consistently? All these questions are fair game, thanks to the assembly of data from statsbynumbers.com.

(Note: This is not me or anybody I’m related to. Carry on)

I remember when my parents put a basketball hoop into our backyard when I was 10 years old. I spent an inordinate amount of time out there working on jump shots and layups.

After a year or so, I was getting pretty decent at making them. I didn’t have a ton of dribbling ability because the majority of the backyard was grass. There was a cement walkway down the middle of the yard so I could dribble well in a straight line but overall, my specialty was becoming shot making. Every once in a while, I’d get some bonding time in with my dad and we’d play one-on-one. He always beat me to the point of frustration. I’d want to stop playing. I’d want to quit. But he wouldn’t let me. Maybe he was trying to foster a balance between my overly competitive nature and a sense to stick with things when they aren’t going your way. Or maybe he just liked beating the hell out of me playing basketball. I like to think it was the former.

The thing is I don’t know that my dad was any better than I was. He wrestled in high school and college. He played football. He wasn’t exactly John Havlicek out there. He couldn’t really dribble. He was a decent enough shooter to beat an 11-year old. He definitely wasn’t getting better out there and I was. But I couldn’t beat him. Sometimes, people just have your number at a certain stage in your life. My dad was bigger and stronger than me. He’d block my shot. He’d crash the boards against me on his own misses. He’d just dominate me whenever he felt like it.

This is the state of the Lakers-Jazz series.

It’s the closest blowout of all-time. The Jazz are in every game but they’re not in any position to win. This may sound pessimistic and maybe it is. But the Jazz have no chance. They came close and made a valiant effort in Game One – even had the lead late in the game. In Game Two, it was more of the same. However the team just can’t seem to put it together against the Lakers. Plus, I don’t think they’re actually capable of truly winning a game in Los Angeles no matter how close the game is.

The first problem is that Carlos Boozer is playing like he has money on the Lakers. I don’t know if it’s laziness with him. Maybe it’s just a lack of complete interest. There were a few moments (very few, actually) when he would push Pau Gasol out of position early. Instead of getting the ball four feet from the basket, Pau was getting the ball around six feet from the basket. When this happened, the hook shot was less deadly and he wasn’t quite far away from the basket enough to open up his jumper with the threat of driving the ball.

But Carlos didn’t do his work early. Instead, he continually gave up prime real estate on the low block for Pau Gasol to establish. And the result was Pau Gasol annihilating the Jazz interior inside (22 points on 11 shots). It caused numerous matchup problems throughout the game too. You couldn’t leave Boozer by himself with Gasol because Carlos had little chance of containing him. So you had to send a double team. When the double team happened, Ron Artest was blatantly left open. It worked for the most part too; he was just 1/7 from three. However, it didn’t work when the Lakers were patient and used Gasol as a decoy of some sorts. They caused the Jazz to scramble on offense and too often left the middle of the paint wide-open. The Lakers responded with 64 (!!!!) points in the paint. In two games, the Lakers have made 50/67 (74.6%) attempts around the basket.

The second problem is no one can check Kobe Bryant with the way he’s playing right now. It’s hard enough to stop him when he’s making questionable decisions. He’s attacked the basket much more in this series than he has for most of the season. With Kobe, you try to close off driving lanes and force him to make those impossible long two-point jumpers. You hope that he misses them and if he makes them you just live with it. But in this series, he’s now taken 16 shots around the basket in the first two games. According to HoopData, Kobe averaged just fewer than five shot attempts around the rim per game. In fact, when he gets five or more shot attempts around the rim this season, the Lakers are 29-9.

There’s no mistake that a properly aggressive Kobe Bryant, in which he’s taking the ball to the rim and creating off the dribble, is much more deadly than when he’s trying to win the game from 20-feet and beyond. In the playoffs, the Lakers are 4-0 when he hits the five or more attempts around the basket mark. And just 2-2 when he doesn’t. Wesley Matthews and CJ Miles are trying their hardest to contain him but with the way he’s choosing to play, it’s nearly impossible for them to get a good effort in stopping him.

