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Over the past quarter-century, the NBA has seen the Black Mamba, Larry Legend, His Airness, The Answer, The Truth, The Mailman, King James, Vinsanity, Flash and Magic.

But the Big Fundamental? If ever a nickname was assigned with a firm backhand, this is it.

Kobe Bryant attacks; Michael Jordan soars; Karl Malone delivers.

Tim Duncan? He's a large man who's really good at mechanics! While other stars transcend the game as superheroes, Duncan merely masters it as a craftsman.

An example: In the second possession of Game 4 against the Clippers, Duncan ran a little cross with Boris Diaw on the right side. Duncan's goal here? To upgrade his advantage against his defensive counterpart. Before crossing paths with Diaw, Duncan had 7-footer DeAndre Jordan fronting him. But after the subtle, little action, Duncan had the much shorter Blake Griffin.

Only that wasn't enough.

As the ball worked its way to the left side of the floor, Duncan followed it. Seeing Danny Green pressured against the sideline by Clippers guard Randy Foye, Duncan set a pick for Green on the high side. This not only allowed Green to wiggle out of trouble, but Duncan was also able to peel off to a couple of feet from his favorite spot off the left block -- and now with the 6-foot-4 Foye as his defender.

Duncan had turned the Clippers roster into matryoshka dolls. Every time he took apart one defender, a smaller one would appear.

Green ultimately dished the ball off to Duncan, who caught, squared, shot and swished. From the top of the key, Griffin watched the flight of the ball, stood still for a second, then retreated upcourt. Somehow, he got taken out of the play. But only 150-some-odd games into his career, Griffin could only process and learn.

"The way [Duncan] plays is so methodical, but at the same time he doesn't overthink the game," Griffin said after the game. "That's something I want to get to."

This was a very nuanced parallel Griffin constructed to describe what Duncan does on the court. We usually regard "method" as something that results from a great deal of thought, but here's Griffin drawing a distinction: For all of Duncan's technique, he rarely trips himself up with complexities. He rarely pauses, hedges or becomes paralyzed by choices.

Duncan has distilled the game down to its essentials. Play his left shoulder and he'll turn middle and devastate you with that running hook through the lane, or worse, take it all the way to the hole for the slam. Play his right shoulder and the bank is open.

You've seen all this thousands of times.

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In the most recent issue of Intelligent Life (via The Economist), Ian Leslie writes about how the most accomplished and creative performers in the world get the best results from not, as Griffin said, overthinking.

Leslie contrasts Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer in the fifth set of a semi-final match in the 2011 U.S. Open. Confronting elimination on a match point for Federer, Djokovic unleashed one of the nastiest forehand returns you'll ever see. Typically, players in Djokovic's situation proceed more cautiously. They're more apt to go with a defensive return to guarantee they stay in the match. Djokovic did no such thing.

After it was all over, Federer was exasperated by Djokovic's return:

Djokovic won the game, set, match and tournament. At his press conference, Federer was a study in quiet fury. It was tough, he said, to lose because of a “lucky shot”. Some players do that, he continued: “Down 5-2 in the third, they just start slapping shots …How can you play a shot like that on match point?”

Asked the same question, Djokovic smiled. “Yeah, I tend to do that on match points. It kinda works.”

Federer, one of tennis' all-time greats, will go down as among the most heralded Thinking Person's athletes in history. He's fallen off over the past couple of years, and Leslie wonders if the contrasting reactions of Federer and Djokovic (now the world's top-ranked player, a position held by Federer for years) speaks to something larger:

Perhaps Federer was so upset because, deep down, he recognised that his opponent had tapped into a resource that he, an all-time great, is finding harder to reach: unthinking.

Unthinking is the ability to apply years of learning at the crucial moment by removing your thinking self from the equation.

Malcolm Gladwell addressed this notion in his book, "Blink." Practice, experience -- what athletes commonly call "reps" -- help develop strong instincts. Duncan has them, as does Federer, Djokovic and most other top-flight talents. Gladwell wrote that the best way to achieve maximum results is to deploy those instincts decisively, without deliberation or rifling through too much information at the moment of reckoning. The expertise acquired over years and years will act as a guide. As Federer said, "But, look, maybe he's been doing it for 20 years, so for him it was very normal. You've got to ask him."

That 20 years is key, and it might be one reason why older teams like the Spurs and vets like Duncan seem so poised when the field of contenders is whittled down to a select few in June. We tend to regard those guys in their 30s as "smarter" -- and they might very well be -- but it could be that they're just methodical-without-overthinking because they arrive at big moments with so much experience:

Unthinking is not the same as ignorance; you can’t unthink if you haven’t already thought. Djokovic was able to pull off his wonder shot because he had played a thousand variations on it in previous matches and practice ... The unconscious minds of great artists and sportsmen are like dense rainforests, which send up spores of inspiration.

When you have years of muscle memory from shooting a lifetime of bank shots, you don't have to think -- you just have to act.

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Temperamentally on their respective courts, Djokovic and Duncan couldn't be more different. Djokovic plays to the crowd, while Duncan often seems like he could be in an empty gym. But they both carry that special combination that Griffin aspires to -- the ability to apply method to their decision-making, but without overthinking that process.

If you're an intrinsically thoughtful person, being told not to think so much is really annoying. How do you do it? Leslie turns to Bob Dylan, who famously wrote "Like a Rolling Stone" in no time flat. Dylan referred to the making of the song as a "piece of vomit, 20 pages long." Dylan said this about keeping analysis paralysis out of the process:

Dylan believes the creative impulse needs protecting from self-analysis: “As you get older, you get smarter, and that can hinder you…You’ve got to programme your brain not to think too much.” Flann O’Brien said we should be “calculatedly stupid” in order to write. The only reliable cure for overthinking seems to be enjoyment, something that both success and analysis can dull. Experienced athletes and artists often complain that they have lost touch with what made them love what they do in the first place. Thinking about it is a poor substitute.

Maybe that's Duncan's secret: He's never disconnected himself from his roots in the game. He won't release a primal scream after a dunk, nor will he bask in the afterglow of a win (he will, however, tell you about the virtues of being mellow). But if you watch Duncan closely enough, you'll see a man so comfortable in his method and purpose, that it's impossible to think he doesn't love what he does.

It's a fundamental joy.

LOS ANGELES -- Laker Sentimentalists weren't happy about it. Shipping Derek Fisher and a draft pick to Houston for Jordan Hill seemed like an unceremonious send-off for the man who enshrined "0.4" into the storied history of the franchise.

Hard-bitten realists countered that clearing a slot for a younger, more able point guard like Ramon Sessions was the right move for a team that had grown older and slower. There were only faint remnants of the Triangle offense in Los Angeles under the new Mike Brown regime. The days of Fisher feeding the ball to the pinch post, then clearing out to the corner were over. What the Lakers really needed was a more resourceful point guard, someone who could initiate offense in a pick-and-roll with Pau Gasol, Andrew Bynum and Kobe Bryant. Steve Blake wasn't doing the job, he of the 8.55 Player Efficiency Rating (PER) and 37.7 field goal percentage. A change was clearly in order.

Sessions, long a favorite of stat heads, had consistently produced during his four-plus seasons in the league -- a career PER of nearly 17, impressive assist rates and an ability to manufacture trips to the line. Sessions would provide the Lakers' best hopes of hanging around the ranks of the elite of the Western Conference.

Maybe, said the Fisher partisans.

Sessions -- with spells from Blake -- might be able to hold things down for the Lakers at the point on a sleepy night in March against Sacramento, but would there be big-game production when the Lakers needed timely shots, the kind of buckets Fisher had produced time and again? Toiling in obscurity, as Sessions did in Milwaukee, Minnesota and Cleveland, is one thing, but playing meaningful games in late spring for the league's marquee franchise is an entirely different matter, a job mastered by Fisher, but altogether foreign to Sessions.

Blake performed reasonably well for Portland in the Trail Blazers' first-round loss to Houston in 2009, but was an nonentity for the Lakers last season in two rounds and, prior to his Game 7 heroics, was largely seen as a lost cause for the Lakers -- a solid character guy, but one carrying an outsized contract.

