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No, the Grizzlies didn't figure the Spurs out late in Game 2. The Spurs just made a series of mistakes they're unlikely to repeat. Ethan Sherwood Strauss and Graydon Gordian break it down.

Once in a while a measurement can change everything.

For instance, if you were born since the middle of the last century, the beginning of your life was changed by a metric. he most essential and timeless human act (or, at least one of them) changed globally and instantly in the middle of the last century when a doctor named Virginia Apgar thought to score newborns on their health, as described by Atul Gawande in The New Yorker:

The Apgar score, as it became known universally, allowed nurses to rate the condition of babies at birth on a scale from zero to ten. An infant got two points if it was pink all over, two for crying, two for taking good, vigorous breaths, two for moving all four limbs, and two if its heart rate was over a hundred. Ten points meant a child born in perfect condition. Four points or less meant a blue, limp baby.

The score was published in 1953, and it transformed child delivery. It turned an intangible and impressionistic clinical concept—the condition of a newly born baby—into a number that people could collect and compare. Using it required observation and documentation of the true condition of every baby. Moreover, even if only because doctors are competitive, it drove them to want to produce better scores—and therefore better outcomes—for the newborns they delivered.

I think hoops is due for an Apgar moment.

We have lots of new measures, and they are changing the game bit by bit. PER has liberated us from a lot of dumb conversations about which boxscore stats matter more. Plus/minus, in its various forms, has started to shed light on the value of individual defense and 100 other tough-to-measure things.

But the real basic thing, the way that a measurement could change every NBA game for the better, every night, is to measure this one thing: Was that shooter open?

That's the thing I want to know.

Introduce that to the equation, and all of a sudden things get very interesting:

• It'll quickly become obvious that who's open matters more than making sure the most famous players shoot. Covered guys usually miss. Open guys usually hit.
• It'll help separate the very few players who are at all efficient when covered from chuckers.
• Like doctors competed with each other to have good Apgar scores, so will coaches compete to have teams with good open shot percentages -- after all, this is the measure of an offensive tactician. That's the antidote to Scott Brooks and Mike Woodson essentially saying "get it to the star" all through losing playoff series.
• I'm dying to know this about point guards: How likely are their teammates to get open looks?

There are some challenges. What is and is not open is open to debate. And the data is tricky to collect for other reasons too.

But the fact is that it's already tracked in various ways. Many teams dig into such things with their internal numbers. SportVu dabbles in it, as do other startups peddling data packages to teams. It's kind of knowable. What we need, though, is for it to be part of the boxscore, part of the daily dialogue, part of how every game is judged and discussed from the bar stool to talk radio.

Then we'll get quick and instant pressure on every team to play better, more effective basketball.

 

It’s a weird kind of party, the NBA draft lottery.

The 2013 version began on the Good Morning America’s repurposed Times Square set (complete with test kitchen) with an NBA staffer welcoming everyone by saying: “For those of you who are new to this, my condolences.”

Then they confiscated our cell phones.

Woohoo!

We were in the secret inner sanctum with the high ceilings, exquisite air conditioning and fake wood paneling. A collection of team representatives and a few others were gathered to witness the drawing of the pingpong balls that would decide who among the NBA’s worst teams got the first few picks of June’s NBA draft. The results would be determined here, but publicly revealed an hour or so later on national TV.

In the interim, we were not free to leave, even for the bathroom, lest we ruin the fun.

Just upstairs, in a different TV studio, the picks are revealed with the celebratory air of a Powerball drawing. But even that room is anxiety-ridden. Sitting in nervous silence is the essential task of the NBA draft lottery. The vibe’s beyond tense.

Once deputy commissioner Adam Silver had revealed the picks, however, at least one corner of the room went bananas.

The Cavs know how to party

The noisy posse in bowties, they’re screeching and hollering and pumping fists in the air. That’s Cavs owner Dan Gilbert and the many spirited people who traveled on his private jet for the occasion.

They won the NBA draft lottery again, they’re color coordinated and they don’t give a damn who knows it.

But even for Gilbert, in this moment of glory, with the TV cameras in his face to collect his acceptance speech, the lottery is bittersweet.

“We were hoping,” he said of his team’s potentially franchise-defining victory, “this would be our last.”

That’s the thing about the lottery. It’s nobody’s idea of perfect, and it's getting less so.

It’s some office building off the Turnpike, by day

Just as a run-of-the-mill Hollywood shopping mall can be transformed into the glamorous home of the Oscars, so did the NBA’s offices in Secaucus, N.J., used to become a wonderland of hoops glitz on the night of the NBA draft lottery. Gloved security men crowded the entrance, welcoming a steady procession of limos and fancy cars pulling up one at a time, dumping out a who’s who of NBA faces: players, owners, GMs.