The third problem is the length and what it does to the Jazz’s rebounding. In the first game, the Jazz did a great job of keeping the ball alive and taking advantage of their ability to jump quickly on the second leap. In Game Two, the Lakers just took the ball off the glass and started the ball up the other end of the court. Pau Gasol, Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom alone outrebounded the entire Utah team. Without Paul Millsap’s strenuous effort on the offensive glass, the Jazz would have been obliterated. He had eight offensive rebounds and seemed to be the only player effective enough to put up a fight.

The Jazz simply don’t have the bodies to make a difference against the Lakers skyline. Would Andrei Kirilenko and Mehmet Okur make a big difference? It’s possible. They’re not really incredible rebounders but it provides much smarter, more agile bodies to bang with the Lakers than what Koufos and Fesenko are able to contribute right now.

The biggest problem of them all was the complete let down Deron Williams gave the Jazz and their fans. He was horrible in Game Two. I’m not sure what it was. Maybe it was Kobe guarding him for a good portion of the game. Maybe he was unsure that he properly applied the GLH to his head. I’m not quite sure. What I do know is that if he is going to have lackluster games in this series, the Jazz have little hope of truly competing for wins.

Overall, this game was just weird. Again it was the closest blowout victory I’ve ever seen and it was buoyed by the worst good performance I’ve ever seen with what Ron Artest produced on the floor. He missed 86% of his threes in the game and also missed four layups. And yet, he somehow ended up with 16 points and two dunks.

The result was that the Jazz lose another close butt kicking. The Lakers just are too big and too strong for the Jazz to beat them on a narrow cement pathway right now.

Remember when Rajon Rondo arrived at a Celtics-Bulls playoff game last year in a Red Bull NASCAR stock car and people were all like, “How dare YOU sir!?!?” … and then Jack Ryan gave President Bennett a piece of his mind and then testified before Congress … end credits, Clear and Present Danger … slow clap … a single authentic tear … score another one for America over those Commie bastards.

Okay, so maybe it didn’t happen that way, but Rondo did take some heat for his extravagant arrival. People called it a distraction, or something like that … but then they laugh at Dwyane Wade’s suits. What’s fair in that?

In any case, maybe, just maybe that experience taught young Rajon the fine art of putting on the brakes. Either that or he guzzled a lot of Dream Shakes as a kid. Let’s watch him slam on the brakes and dupe Anthony Parker and Anderson Varejao of the Cleveland Cavaliers …

Yea, yea … I hear ya Cleveland fans. You’re probably saying that Rondo dragged his right foot and thus traveled. Sorry dudes. Maybe you should give the move a cute animal name like the Crab Dribble.

Mike Brown, tell us how you feel about losing home-court advantage to the Celtics.

Me? I do musings about the amusing Washington Wizards at Truth About It.net.

The exposition provides the background information needed to properly understand the story, such as the protagonist, the antagonist, the basic conflict, and the setting.

The exposition ends with the inciting moment, which is the incident without which there would be no story. The inciting moment sets the remainder of the story in motion beginning with the second act, the rising action.

And so we begin, with exultation, confusion, and a tone of both contest and determination. Wrapped in a newer context we’re not entirely convinced of, there exists the same elements we know. The same characters we’ve come to know and love or hate, depending on the colors we wear on our backs. The Cyrano De Bergerac, Manu Ginobili, complete with distended nose, slicing and dicing, but seemingly left wanting by the body’s inability to compensate (or in this instance, close out). The shrouded monk, Tim Duncan, simply forcing the story along by sheer exposition of the plot: slow and steady Spurs vs. rampant and intense Suns.

And then there is Nash. 30 points, 10 assists. An allusion? How about the Count of Monte Cristo? Driven by revenge, even as he publicly plays the braggard count simply indulging in luxury and refinement. Nash said prior to the game repeatedly that it was a failure on our part to invent new stories that creates the questions of this non-rivalry or rivalry or whatever it is.

But what did we see?

We saw Nash, drive, as we haven’t seen him this year drive. Attacking the basket relentlessly, endlessly, fiercely, with singular focus. PUSH THEM BACK. And let them know that the Suns have not come meekly to surrender again, but with full intention of mindlessly attacking as if there were not just another series, nor a desperate fight against an unbeatable foe, but a death match upon which our survival hangs. Because honestly, there’s no other approach.