The Fisher loyalists had their suspicions about Sessions confirmed over the Lakers' first nine playoff games this postseason. After a solid Game 1 outing against Denver, Sessions became inefficient, then downright tentative as the series against the feisty Nuggets wore on and grew more tense. By the time Game 7 rolled around, Sessions never saw the court in the fourth quarter.

Enter Blake, who was the Game 7 hero and Brown's go-to man at the 1 during the tight close of Game 2 against Oklahoma City on Wednesday night. When Blake missed a wide-open corner 3 to win the game for the Lakers, he received death threats to his family over social media. Between Sessions' struggles and Blake's miss, grumbles about the Fisher trade -- however irrational -- bubbled to the surface.

On a personal level, Sessions and Blake each entered Game 3 in Los Angeles badly in need of redemption. More imperatively, the Lakers weren't going to dig themselves out of a 2-0 hole against Oklahoma City without some passable play from their platoon of point guards.

Both Sessions and Blake delivered. Sessions started for the Lakers and scored six early points, displaying his best skills. Sessions is intuitive, the kind of player we often say "has a feel for the game." In the first quarter, he scored on a sharp basket cut from the weak side, working a two-man game with Bynum for his floater, then sprinting out in transition the instant the Lakers secured a steal on the Thunder's side of the court.

"I just tried to push the ball a little bit more," Sessions said. "In this offense, it's not traditional where you have the ball in your hands a ton off pick-and-rolls. I just tried to find angles and ways I can be aggressive and get baskets."

Sessions denied that he was bottled up in Oklahoma City, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Sessions had absolutely no luck attacking the Thunder's bigs on the pick-and-roll. The Thunder aren't a top-5 defensive squad, but they got their pick-and-roll coverages down at home and neutered the best part of Sessions’ game. And if the Lakers’ point guard -- whoever he is -- can’t effectively initiate the pick-and-roll, then he’s relegated to spot-up duty, which isn’t Sessions’ strength, one reason why Brown opted for Blake, a better perimeter shooter.

Sessions worked well on Friday night with both big men -- a pick-and-roll early with Bynum, a dribble hand-off with Gasol. The fluid play translated into 12 points (5-for-9 shooting from the field) and four assists in 28 minutes, the most he's played since Game 6 of the Denver series. After a frenetic couple of nights trying to dodge the Thunder's corralling big men, Sessions navigated the half court nicely. His drive-and-kick to Metta World Peace on the final possession of the first half resulted in a clean 3-pointer that gave the Lakers a 50-47 lead at intermission.

Brown ultimately chose Blake as his point guard for the closing stretch, as Blake recovered from that excruciating miss at the end of Game 2. He finished with 12 points on 4-for-5 shooting from the field. He single-handedly erased a five-point Oklahoma City lead midway through the fourth quarter on consecutive possessions, the first on a pull-up jumper on the left side, the second a 3-pointer to tie the game after moving left of a Bryant screen.

"I thought Steve Blake's two shots were big," Brown said. "He came off the pick-and-roll and shot his pull-up. He was aggressive and knocked that thing down. He came off the pick-and-roll a second time and knocked down a 3."

Sessions and Blake have no shot at matching Russell Westbrook's production. They're unlikely to write themselves into the annals of Lakers history as Fisher did. But if Blake can hit from the perimeter, he'll be sufficient. And if Sessions can attack the Thunder's defense in the middle of the floor with aggressive actions, deliver the ball to Bynum and Gasol at their spots, make some smart plays off the ball and keep Bryant happy -- essentially much of what he accomplished in the regular season -- he'll get to experience something he never could while playing out the string in the league's most remote outposts.

• A 12-year-old kid was suspended from school for having Matt Bonner's likeness shaved into his head. Bonner responded by giving him and his folks free tickets to Game 2 of the Spurs-Clippers series at the AT&T Center on Thursday night.
• There's a ton of insight to glean from Chris Ballard's tremendous profile on Tim Duncan in Sports Illustrated titled, "21 Shades of Gray." You can read about how Duncan isn't much of a Kevin Garnett fan, how Duncan first bonded with Gregg Popovich on the beach at St. Croix and how Stephen Jackson is "humbled" to count Duncan as a friend. Ballard also offers this very telling portrait of what happens when the Spurs call timeout: "When the Spurs call a timeout and you see the San Antonio coaches huddle a few feet from the bench, it's not to hash out strategy. Rather, Pop is giving Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker time with the team. 'You'll see Timmy over there with a young kid, talking about how he should do this or that or what we meant by such and such,' says Popovich. 'I'll come back to the timeouts sometimes and say, "Are we square?" and Timmy will say, "Yeah, we got 'em."' Popovich pauses. 'He commands that type of respect because he doesn't demand it, if that makes sense.'"
• Should Tim Duncan have been a more public celebrity over the course of his legendary career? Would the NBA and the Spurs been enriched had Duncan given us a deeper glimpse of both his interior and external life? Alex Dewey of Gothic Ginobili grapples with these questions and more.
• For years, Popovich has rationed the minutes of his most important players, readily sitting Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker during tough stretches of the schedule. In doing so, Popovich has raised eyebrows around the league and the ire of basketball populists who feel that the Spurs owe it to the ticket-paying public to put the best players on the floor. History sides with Popovich and you don't have to look much farther than the Spurs' current series with the Clippers -- a younger, sprightlier team -- to appreciate Popovich's strategy. But there's also an ancillary benefit to sitting Duncan, Parker and Ginobili periodically: It means that secondary guys get the ball in meaningful spots during games that matter.
• As Zach Lowe of The Point Forward documents in pictures, the Spurs' ability to stretch the floor, mastery of the misdirection, and constant movement have the Clippers' young big men twisted in knots.
• Bill Simmons at Grantland, on the Spurs: "Thank God for the Spurs, an offensive powerhouse that has single-handedly saved the playoffs from turning into a rockfight. They're headed for a second sweep while pacing the league in points per game (103.7), shooting (49.1 percent) and 3-point shooting (42.7 percent). It's the best version of international basketball we've ever seen -- the Spurs might as well be Argentina or Spain, only with superior players. Everything revolves around their slash-and-kick guys (Parker and Ginobili), their 3-point shooters (too many to count) and their versatile big men (Duncan, Diaw and Splitter, all of whom know where to go and what to do). And unlike Nash's high-scoring Suns teams from back in the day, San Antonio can also rebound and protect the rim, which makes them our single most dangerous playoff favorite since the 2001 Lakers. They aren't just beating teams, they're eviscerating them."
• Boris Diaw might best illustrate the strength of the Spurs' system and culture. Here's a guy who, as recently as 12 weeks ago, was a punch line for his conditioning and an irritant to Bobcats coach Paul Silas. Now he's the starting center for the title favorites. When you watch Diaw dig in defensively for the Spurs, it’s a reminder of what a dominant role effort plays in defensive makeup. Prior to landing on the Spurs' doorstep, Diaw hadn't played much defense in years, but here he is grinding away for Popovich in May. On the offensive end, Diaw passes with so much confidence, and his high-low deliveries to Duncan are a reminder of his refined skill set as a big man. Yet another instance of the R.C. Buford telling the league, “If you’re not going to use that guy, we’ll take him.” At 48 Minutes of Hell, Jesse Blanchard has more on Diaw.
• Timothy Varner of 48 Minutes of Hell: "You’ve heard me say it before, but the Spurs’ ability to attract a championship supporting cast was fueled by veterans who signed on for an opportunity to chase a championship alongside Tim Duncan. Duncan was the draw. Not the city of San Antonio. And never the promise of more money. It was always Tim Duncan. Not anymore. The draw is the opportunity to play in Gregg Popovich’s system. It’s Tony Parker. It’s Spurs culture. It’s Pop himself. It’s the confidence that the front office can always shore things up by adding a Gary Neal, Tiago Splitter or Kawhi Leonard. It’s the confidence that the front office will manage its books and never the saddle the team with a cancerous contract. It’s the confidence in the ability to improve through the internal development of guys like Danny Green. The Spurs have it figured out. Players understand this."
• Paul Garcia of Project Spurs on the quiet professionalism of rookie Kawhi Leonard, about whom Popovich once said, "He just does his work and goes home."
• Steve Perrin of SB Nation on Gregg Popovich, the Alchemist.
• Jordan Heimer and I shower the Spurs with much love on the most recent episode of The Clippers Podcast, presented by ESPN LA.