The NBA, bless them, puts on a lot of buffet meals for the media, but this was the one that was a hell of a buffet. The fish was peppered to taste, the roast beef sliced to order, the gorgonzola crumbled and ready to cascade across your chopped romaine. You have never seen cookies like these, and if you’re not big into cookies, please consider the finest fresh fruits, still shiny with a fresh coating of dark chocolate.

This was how the lottery used to run, back when it was easier to forget the lottery was about losers, not winners.

Sure, it wasn't all showbiz. It was tough to hide some of the workaday details. Most of the party took place in a rented tent out back, the kind you’d more commonly see used for weddings. The walk there from the front door was a long one, much of which bordered a drab cube farm.

But a half-decade ago, say, as then-Blazers GM Kevin Pritchard made the walk, he made it like a prize fighter. People emerged from all angles, offering high-fives and attaboys. Pritchard beamed, a proud man representing a basketball-mad city, entering the ring to do his job saving the Trail Blazers.

Pritchard’s shoulder was one of the few tapped early in the evening that night. Along with a who’s who of NBA front office personnel, he was invited upstairs to witness the pingpong reveal.

Every team in the lottery sent two representatives: One to take care of the real business with the pingpong balls, and another to be the face of the franchise on TV. The back room, as usual, had the power brokers.

Please come with me, sir. Up these stairs. Place your cell phones and all personal electronics in this sealed envelope.

Pritchard had even more pep in his step a couple of hours later, when the pingpong digits delivered him a dreamy choice between Greg Oden and Kevin Durant. (This was before the off-road portion of Pritchard’s freeway-to-the-top career.) Pritchard walked out of that building a front office champion.

Who knows how many times he told the story of what happened in that room, on how many radio shows and local TV shows. Hell yes, he circled up Blazers staff to inspire them with thoughts about the great ride that franchise was about to take. He talked about character, he talked about fortune, and it was hard not to get the feeling some Higher Power was smiling on the Portland Trail Blazers, thanks in no small part to the magic Pritchard mustered in some stuffy Secaucus boardroom.

New York, New York

A couple of years ago, the NBA downsized the Secaucus offices and the draft lottery has packed up for TV studios in Times Square. It’s ostensibly as nice. The roast beef is still delicately cooked, and is accompanied by mild horseradish, but it’s no longer sliced on demand and the chocolate chip cookies in the back room were all gone by 8:15.

The bigger change comes from the crowd. Sure, there’s a Damian Lillard or Andre Drummond here or there to enliven the proceedings, but in the big picture, to put it bluntly, this event is getting less cool by the minute.

My guess is that trend will continue, not because of how anything is run, but because of what everybody knows.

At the highest levels of running a team these days, on smart teams at least, are masters not just of basketball, but of decision-making. It's a different kind of person.

These are people who gather and process information professionally, from all angles, and turn it into strategy. People who read books about optimal decision-making. People who are obsessively connected with reality.

Getting excited about the draft lottery, meanwhile, requires divorcing yourself from reality, in one key way: You have to forget how you got here. To celebrate here means detaching from the fact that the team you’re charged with making great actually stinks.

In the days when NBA brain trusts were thick with grocery store magnates and retired players, maybe that was more doable, especially with a beer or two on board. In the era of smartphones, Twitter and non-stop information parsing, reality thickens the air, even after they confiscate your smartphone.

The NBA draft lottery might have the trappings of a Powerball drawing, but it’s different in a key way. A real lottery is a windfall for some lucky schmuck who happened to buy a ticket.

This?

This is a mindless game of chance open only to losers.

And, increasingly, they know it.

You know who was not on hand? Most of those with the most on the line. Michael Jordan, for instance, who owns the Charlotte “we’re betting the farm on the lottery” Bobcats. Same goes for his GM, Rich Cho, as well as most of the front offices of most of the teams represented.

New Sixers GM Sam Hinkie? Absent. Mark Cuban? Joe Dumars?

It’s not the event to be seen at. Not if you’re into winning.

Many teams sent a PR person. But very few sent the brain trust, because there’s nothing for them here.

Nobody has gotten more from the lottery than Gilbert, whose team just added another top overall pick to a collection that already included LeBron James and Kyrie Irving.

He of all people must love this system, right?

“There’s no perfect way to do it,” Gilbert told me, literally minutes after winning. “I think of all ways it’s probably one that is not optimal. But there isn’t an optimal one. It’s probably the best of the worst you can do. You’ve got to give it to the guys at the NBA to even come up with something like this.”