Richardson is described as the barometer, but really, he’s fate in this instance. If he fires, and it drops, if he’s plugged in and successful, the Gods have shown favor. If the threes rim out, if the dunks don’t drop, if his first step to cut off Parker or Ginobili is a half-step short versus a half-step long, the Suns are doomed, as doomed as they’ve ever been.

If I were  to tell you that our heroes depend on the new breed, on Dudley recognizing from the film he’s covered to snake out and cut off the baseline wrap-around pass by Hill or Parker, on Frye swinging for the fences at both ends, for Amundson bull rushing to close out in a way you never see from the Suns, that would be part of it. But it’s not. Their survival is dependent on Nash doing what he did tonight, holding no quarter, not thinking, not considering, not smiling or enjoying it. He has to remove all the things that make his life fun for those few hours and he’s got to kill them with the same silent monstrosity they’ve brought his brilliant seasons to an end time after time. And Amar’e's got to keep rebounding the f*cking ball.

Is this wankery? Of course. But that’s because Suns-Spurs has become our opera. It’s the only familiar battle we have. Spurs-Lakers? The commencement ceremony at the end of the school year. Dramatic, with nice music and clothes and you can appreciate the care that goes into it but it’s just a formality. And while its conclusion is more in the air than Suns-Spurs, even now, even after Game 1, Suns-Spurs still fulfills our need for drama. Spurs fans may not think it’s a rivalry, and they may be right. But they want to keep it not a rivalry. They may 100% believe that even after tonight, with all the favorable odds of a team after winning Game 1, they have this in the bag. But they want to maintain that domination. They want to be able to look a Suns fan in the eye and say “SCOREBOARD.” And Suns fans? Three more wins, three more performances just like tonight and they will have had as good a season as they can hope for. They could be wiped from the face of the playoffs like the Egyptians by God’s Lakers in the WCF and be happy as a clam. Because their last game would still be later than that of the citizens of San Antonio.

There are warning signs littered throughout this game. The way Parker did what he’s always done, made Nash completely incapable of responding on defense, which puts him out of position in transition on offense and tires him out. The way Antonio McDyess was able to squeeze in through the cracks. The way Tim Duncan was a few more things going his way from dropping one of those games where you just shrug and ask the Fates how they could invest so much power in one tree trunk. The way Ginobili was in full effect. Lunging out of bounds, often running completely through players and not only avoiding a reach-in, but gaining possession. Dropping like a sack of bricks as soon as he was touched on defense. Slicing up and through to the other side if no one attacked the ball on the perimeter. The Suns seemed to be half-successful, half-not against Ginobili. What I mean by that is sometimes on defense, you get lucky because the guy just can’t make shots. The Suns? They devoted themselves to running him off on offensive-rebound-scramble-dish threes and occasionally doubling him hard on the perimeter. It kick started the Spurs rotation, but the funny thing? Their shooters are not great at catch and shoot, like Bowen and Finely were. They hesitate, consider, reset, and waste clock. Which enables the Suns to regroup. It’s the best of both worlds. Force the ball from Ginobili’s hands and recover. They only have to do that for four more games and withstand Popovich’s numerous adjustments including what I can assure you will be several more pick and pops with Antonio McDyess and they’re home free.

But the Suns won. They have the series lead. For a day, a few days, a few hours. And at least now they can remember something they haven’t known since the exact second Horry brought that hip into Nash. The Spurs for all their greatness and legacy, are still human. They will still bleed, they will still get tired, and if you attack them, they will still recoil. But you must not let them understand they are your superior. Once they believe, the series is already over and the confetti hasn’t even dropped.

George Hill was a factor in round one. He’s a liability now, unable to stay with Nash’s moves and lacking the shot that blessed him in Dallas.

There was a Suns run late in the third quarter, where every miss fueled the crowd, and Nash, sensing the moment, pushed as hard as he could. The euphoria on every made three pointer as the Suns rattled off an 18-6 run was astounding. It was like a church tent revival. The crowd could have been screaming in tongues. We were one more made three from Beatlemania. It was basketball at its apex. The Suns touched the ceiling tonight, for the first time since 07. Let’s pray the landing is at least softer than it was that season, even if it’s not in the clouds.