How the San Antonio Spurs got tagged as boring never made much sense to me.

Yes, the Spurs were the proctors who broke up the spring flings thrown by the Seven Seconds of Less Phoenix Suns. For those who like their superstars to dazzle, Tim Duncan's charisma deficit and his mechanical game can be affronts. The Spurs have historically been defensive stalwarts, likelier to grind an opponent into submission, not run it off the court. Those qualities, along with a lack of interpersonal drama, might lull certain fans to sleep.

But boredom, at its very root, can be defined as the absence of choice. Get stuck with a program that uses the same formula to produce the same outcome over and over and over again, and you get bored. If you eat the same stuff every day for lunch, you grow tired of it. The same outings with the same people where you talk about the same stuff -- those experiences can become rote.

We're rarely bored when our expectations are challenged, and the most interesting way to do that is by introducing choice into the equation. Anything can happen means that the range of possibilities is endless.

When the Spurs bring the ball upcourt, that's usually the case. They relied on isolation plays only 7.1 percent of the time in the regular season. (Only the Magic used a smaller percentage of their possessions in iso.) In their first-round sweep of Utah, the Spurs ran isos only 24 times in four games. (The Knicks, in contrast, had 124 such possessions over five games.) Instead, the Spurs did what they usually do to get what they want in the half court -- rely on motion, timing, ball movement and, most of all, choice.

Choice is the overriding principle at work in an efficient offense. Take away that offense's primary objective in a half-court possession, and it will gladly move on to option No. 2. Sniff out No. 2, and a third choice will materialize. And so on.

The Spurs under Gregg Popovich have always understood that NBA defenses are too big and quick to confine your offense to one option. There have to be multiple contingency plans in a given possession; otherwise, you leave yourself vulnerable to chance. A lot of fans like the element of chance in sports -- and perhaps that's one explanation for the Spurs' "boring" rap.

But the Spurs' trademark set -- called "motion weak" -- is anything but boring. It's a magical merry-go-round of basketball possibility, a play that has an endless number of outcomes. When it begins, the players aren't even sure where the ball will land, but they know that if they read the defense and move with precision, a quality look at the basket will surface from somewhere.

Let's take a look:

The play starts simply enough: Tony Parker passes the ball off to a wing player on his right. It might be Danny Green, Manu Ginobili, Kawhi Leonard, Stephen Jackson or Gary Neal. Once the ball leaves Parker's hands, he cuts through to the basket.

If the defense is napping or Duncan has prime position against his defender down on the low right block, the ball can go immediately from the wing to Parker on the move (it'll look like a simple give-and-go) or Duncan for a quick shot. Against bad defenses in January, the Spurs will pick up a couple of easy buckets this way, but deep into the postseason, the Spurs usually will have to put in a little more work.


Whoa! There's a lot going on here!

Very true, so let's break down what each of our chess pieces is doing on the board:

• Tony Parker: Rarely do the Spurs get that easy give-and-go mentioned above, so when Parker dishes the ball off in Picture 1, he dives to the basket, but ultimately clears through, then loops around to the wing on the weak side.
• Tim Duncan: If Duncan isn't fed the ball down low on the right block, he'll use a cross screen along the baseline provided by the Spurs' other wing player (2/3), then set up on the opposite block.
• 4/5 (Boris Diaw, Tiago Splitter, Matt Bonner, DeJuan Blair): The big man who isn't Duncan sets up at the top of the floor, where he'll receive a pass from the wing, then keep the ball moving by dishing it off to Parker once Parker has cleared through. When he dishes the ball off, our 4/5 man will then set a down screen for 2/3, once 2/3 has finished setting that aforementioned cross screen for Duncan. After setting that down screen, 4/5 will head over to the right block vacated by Duncan. On the rare occasion Bonner is the guy at the top of the floor and his defender is elsewhere, he can fire away. But generally, this is merely a transit point for the ball between the strong and weak sides fo the floor.
• 2/3 (Ginobili, Leonard, Green, Jackson, Neal): As mentioned above, 2/3 has two jobs: setting that cross-screen for Duncan, then looping back to the perimeter courtesy of a down screen from the big man.

When this cycle of events is over, the ball is back in Parker's hands on the other side of the floor. Duncan may or may not have a mismatch on the left block, depending on how the defense dealt with that cross screen.

The carousel has slowed down a bit, and Parker has a few options:

• Feed Duncan on the left block, six words that have yielded four championships. Duncan might have a mismatch or have his man sealed off. Whatever the case, Duncan one-on-one in the low post is never a lousy consolation prize.
• Kick it over to 2/3. It's difficult to capture the choreography with still diagrams, but 2/3 will often be buzzing at warp speed with his defender trailing in hot pursuit. If there's ample separation and Parker can hit 2/3 on the move, this can either serve as a catch-stop-and-pop midrange jumper, or 2/3 can keep moving and attack.
• Move into a pick-and-roll with Duncan on the left side. If you're the San Antonio Spurs, there are worse things than a Parker-Duncan two-man game on the left side of the floor with the defense still catching up to all the movement.

The responsibility now lies with Parker and Duncan to make the call. If Duncan moves off the block to set a ball screen for Parker, we move on ...

The final resort of the Spurs' signature set looks like the first strike from most teams -- a simple angle pick-and-roll on the left side with a variety of drive-and-dish options for Parker. He can deliver a bounce pass to Duncan on the move (or a quick dish if Duncan pops, which is increasingly the case these days). Otherwise, Parker can hit the other big man on a duck-in beneath the weakside glass or kick the ball out to either of his wings on the perimeter.

Parker recorded a career-high 28.4 assist rate this season, far and away the best mark of his career. How did he do that at age 29? By become fluent in situations like these. It takes years to master an intricate offense, even for the most instinctive players. There's a reason we see veteran teams executing best in the playoffs. It's because this stuff is tricky! Running a sophisticated offense requires tens of thousands of possessions in repetition over several seasons with the same guys.

There was a time when Parker couldn't see or wouldn't respond to all the options in the Spurs' offense. He didn't arrive in the league with the vision of Chris Paul or Steve Nash. It took several seasons and some tough love from Popovich, but Parker has arrived in full.

And that's how you build the league's No. 1 offense.

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Information in this post was provided by mySynergy Sports.com.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- What was once indifference between the Los Angeles Clippers and Memphis Grizzlies has descended into hostility over six games. These teams actively dislike each other. The Clippers have made light of Memphis' "Grit 'n' Grind" handle and generally annoyed the Grizzlies with their posturing. Memphis has countered that the Clippers are a bunch of floppers -- its head coach going so far as to accuse Chris Paul in a live interview during Game 4. When the topic of Paul's injury came up after Game 6, Zach Randolph fired back that he didn't even know Paul was hurt, implying that the Clippers' injuries were merely incidental, a sideshow.

All of it will come to a head on Sunday afternoon in Game 7.

The health of Chris Paul and Blake Griffin
Whatever Randolph says at the podium, the Clippers simply aren't the same team with Paul and Blake Griffin hobbled. On Friday night after the Grizzlies' Game 6 win in Los Angeles, Paul, Marc Gasol and Randolph pointed out that nobody is 100 percent this time of year. True, but the Clippers can't function as an offensive team without Paul and Griffin. When the Clippers had their offense rolling late in Games 1 and 3 and most of Games 2 and 4, the formula was simple: Make the Grizzlies choose between bringing bodies to the paint to stifle Paul's penetration, which presents problems on the perimeter and with balance, or yield seams to Paul and pray that the help will come from the right place at the right time.