And if all goes well, he won’t be back anytime soon.

He's 6-5. He shoots like Ray Allen. He dunks on people. He's a candidate to be the top overall pick in the 2013 NBA draft. And yet, he still gets confused, now and again, with that guy who raps about thrift stores.

Adonal Foyle thought the Western Conference finals would mark the next great step in Kevin Durant's career.

Gregg Popovich called Tony Parker over to the bench. The game was five minutes old and the Grizzlies were shooting free throws. Parker and Popovich have worked together so long that surely they can finish almost all of each other's sentences.

But Pop had something to say. He was animated. He was instructing. Parker looked to be agreeing.

The next time Parker touched the ball, he was bossy point guard. Pointing here, barking there. Before long he was pointing and -- plain as day as everybody else stood and watched -- calling Boris Diaw over to set a screen.

Red Rover, Red Rover, send Boris right over. Boris was nowhere near, and he has been looking heavy for several years. He began to jog. It took a few seconds.

But Parker got just what he wanted: Diaw setting an aggressive-angle screen on Parker's man, Jerryd Bayless (who struggled with screens all night) up by the 3-point line.

What was the point of all that? Does Parker love how Diaw screens? Perhaps. But if you look at how the rest of the game played out, I suspect that what Popovich and Parker cared most about wasn't Diaw, but who was guarding him.

Zach Randolph.

After Diaw's screen erased Bayless from the play, Randolph was all that mattered between lightning-quick Parker and the hoop.

Randolph is amazing at a lot of things. He has great hands, touch and in-the-paint jujitsu. He can score over and around bigger players, and rebounds stick to his hands like glue.

None of which helped a lick 20 feet from the hoop, with rocket-legs Parker bearing down on him.

Also, Randolph does not move laterally anymore.

The result: The big photo above.

The Grizzlies have arguably the best defense in the NBA. This happened with all of their good players in, and it was not in transition. This came against a set defense.

And that's an almost-uncontested layup.

Whoops.

Watch Spurs highlights from Game 1 of the Western Conference finals, and it's a good bet you'll see Randolph a yard or two behind the play, carrying regret.

As Kevin Arnovitz has pointed out several times, Randolph excels in one-on-one battles. Box out that guy. Don't let him score. Hang 20 and 10 on this opponent. Done, done and done. But out here on the perimeter, it's not mano a mano. This is "helpland," where all these younger, longer bigs like Joakim Noah can keep their eyes and hands on two defenders at once. But that's not Randolph's game.

Which is why you saw whoever-Randolph-was-guarding called into one Spurs pick-and-roll after another. Plenty of teams do that, but most teams don't have Parker.

It's too early to fire up the Outcoach-A-Tron and declare Popovich the coach of the playoffs -- even on the heels of inspiring adjustments that ended the Warriors' season.

We're not there yet. Lionel Hollins' crew has always played hard and has many an adjustment yet to make. Randolph's backups, Ed Davis and Darrell Arthur, can't do a lot of the things that Randolph can do, but they far outclassed him yesterday at containing Parker in the pick-and-roll.

The Grizzlies had a lovely second-half run, maybe not coincidentally with Arthur in. The Spurs' scoring slowed while long, pass-and-shoot happy players Marc Gasol, Tayshaun Prince, Quincy Pondexter and Bayless found open looks.

Everyone has made a lot of Randolph's stagnant offense in Game 1. And it was not great. But to my eyes, the swarming horde of 7-footers around him when he gets the ball deep can be overcome in the manner Tim Duncan demonstrated yesterday: by getting teammates open looks. The defense can't be everywhere at once. Selflessness and ball movement enabled the wide-open Spurs (Matt Bonner, Kawhi Leonard) to take a lot of shots. (Knicks and Thunder take note -- this has always worked and could have been you). Except when non-shooter Tony Allen is in, the Grizzlies could similarly wrong-foot the Spurs' defense.

But Randolph's starring role in the Spurs' excellent offense ... being the breakdown, play after play ... that's tough to fix.

David Thorpe's latest postseason MVP rankings are posted (Insider). Stephen Curry doesn't top the list anymore. We discuss:

The NBA's Board of Governors is meeting today in Dallas, likely to finally close this chapter of uncertainty about the Sacramento Kings.

If you've been following the news you probably know there's an aggressive push to move the team to Seattle, which is heavily favored by the current owners, the Maloofs.

There's similarly an aggressive push to keep the team in Sacramento.

Who will carry the day? There are many moving parts to this econo-drama, and they are explained nicely and succinctly by James Ham of Cowbell Kingdom.

Well worth a read.