Paul clearly doesn't have the same burst off the bounce or the ability to change speeds, probe, beat his guy and get to his spot for an elbow jumper before the defense can recover. Without that, the Clippers' offense suffers from rigor mortis. Paul can't split a trap, and ultimately, the Grizzlies can play him straight up, while the help can stay home on the Clippers' perimeter shooters. With Paul on the court in Game 6, the Clippers shot only 39 percent.

Meanwhile, Griffin pummeled Memphis in his breakout Game 4 as the roll man with Paul, posting up and going decisively into his move. That's the key: Griffin's knee won't prevent him from being on the floor, but without a confident face-up game, he must rely entirely on those up-and-unders, spins and step-throughs. With the bum knee, he's a step slow -- and you can slice a few inches off the vertical. That's the difference between wreaking destruction at the rim and having to finesse his way to the basket.

The Grizzlies' inside job
Gasol got what he wanted after a frustrating long weekend in Los Angeles during Games 3 and 4: He's again the centerpiece of the Memphis offense. On Friday night, there was a lovely balance to Gasol's game, an exhibition of his versatility. Memphis used him to run a pick-and-roll in the left slot, from where he was able to beat the Clippers' rotation on the dive. They posted him up on the left block, where he launched that pretty hook over the Clippers' defense. And when the Clippers came hard at Gasol in the high post, he dumped it off to Randolph (the recipient of all three of Gasol's assists) in Memphis' savvy high-low game.

The pinpoint bounce pass that Gasol delivered to Randolph at the three-minute mark in Game 6 was a thing of beauty. Mike Conley and Gasol ran that angle pick-and-roll on the left side. Gasol stopped at the edge of the paint and received the pass as the Clippers trapped Conley, forcing Kenyon Martin to rotate up from the baseline. As Martin approached, Gasol hit Randolph wide open beneath the hoop on the right side. A perfectly executed play by Memphis at the biggest moment of the series, which is how you advance in the postseason.

Randolph has found his legs and looks more like the bully from last season's playoffs than the player who was struggling to carve out space for himself down low. For Randolph to be successful, he needs to rip through and keep his defender moving. That's how he creates that space, and that's what he's been doing the past few games.

Having two big men with diverse but overlapping skill sets allows Memphis to do some interesting stuff in the half court. Sometimes the offense just needs a nudge.

Who else for the Clippers?
With Paul and Griffin banged-up, the Clippers must get something exceptional from one of the supporting actors. Randy Foye, Caron Butler, Mo Williams and Nick Young have each had their moments over this season and, to a lesser extent, in the playoffs. In Game 5, that performance came from second-year dragonfly Eric Bledsoe.

Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro isn't predisposed to trust young players. Whether it's because he's risk-averse, conflict-averse or just more comfortable with guys who've "been there," Del Negro favors vets. With Paul hurting and Williams suffering a hand injury in Game 6, Del Negro had to lean on Bledsoe for significant minutes -- and it's about time.

Bledsoe doesn't stretch the floor for the Clippers, but he's their best perimeter defender on and off the ball. He has an uncanny synergy with Paul in the backcourt. For aforementioned reasons, the two played together for only 76 minutes in the regular season. The Clippers scored 111.4 points per 100 possessions during that time and gave up only 93.5. In this series, Bledsoe is a plus-35. When Bledsoe on the floor, Conley is minus-34 (and plus-47 when Bledsoe is off).

Both Bledsoe and Foye, who has struggled in the series, will have to make major contributions on Sunday for the Clippers to escape Memphis with a W. The Clippers also will have to be more resourceful because their two best creators are limited. When Reggie Evans is your roll man off the high ball screen, life doesn't become any easier, because now two defenders are blitzing Paul. As it is, Tony Allen and Conley make things difficult enough because they can play the Clippers' perimeter straight up. Getting the shooters clean looks at the basket will have to come via flare screens and a ton of movement in the half court.

So who's it going to be?

The battle on the margins
In many ways, this series has been fought in the periphery -- on the offensive glass, in passing lanes, at the foul stripe. Neither team has gotten much of what it wants offensively, but there have been ample opportunities to supplement that cruddy output with extras. For instance, the Grizzlies have annihilated the Clippers on the offensive glass, where Memphis has collected more than one out of every three available rebounds -- its 33.7 offensive rebounding rate is tops among postseason teams. (As a frame of reference, the Bulls ranked first in the regular season with a 32.6 offensive rebounding rate.)

For the Grizzlies, this is vital because they're a terrible shooting team. They've been outshot by the Clippers in the series but have been able to make up ground by getting additional looks at the basket -- at short range, no less. Memphis' prowess on the offensive glass is especially impressive when you consider that the Clippers were a pretty decent defensive rebounding team during the regular season. Overall, the Grizzlies have racked up 15.4 second-chance points per 48 minutes, with only 10.2 for the Clippers.

In the turnover event, the Clippers protected the ball better than any team other than Philadelphia during the regular season, and Memphis led the league in opponent turnover rate. Something had to give, and true to form, the Clippers and Grizzlies have played to a draw with identical 12.69 turnover rates. The Grizzlies had been winning the turnover battle but coughed the ball up 22 times in Game 6 -- the only reason the Clippers were in a game in which the Grizzlies shot better and controlled the glass decisively.

Then there's the foul game. Both teams hack with impunity, and both are spending plenty of time at the stripe in this series. But the team that has gotten to the line with greater frequency has won five of the six games -- the Clippers' Game 3 rally the only exception.

Here, the Clippers have to be careful on Sunday. When players are gimpy, they have a tougher time staying in front of their guy. They're more desperate defenders and, in turn, tend to be more likely to foul. Paul didn't foul out of a game all season but was whistled for six fouls in Game 6. Evans, who likely will pick up some of Griffin's minutes, is a foul machine. With the Grizzlies re-establishing their inside game, there will be more pressure than ever on the Clippers' defense to body up on the block. They'll have to do so carefully.

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Information in this post was provided by NBA.com.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Marc Gasol never quite understood how and why the Memphis offense got away from him. He expressed those sentiments after the Grizzlies coughed up a 27-point lead in Game 1 and his frustration came to a head in Game 4 in Los Angeles, when the ball was coming to him late in the shot clock or after the Clippers' help defenders had sniffed out the plan.

On Wednesday during shootaround he was asked if his dormancy in the series could be chalked up to the work of the Clippers' big men fronting him. He politely rejected that theory, pointing out that his defender wasn't the guy doing to fronting, but the Clipper big man hulking on the back line ready to pounce if the ball was delivered to Gasol at either the foul line or the low block. And, furthermore, the Grizzlies guards -- the ones charged with delivering him the ball at his preferred spots -- were getting hounded by the Clippers. So there was that, too.

Translation: I'm seven feet tall! Just pass the ball over the top of the defense and I can figure it out from there! Haven't you watched me play? And if you're not in a position to make those passes, let me know how I can help.

Granted, the Clippers have nobody to match up with Rudy Gay. And, yes, Mike Conley has become a pretty good pick-and-roll practitioner on the right side if Zach Randolph isn't clogging the right block. And of course Gasol is also your best screener, so he's often useful in other capacities.

A playoff series flows in cycles, and in Game 5 the Grizzlies returned to what's worked best for them offensively all season: Starting with Gasol as the fulcrum to leverage the Clippers' defense.

From the opening tip, the Grizzlies created a better work environment for Gasol in the half court. The Clippers' big men are mucking things up? Then have Gasol and Randolph cross low before delivering the ball to Gasol at the foul line!

Defenders are fronting Gasol at his favorite spot? Then let's find some other angles on the side. You'd rather work your offense in the middle of the floor, but sometimes games against tough opponents call for adjustments. So rather than bang your head against the wall, which the Grizzlies did over a long weekend in Los Angeles, take 80 percent of what you like and compromise on the rest.

It wasn't just Gasol's teammates and coaches who would have to accommodate. Gasol would need to work quickly, which we saw at the 4:10 mark of the first quarter when, fronted by Blake Griffin, the ball was delivered to Gasol off the right block -- but closer to the baseline. That's usually an invitation for quick help, but not if you catch and go! Gasol caught and went, spinning baseline before Griffin or any other red jersey could respond.

We saw this old friend again in Game 5. We also saw Gasol trailing in transition, where he's so dangerous.

Better yet, we saw Gasol with a renewed spirit, a mood that was a long departure from his pouty disposition in Game 4. When the Grizzlies missed him on one possession after he'd established prime position Griffin, he turned and growled at the bench after Randolph turned the ball over. If the Grizzlies needed a moment to reset, Gasol rallied his teammates into a huddle. He was emotive and feisty, feeding off a home crowd that was as eager as he was to see the ball in his hands.

It wasn't a perfect night for Gasol or the Grizzlies' offense. 18 of Gasol's 23 points came before intermission, and the Clippers' zone complicated things for Memphis. As is often the case, Memphis' anemic shooting from outside allowed the defense to gradually constrict the Grizzlies' half-court stuff -- with Gasol as the most acute victim. Watch the possessions again and you can see that the Clippers effectively ran a box-and-one, with Reggie Evans or DeAndre Jordan attached to Gasol.

But such is the nature of playoff basketball: one long exercise in problem solving. For a good, long stretch of Game 5, the Grizzlies and Gasol figured things out.

LOS ANGELES -- There was a moment toward the end of the first quarter in Game 2 between the Grizzlies and the Clippers when Memphis walked the ball upcourt after getting beat in transition. As Mike Conley tried to deliver the ball to Rudy Gay on the wing, Zach Randolph barreled into Blake Griffin just inside the arc.

The contact caught Griffin off guard, and he stumbled backward like a fighter who’d been hit. Just as Griffin regained his balance -- now below the foul line -- Randolph delivered another elbow to Griffin’s torso, knocking the Clippers’ brawny power forward further into the paint.

Back up at the top of the court, Bobby Simmons denied that intended pass to Gay. Conley was fortunate to recover the ball and, when he did, he saw Randolph primed in the paint. Easy entry pass to Randolph, who took a single power dribble and muscled the ball up off the glass with his left for an easy layup. After staggering early, Memphis trailed by only five points.

The Grizzlies ultimately won the game and much of their success was attributed to pushing the Clippers around at will.

A playoff series develops certain storylines, and a dominant one to emerge from the Grizzlies-Clippers matchup has been physicality -- who is manhandling whom beneath the glass, in the paint and any other place on the floor where there's contact between opponents, which seems to be any arbitrary point between the east bank of the Mississippi River and the coastline of the Pacific Ocean.

Designated brute Reggie Evans said the Clippers got “punked” in his team's Game 2 loss in Memphis. Back in Los Angeles prior to Game 3, the Clippers posted a quote from commentator Charles Barkley on the locker room wall:

Other than Kenyon Martin, [the Clippers] are not a physical team … If I was coaching the Grizzlies, I would say "We are not letting them dunk." They want to get the "play of the day." They don’t want to be rough and tumble.

When the Clippers eked out a win in Game 3 by dodging a bullet at the buzzer, they claimed victory in the physical sweepstakes. "Overall, I thought we did a good job of being the more aggressive team," Griffin said. "That was kind of the plan, to be the aggressive team from the jump. That’s [the Grizzlies’] whole M.O., being aggressive, their whole ‘Grit ‘n’ Grind’ thing."

On the Memphis side, Rudy Gay was despondent after the game. Gay is a genial guy, but about as milquetoast as they come when it comes to declarative statements about team and individual performance. Yet he could hardly contain his frustration at the podium following Game 3.

"We're supposed to have a physical team," Gay said. "They took that away from us today. They pushed us. They did all the things that we usually do to teams. ... They really imposed their will on us tonight."

Evans might have struck the most balanced note after the game, one that acknowledged fewer instances like the one Griffin suffered back in Memphis, but stopped short of wholesale praise.

"We did pretty good, but we can still improve," Evans said. "We still have a little more work. We don't want to get too comfortable, too relaxed and too happy with the results. Even though we won, found a way to get a win, we still have to go back to the drawing board and see what we did wrong."

Evans understands that victory in the manhandling event tends to be assigned retroactively.

If Gay's last-second shot fell through the net, would he have bristled the way he did about the Clippers' seizing the mantle of schoolyard bully? Would the Clippers have been peppered with questions about whether their inability to control the trenches would be their undoing in this series?

"Physicality" is an ambiguous term whose definition changes player to player. When Evans was asked about it, he cited the offensive rebounding numbers. To Paul after Game 2, physicality meant Memphis' willingness to tug, pull and push him wherever and whenever he tried to navigate in the half court. Randolph's moments come when he and Griffin are wrestling for position.

And for Gay, it's about luring the opposing defense into illegal contact by being aggressive with the ball. For the Clippers, physicality doesn’t come without a price. They might have done a better job of holding their ground in Game 3, but they also let Gay and Randolph combine for 23 free throw attempts. There's smart physical and silly physical, and the Clippers simply can't foul Memphis the way they did on Saturday afternoon. Setting aside Memphis’ Game 1 exploits from the perimeter, the Grizzlies aren’t going to win this series from the perimeter. But they have big men who can stroke it from the foul line, and Gay has the capacity to turn a mediocre shooting performance into a charity drive, as he did in Game 3.

The Clippers can take down the bulletin-board material for Game 4. They did an acceptable job on the glass and Paul was more elusive to the Grizzlies behind the pick-and-roll. But there's still work to be done. Cutting down on the aforementioned fouls. Inspiring Griffin to leverage his big frame and plant a stake on the left block. Staying active on the glass. Fighting over those high picks for Conley.

The physical battle is usually portrayed as a bout, but it's just as much a game of wits. The Clippers worked harder in Game 3 -- and good for them. To take a decisive edge in Game 4, they now have to work smarter.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Once the Grizzlies digested the Game 1 meltdown (come to think of it, they might not have been able to keep that one down), they went back to work, watched the film and likely came to a reasonable conclusion:

Memphis dominated the Clippers for 39 minutes on Sunday night.

If an NBA team defines success by their capacity to get the shots they want over the course of the game, Memphis achieved that for most of Game 1. If not for settling into their prevent offense, what Gilbert Arenas called "stalling," almost a four-corners style of play, this exercise might be a one-way exchange:

What do the Clippers need to do to get back in the series?

Chris Paul is aware of this dynamic. "I think Gilbert [Arenas] said it yesterday," Paul said. "[The Grizzlies] don't have to change anything. They beat the life out of us."

As good as the Grizzlies looked for three-plus quarters, they'll tweak their plan for Game 2. Meanwhile the Clippers have a ton of work to do to stave off the rigor mortis that afflicted them for most of the game:

Now starting at small forward for the Clippers against Rudy Gay...
Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro has been coy about his plans for the 3 spot in the Clippers' starting lineup, and for good reason. With Caron Butler lost to a fracture in his left hand, the Clippers have a couple of imperfect options. The first is journeyman Bobby Simmons, who hasn't seen much action lately. Simmons offers Del Negro better size against the rangy 6-foot-8 Rudy Gay. The Clippers staff likes Simmons' defensive judgment, but he's been an offensive liability, tallying a very sad Player Efficiency Rating (PER) of 6.06. He's shooting 31 percent from the field and doesn't get to the line.

After playing the role of co-savior on Sunday night, Nick Young would be the natural candidate if the Clippers wanted to throw maximum firepower at Memphis with their starting lineup. But both Young and Del Negro have expressed a comfort with Young's role in the second unit. He's a one-on-one player and inveterate shooter who best operates as a microwave in a less structured game. Over the course of the season, Del Negro has been inclined to maintain order on his bench and elevate better defensive options to plug holes in the starting unit. Don't be surprised if Simmons starts, but Young finishes.

This decision for the Clippers is less about Simmons-Young and more about Gay, who was able to find mismatches at will over the first three quarters. Time and again, Gay would zip off down screens and force the Clippers' big men to switch out. Or Memphis would go to their "Pistol action," which forces a mismatch for Gay against one of the Clippers' guards. Had the Grizzlies not collapsed and stayed true to what was working for them offensively, the headline Monday morning might have read, "Gay carries Grizzlies to Game 1 victory."

Work through Marc Gasol
The Grizzlies don't boast the most efficient half-court offense, but you never would've known it by their performance in the first quarter in Game 1. Memphis' best-looking offense originated with Gasol, both as facilitator and scorer. When he wasn't draining face-up jumpers, Gasol was distributing the ball. He dished out six assists, at least one to each of the other four Memphis starters. Gasol's gifts were a beautiful composite of what makes the Grizzlies offense tick: A high-low pass to Zach Randolph, hitting Tony Allen (twice) on baseline cuts, a pair of kickouts to Conley when the defense collapsed, and a well-run handoff play for Gay.

Whether the Grizzlies have Gasol flash to the foul line where he can act as the distribution hub on the offense, or they put him into pick-and-roll plays on the left side which will pressure the Clippers' big men to make decision, he's the catalyst for Memphis. They got away from late in Game 1 and it might have cost them the game.

Can Z-Bo be Z-Bo?
By his own admission, Randolph isn't 100 percent, and you can see it in his work down on the right block. When Randolph is right, he uses his feet and mass to put his defenders on their heels. By keeping his defender moving, Randolph is to create that layer of space he needs to get that sweet shot up, with his countermove if necessary. Right now, he's hesitating and Blake Griffin and Reggie Evans are standing their ground and denying Randolph that coveted space. That needs to change if the Grizzlies want to have that inside-out look. The aforementioned Gasol-oriented sets are vital to the Grizzlies' success, but so is the Randolph-based stuff. Randolph might not demand a double-team right now, but he can't allow the Clippers' big men to establish position -- and confidence -- in his kitchen.

Feed the big dog
Speaking of the inside-out game, the Clippers have some issues of their own to address. Griffin needs more touches in the post, not just for his own productivity, but to get the Clippers' half-court offense humming. Griffin has superior speed and athleticism to anyone in the Memphis frontcourt corps, and he must get ample opportunity to exploit that advantage.

Force the Grizzlies to either play Griffin straight-up or send a double-team, out of which Griffin is a capable and willing passer. Much of the Clippers' perimeter game is predicated on Paul's penetration, but plenty of good looks materialize with Griffin leveraging the defense. That's when the ball starts moving in the Clippers' offense.

"This is the way our offense is set up," Randy Foye said. "It's about where the trap comes from. [Griffin] posts up on that left block. When he turns middle, they collapse, and put him in a situation where they make him pass the ball. I move over the weak side to try to get open, and he knows where to find me."

The turnover game
It's the immovable object and the irresistible force. The Clippers ranked second in the NBA in protecting the basketball (thank you, Chris Paul) while the Grizzlies led the league in forced turnovers (thank you, Mike Conley). In Game 1, the Clippers were out of character, coughing up the ball 18 times in 91 possessions. Memphis generated 20 points off those turnovers, a bounty that sustained them for much of the game. Memphis will need a similar output against a team that's far more efficient offensively. They also need to keep the Clippers off the offensive glass. Memphis has been no better than an average defensive rebounding team all season, but letting the Clippers collect nearly a third of their misses is, for all practical purposes, a turnover in its own right.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Any team that blows a 27-point, second-half lead will assume the role of league punching bag until it suits up for their next game, and the Grizzlies have absorbed plenty of hits over the past 48 hours.

The early stages of Game 1 seem like an afterthought now, but if you're the Grizzlies (or the Clippers), a screening of Memphis' first-quarter reveals a team that got anything and everything it wanted in the half court on Sunday night. And most of those play calls were focused around one man -- Marc Gasol.

The Grizzlies aren't a very efficient offensive team in the half court. They have trouble spreading the floor because none of their starters drains more than one 3-pointer a game (Mike Conley's prolific, outlying Game 1 explosion notwithstanding), and there isn't a single player on the roster who hits at better than a 38 percent clip from beyond the arc. Their big men provide a little stretch -- and that can create pockets of space -- but they can't fully stretch a defense.

The Grizzlies staff understands those deficiencies better than anyone. They've designed a half-court offense whose best sets force the defense into impossible choices by putting the ball into the hands of their most skilled practitioner, Gasol.

Here's my favorite Grizzlies set, one they used to jump out early on the Clippers in Game 1.

Please look at the pair of smaller panels on the left side of the frame. The possession begins with an angle pick-and-roll with Zach Randolph screening for Conley, the Grizzlies' point guard. Conley then dribbles right of the pick. As Gasol flashes to the middle, Conley hits him with a pass (It's worth noting that, in the third quarter, the Clippers ran so far under this action, that Conley chose to use all that space to launch 3-pointers at will).


Now we're at the main event, which you can see in the larger panel on the right side of the frame. This is where all the good stuff happens for Memphis.

Know what's impressive about this set? Once the ball goes into Gasol at the foul line, all five guys on the floor are viable scoring options. If Gasol has space, he has a clean turnaround jumper (3rd quarter, 10:15). Rudy Gay can slice, picking up a handoff from Gasol, and rubbing his defender off the big center in the process. Now Gay is on the move with the ball with separation from his defender. He can drive or, if he prefers, he can stop and pop (1st quarter, 11:00). If the defense helps off of Tony Allen in the right corner, Allen goes back door with an aggressive baseline cut to the basket, where Gasol hits him with a pass (1st quarter, 10:07). We've seen beautiful high-low passes from Gasol to Randolph, and if Conley is left alone on the perimeter, Gasol can kick the ball back out to him.

You'll also see the Grizzlies run this with different combinations of big men. Marreese Speights doesn't have the full toolbox Gasol has, but if he flashes to the foul line unaccounted for, the Memphis ball handler can hit him there for an easy face-up jumper. We saw this toward the end of the first period, a bucket that gave the Grizzlies a 34-16 lead.

So what happened?

"We got away from it," Gasol said. "We took too many good shots and we turned the ball over. That was our fault. [The Clippers] also did a better job of showing. So we stopped running it or I'd set the pick."

Which is one way you blow a 27-point lead.

In fairness, the Clippers made an adjustment. Their harder shows, as Gasol alluded to, made the pass from Conley to Gasol harder to thread. The Clippers also stopped helping off Allen, which slammed the back door shut and opted to lay off Gay, who can't do as much harm from distance. If instead of going into Gasol where he's so dangerous, Conley decided to shuttle the ball to his right with Gay at the top of the floor one-on-one, the Clippers can live with that. Most of all, Reggie Evans and Blake Griffin brutalized Gasol at that spot, not only denying the pass, but pushing Gasol farther out on the floor.

The Grizzlies will inevitably make a counter-adjustment. They're unlikely to shoot 69 percent from 3-point range again, and will need to manufacture quality possessions by leveraging Gasol's capacity to make good things happen from his preferred spot.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Do you trust a man without a conscience, one who operates on a different -- even nonexistent -- moral code?

For basketball purists, that’s a tough one. We subscribe to the high-minded principles of “quality shot selection,” of “taking what the defense gives you,” of “not settling.” These tenets make up the basketball code we romanticize in “Hoosiers” and in the longevity of the San Antonio Spurs.

But Los Angeles Clippers’ swingman Nick Young doesn’t subscribe to this code -- not by a long shot. When Young has the ball in his hands, he doesn't factor his decision-making the way coaches, fans and analysts would.

"I'd say I have no conscience, to a certain extent," Young says. "I feel like I can make any shot. That's something that's been in me since I started playing the game."

Young doesn't deny that he takes a few ill-advised shots a game, but he won't apologize for them. And on Sunday in the Clippers' improbable comeback, he had nothing to be sorry about. He went for 19 points on 11 shots, including a trio of 3-pointers in a span of a minute to shave a 12-point deficit to three in a flash.

Most of those shots on Sunday were open looks, but for most of his tenure with the Clippers the degree of difficulty on his shot selection has been astronomical.

"Those shots? I still think I can make them," Young said. "Some people might think, 'He's glad to shoot that shot,' but I practice those shots."

This entire premise can offend certain sensibilities. I ask Young, "Really? You practice taking contested 21-footers inside the arc with two guys on you?"

"I know I can make 'em," Young says.

This certitude can drive an empiricist nuts. An average NBA game has about 94 possessions, and if you have a guy like Young chucking up bad shots on three or four of those possessions, that can kill your efficiency. Look at the point differentials of most NBA teams -- a bucket or two per game is the difference between a top-four seed and a seat at the draft lottery.

Despite these truths, is it possible that Young has a point? Are some of those bad shots loss leaders that ultimately pay off in a game like Sunday night's?

In an effort to try to make sense of whether a lack of conscience can translate to success, I go in search of Gilbert Arenas.

After Arenas dropped 61 points against the Los Angeles Lakers in December 2006, Kobe Bryant famously said of the then-Washington Wizards star, "He doesn't seem to have much of a conscience. I really don't think he does. Some of the shots he took tonight, you miss those, and they're just terrible shots. Awful. You make them and they're unbelievable shots."

Setting aside the irony of the source, Bryant gets to the heart of the matter. Many interpreted his comments as a swipe at Arenas, but it wasn't. Bryant was just delving into the mindset of the unconscionable shooter, who is neither good nor bad -- but just is.

On Monday, Arenas had plenty to offer on the matter:

The best players in any sport in the world have no conscience.

It's like someone who has ADD (attention deficit disorder). They have a creative mind. They can see things that other people can't see. They can do things that other people can't do. But once they take the medicine, it calms them down -- just like a coach who gives a conscience to a guy who doesn't have a conscience.

It's like an assassin. In any movie, he starts off killing everybody, but then he finds the girl who stops him from being an assassin. That's just like players. The reason Steve Nash can make the passes he can make is because nobody has ever told him when he makes a turnover, "Don't make that pass." Same thing with Rondo. It gives them that freedom to expand and create anything he can think of.

I challenge Arenas on the notion that really bad shots are part of the creative process, that a guy somehow can't be both judicious and aggressive, but he rejected the premise that there's anything wrong with taking a 20-footer with a defender in your face and time on the shot clock:

His creativity lets him do that. It's a shot he thinks he can make. Just like Kobe. If you think about the best players in the world, they have no conscience. They try anything. They do anything. Brett Favre -- he threw any pass he thought he could throw. That's his creativity. That's what he's like. He's going to fail and he's also going to win.

But a guy with a conscience won't pull that trigger.

I ask Arenas whether you can be a great player and still have a conscience.

"I don't think so," Arenas says. "Michael Jordan never had a conscience. A.I. didn't have a conscience. Kobe doesn't have a conscience."

I counter that Kevin Garnett has a conscience, that he exercises an uncommon discipline and has still been one of the best players of his time.

Arenas' response?

And that's why he doesn't get the ball in the fourth quarter. That's why they give it to Paul Pierce, because he has no conscience. LeBron has a conscience. He cares what you think about him. But Kevin Durant doesn't have a conscience. D-Wade doesn't have a conscience. But Bosh has a conscience.

You're born with it or you're not. Some people are what I call "killers." Some people have the killer mentality and that's who you want with the ball at the end of the game. You want them taking that shot because they don't care about failing -- even if it's a bad shot.

It's hard to let Arenas off the hook on this point. Does he deny there are bad shots that cost you basketball games?

That's the game of basketball. You can't go around and play like we did yesterday -- like college basketball when you're up 20 with a few minutes left and you're stalling and you do the four corners, and before you know it, you stop being aggressive.

So the Grizzlies developed a conscience at the wrong time in Game 1?

"Yes," Arenas says.

Arenas' theory that conscience is a congenital trait is interesting. In his worldview, a player can't develop -- or rather shed -- his conscience. He's either hard-wired to kill, like Nick Young or, on a larger scale, Kobe Bryant. Or he's not.

Arenas might be half-right, half-wrong:

A lack of conscience might be a necessary ingredient for Arenas' "killers," but those moral vacuums aren't created equally.

On Sunday, we saw the best of Young's nihilism. Without it, the Grizzlies are up 1-0 in this series. But down the road, it's possible a lack of conscience might shoot the Clippers out of a game.

Such is the fickle nature of the code.

When Blake Griffin was assigned to the Los Angeles Clippers as the first pick at the 2009 draft, he moved through the usual rituals -- the handshake with David Stern, the donning of the cap, then his inaugural news conference as a member of his new team. With camera bulbs flashing like lightning bugs, Griffin fielded questions about joining a losing organization, one that lived in the shadow of its crosstown rivals.

Whatever he might have been thinking privately that night, Griffin said all that right things. The low expectations for his new team meant there was time to work and build a culture. He scoffed at a question about whether the franchise’s futility would affect his mood or mission.

“I know what’s happened in the past,” Griffin said then. “People keep telling me that, but I’m not just going to say, 'Oh, well, we haven’t had that many winning seasons so I’ll just give up now.'"

Nearly three years later, as Griffin prepares for his first postseason game, the Clippers are an organization whose culture has changed radically since his arrival. Griffin is partially responsible for the new vitality of the Clipper brand. His pyrotechnics, which began to attract real recognition in December 2010, helped the Clippers achieve cult status last season, even though they won only 32 games.

Griffin is a visual talent for a visual age, and his exploits are perfectly distributable on video platforms, which is where a fair number of us spend our time these days. His charisma has taken a peculiar turn this season, as he has become more polarizing -- but that pivot has also turned him into one of the league's lead characters.

Griffin's individual notoriety wasn't enough on its own to elevate the Clippers to relevance, but then Chris Paul arrived.

Like Griffin, the legacy of the franchise, its name, its past transgressions -- none of it fazes Paul. As far as he's concerned, the Clippers are the Los Angeles Pauls. The way Paul sees it, abstractions like history and superstition don't stand a chance against history if he's at the controls. He has accepted this franchise as his home, and that alone renders your snide comments and glib insults null and void. Ask him a question about the Clippers' storied futility, and he'll reject the whole premise.

Seriously. Ask him.

The Clippers now have two guys who have effectively rebranded the organization with their skills and appeal (or, perhaps for some, anti-appeal). After winning more than 60 percent of their games, the Clippers will take the floor in Memphis on Sunday night. As has been the case since the start of the season, nobody is quite sure what the threshold of success should be for the Clippers. Should their season be deemed a failure if they bow out ceremoniously to a quality Memphis Grizzlies team with home-court advantage? Or should a team with two superstars be disappointed with anything less than a conference finals appearance?

There's no consensus to these questions because we haven't figured out whether we should judge the Clippers' performance in the postseason through the lens of history or as just another NBA team.

For incrementalists, the outcome of the Clippers' playoff campaign isn't all that important in the larger context of the franchise's renovation. You don't cry if someone makes a dent while laying sheetrock for your dream home, one you hope to live in for the rest of your life. Even if the Clippers go quietly in a Round 1 loss, that won't nullify the accomplishments of the season. The Clippers are now a destination where superstars will set up shop, and where a young star can prosper as both player and persona. Ten years ago, Elton Brand heard nothing from the Clippers when he was eligible for an extension on his rookie deal. On July 1, 2012, it's a safe bet the Clippers brass will be on Griffin's doorstep at 12:01 a.m. with paper and pen to secure his services long term. Better yet, chances are that Griffin will sign that extension, which is no small thing. With Paul returning, the Clippers can pick up where they left off and continue the project. By next spring, a first-round exit a year earlier will be in the rearview mirror.

The counterargument is that this line of thinking is exactly the kind of defeatism that sentences bad franchises to eternal failure. You really think Paul cares about "larger narratives"? Have you watched him play? Paul cares about only one thing -- winning -- and any attempt to accept losing as a minor setback is silly. If you want to become a tent-pole franchise in this league, then act like it. No team worth its salt ever rationalizes losing. In fact, that's precisely how you delineate the Lakers from the Clippers.

For the past couple of years, the Clippers have been engaged in one of the most ambitious rebranding exercises in professional sports. That evolution won't be derailed by a first-round loss to Memphis, but there's a fine line between relevance and success.

The Clippers have claimed legitimacy. Now we'll see if they can win.

The first half was an eyesore, as the Thunder led nearly the whole way despite a bevy of turnovers by both teams. Then the Clippers rallied back to drop the Thunder 92-77 on Monday, five nights after Los Angeles went into Oklahoma City and stole one on the Thunder's home court. The game was a revelation for the Clippers, and a nightmare for the Thunder after halftime.

• So many of the Clippers' wins this season have been of the lightning-in-the-bottle variety. Randy Foye will get hot from long range, or Chris Paul will emerge from the bullpen late in the fourth quarter and carry the team to an improbable win. A win is a win -- but the best teams in the league rely on reliable systems and methods to chalk up victories. The Clippers, on the other hand, have been masters of serendipity. But that wasn't the case Monday night, when the Clippers collectively identified Oklahoma City's weaknesses and attacked them. Playing a grown-up brand of basketball, the Clippers threw a steady stream of different defensive coverages at the Thunder. When the Thunder confronted their strengths with strength, the Clippers made reads and found workarounds. This is how mature basketball teams win big games in the NBA and, in taking out the Thunder with substance and savvy, the Clippers played up to their potential Monday. The pyrotechnics will explode at some point; the Clippers' challenge going forward is adopting a series of principles that will guide them when they don't.
• The turning point of the game came toward the end of the third quarter when Nick Young exploded for eight points in three possessions. Prior to Monday, Young had been terrible for the Clippers, failing to shoot over 50 percent from the field in any of his 17 games with the Clippers. That was largely a function of looking for the wrong shots in the wrong spots. But during this stretch of possessions, he played off the Clippers' primary action: the middle pick-and-roll between Paul and Blake Griffin. On the first shot, the Thunder trapped Paul, then the other three OKC defenders converged on Griffin in the lane. Griffin takes a lot of grief as a "one-dimensional" player. Ever seen him move the ball out of a triple-team? That's what he did there to find Young open for two. One possession later, Paul ran a little slip screen with Griffin. This time, Young needed some help, so DeAndre Jordan pinned Kevin Durant (Young's man) out of the play. Young was open for a 3-pointer at a spot a couple of feet deeper than the previous one. On the third possession, the Clippers ran that Paul-Griffin pick-and-roll one more time. Again, a trap and, again, Durant got caught helping middle (to pick up Jordan on a duck-in) rather than staying at home on Young. It's safe to say Paul is a guy who knows how to make hedging defenders look silly. He did here. In a flash, the Clippers shaved the Thunder's lead down to a single point. Young finished with 19 points on 11 true shots without a turnover. The swag was back, at least for a night, and a very opportune one at that.
• In their heyday, the Celtics got away with a lot of turnovers, largely because they were impossible to score against for long stretches of basketball. The Thunder have a reasonably efficient defense, but they can't continue to cough up the ball on nearly a sixth of their possessions, because a team like San Antonio or the Lakers -- or even the Clippers, who protect the ball well -- will punish them for it. Russell Westbrook, who scored the Thunder's first seven points, couldn't find his cutters in the first half, errors that resulted in a slew of turnovers. In the third quarter, Serge Ibaka couldn't make a simple entry pass into the high post, and Westbrook found a wide-open Vinny Del Negro for a kickout. All of it made for very bad news, as the Thunder couldn't get out of their own way.
• The Clippers started dabbling with the zone a couple of months back when their man-to-man defense was in shambles. The schemes weren't terribly effective, but you could see the faint sketch of something that could potentially work. The Clippers are quick and long, and they certainly had the potential to compensate for their lack of reliable isolation defenders by using their size and athleticism in the zone. Gradually, that zone defense has improved, and it hummed just before halftime. Jordan was everywhere, and the Clippers were quick to match up the instant the Thunder found a seam. I caught up with Chauncey Billups after the game to ask him about the Clippers' zone, which gave up only seven points in 13 possessions. Billups was miffed when Flip Saunders installed the zone in Detroit, because he took it as an affront to his Pistons' defensive capabilities. Zone, as Metta World Peace recently told me, was for teams that can't defend in man, and for a certain proud vet, the scheme still carries a stigma. "We looked at it like it was a weakness, like you couldn't stop anybody," Billups said. "But it's a good gimmick to change up a defense." The Clippers, with Jordan anchoring underneath in Chandlerian fashion, are making it work. The Thunder couldn't lay off the long jumpers (though Durant missed a couple of open ones from long range), or they drove recklessly into the teeth of the zone. No flashes, few cuts and little patience.
• Oklahoma City couldn't make sense of the Clippers' varied coverages. The Clippers ran under Westbrook on pick-and-roll plays -- but not the big man -- giving the eager point guard just enough rope to hang himself ... but not too much. The Clippers played Durant straight-up in isolation or in the post, with the occasional trap. Sometimes they'd switch when Durant came off the pindown, sometimes not. "The big thing was to make [Durant] catch as high as possible," Kenyon Martin said. "Sometimes out of timeouts we'd switch the coverage if we saw he was getting low, and sometimes we made a read." Durant shot 7-for-18 from the floor, and drained 10 of 12 from the line.
• Aside from the handful of lousy close-outs, the Thunder didn't play a poor defensive game. Their defensive pick-and-roll strategy can best be characterized as a "long show." The big man -- be it Kendrick Perkins or Ibaka -- stayed with Paul until the point guard gave up the ball, and this creates all sorts of confusion behind this quasi-blitz. The Clippers' wing would stagnate in the corner, while Griffin would shuffle around the high post desperately looking to provide a pressure release for Paul. More times than not, it worked, even against a menace like Paul. The Clippers point guard finished with 12 points (5-for-12 FGAs, 1-for-2 FTAs) and 10 assists. Not bad, but hardly destructive.

• Concussions are becoming a near-weekly occurrence in the NBA, with Kevin Love as the most recent victim. Will there come a time when basketball players wear protective headgear? Here's a vintage video of the inventor of the football helmet demonstrating -- rather bizarrely -- his creation.
• At Grantland, Jonah Lehrer examines Regenokine, the therapy administered to Kobe Bryant to treat his arthritic knee. A debate rages: Is "biological medicine" a game-changer or quackery?
• Everywhere Tyson Chandler has ever played, his team has improved itself defensively. There are probably 15 infields in Major League Baseball who could use him up the middle.
• Rob Mahoney of The Two Man Game on the Golden State Warriors: "In their current form, the Warriors are a perfectly miserable basketball team. There were some decent individual efforts on Thursday, but overall the team’s operation is reminiscent of a confined gas; they’re objects floating within the limits of a particular space, toward no end in particular and without any coherence of movement or purpose."
• Nate Drexler of Magic Basketball sizes up the pick-and-roll D of two possible Orlando first-round opponents -- Boston and Atlanta.
• A fun spring read for you: Neal Pollack's "Jewball," basketball noir/historical fiction at its finest.
• Devin Dignam of Wages of Win offers more evidence that tanking doesn't work though, once upon a time, it used to.
• Ian Levy wonders if the frontcourt tandem of Brandan Wright and Ian Mahinmi could give the Mavericks some juice come playoff time.
• Carlos Boozer had a standout game on Thursday night for Chicago. He's also released a new single, titled "Winning Streak." Where does Booz rank in the hierarchy of NBA rappers?
• Ray Allen's mom is fresh and ready for her third consecutive Boston Marathon on Monday. In doing so, she'll be raising money to combat Diabetes in honor of her grandson, who suffers from the condition.
• I'm willing to offer up a mea culpa on my wholesale dismissal of Iman Shumpert as an NBA player. He's a tremendous defender who has a decisive impact on the game. But he's still an offensive liability completely unaware of his limitations. Fortunately, the coaching staff in New York seems to recognize those deficiencies.
• NBA players who toil in one city, but maintain their primary residence in the other face the dreaded "Jock Tax."