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Former professional football player Wade Davis came out in 2012, a few years after retiring from the game. We spoke on Monday soon after Jason Collins' story was published, and one of Davis' first reaction was, "He's perfect."

Davis stops by TrueHoop TV to explain what makes Collins a strong candidate to perform the hard work of being North American team pro sports' first openly gay male athlete.
 

Let’s not call what the Los Angeles Clippers and Memphis Grizzlies share a rivalry, because that’s a stamp reserved for rare use. But for the second consecutive season, the Clippers and Grizzlies are delivering us a serious piece of first-round entertainment that plays like something we usually see in late May. These games have been fueled by a familiar but unique grade of intensity, and with Game 5 set for Staples Center on Tuesday night, the heat in this series will be dialed up to maximum capacity.

Both last year and now, Clips-Griz has been the rare first-round series where an early bounce would be cataclysmic for both teams. Each team played championship-caliber basketball for sustained stretches during the regular season, and both have produced a single performance (Clippers Game 1, Grizzlies Game 4) as good as anything else on display in the first round.

The problem for both is that the furthest reaches of the playoff bracket generally have room for only one team of that breed. That means that in less than a week, one of these two 56-win teams will be in basketball purgatory after the most successful season in franchise history and showing glimpses of brilliance just days before elimination.

Beyond success or failure, there’s even more at stake. Chris Paul becomes a free agent on July 1. Although the probabilities of his remaining with the Clippers are very high, meeting last season’s benchmark leaves far less doubt than a playoff failure does.

On the Memphis side, it’s clear the Grizzlies’ new management is playing the long game. They’re an inquisitive group by their very nature, and it’s difficult to imagine the organization not fully exploring every opportunity this summer, even if that means losing guys who are major contributors to the team’s identity. The case for retaining the present core becomes an even tougher sell if the Grizzlies make a first-round exit for a second straight spring.

Neither coach is under contract for next season, which means the respective long-term prospects of Vinny Del Negro and Lionel Hollins are both in play, something we rarely see in a series. No matter how high the stated expectations or personal preferences, it’s hard to dismiss a coach who led a team that won a ton of basketball games and justified its playoff seeding. But it’s easy to argue for change if that team is either backsliding or stagnating.

A vulnerable Oklahoma City Thunder team -- the presumptive second-round matchup for whoever emerges from the wreckage -- compounds that intensity because both the Clippers and Grizzlies can see a navigable path to the NBA Finals.

The most competitive seven-game playoff series tend to be divided into two acts. The first four games comprise the first act. Although the Clippers and Grizzlies met 14 times in 15 months prior to this series, Act 1 served to re-establish the characters and larger themes of the series -- and the introduction of new ones.

The Grizzlies are the league’s most self-realized team. They’ve come to terms with their shortcomings, and when they’re at their best, the Grizzlies mitigate those flaws and focus on their undeniable strength. No other unit in the NBA features a frontcourt tandem that is so perfectly complementary as Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph. For a team that ranked in the bottom half of the league in offensive efficiency during the regular season, man, Memphis runs some beautiful stuff when Gasol and Randolph are synchronized and using their big-man telepathy.

In Games 1 and 2 on their home court, the Clippers had relative success mucking this up. Much of that was Blake Griffin winning the battle of wits against Randolph down on the low block, but also the Clippers’ bigs applying pressure and making aggressive attempts to deny entry to Gasol and Randolph.

In Memphis, Gasol controlled the space on the floor, almost as the big man version of Chris Paul. Gasol obviously doesn’t have possession of the ball to the extent Paul does, but Gasol’s movement off the ball is just as vital to his team’s offense as Paul's movement of the ball is to the Clippers. Randolph’s work space is much smaller, but the baseline in Memphis belonged to him. Space dictates control underneath -- the angles available to Randolph when he’s fed the ball and looking to score (which he does at an efficient rate), and the room he’s afforded to gobble up misses. Armed with virtually no lethal perimeter shooting, the Grizzlies can’t succeed without executing the high-low game, Randolph isolated in the post and Gasol finding clean attempts by lifting to 20 feet against a scrambling Clippers’ defense.

The Clippers are almost mirror opposites of the Grizzlies and are a hard team to understand because they’re a study in contradiction. Critics -- and I’ve been one -- cite the team’s rudimentary offense which seems to stall at inopportune times against the league’s better defenses (Memphis is ranked No. 2 in the NBA). But as Del Negro rightly pointed out the other day, the Clippers ranked fourth in offensive efficiency this season. However much the Clippers’ half-court offense offends aesthetic sensibilities, the results bear out. Paul’s surgical work off the dribble and Griffin’s capacity to work at will on the block were the primary elements of control in Games 1 and 2.

So here we are at Act II, about 265 basketball possessions per team to culminate a season that’s seen almost 8,000. The Clippers and Grizzlies style different fashions on the court, but they both stake claim to possession control as the defining attribute to their master plans. For all the other factors that are ratcheting up the pressure in the series, that commonality -- the need to control not just tempo, but also physical and mental space -- boils the hottest.

ESPN.com's Kevin Arnovitz has been out of the closet, and going to work at NBA stadiums (and yes, in locker rooms) for years.

In his experience, how can Jason Collins, now that he's out, really expect to be treated?

In response to several Twitter requests, here's Outside the Lines on Jason Collins, featuring TrueHoop's Kevin Arnovitz:

"No one wants to live in fear. I've always been scared of saying the wrong thing. I don't sleep well. I never have. But each time I tell another person, I feel stronger and sleep a little more soundly. It takes an enormous amount of energy to guard such a big secret. I've endured years of misery and gone to enormous lengths to live a lie. I was certain that my world would fall apart if anyone knew. And yet when I acknowledged my sexuality I felt whole for the first time."

-- Jason Collins in Sports Illustrated

Everything has changed, yet it all seems so self-evident when you break it down. In which workplace, family, school or community would we not want someone to feel like the best version of himself and committed to his well-being? What benefit is derived from imposing what Metta World Peace aptly referred to as “unnecessary stress” on another person? How is basketball, sports, or the larger world better when we have people like Jason Collins enduring misery, sleeping poorly and expending precious energy guarding secrets? We shouldn’t wait for everyone to be ready before we create the environment for a guy like Collins to thrive -- we should get ready.

This is why the “readiness” canard never rang true to me. The world is never completely ready for change, and there are some in the NBA today expressing ambivalence about Collins’ announcement. Those voices won’t be the last. The next time Collins sets a screen in front of 18,000 people, it’s a fair bet that a couple of them will be angry. There will be players who grumble privately that Collins’ admission makes life a little more awkward for them.

There’s going to be a serious temptation in the next few days to dwell on the commentary of those who are least comfortable with Collins’ decision, but let’s not. We should offer clarity where it’s lacking and perspective where there isn’t any, but this has always been a conversation that’s strongest when it’s forward-looking, not reactive. Present resistance isn’t nearly as profound as future potential. Pretty soon, just about everyone will get over it because that’s what progress is -- the collective act of getting over it.

I still can’t figure out if Collins' coming out is a “where were you when it happened” moment. When I first learned about Collins I was banging out some thoughts and impressions about the Clippers-Grizzlies first-round playoff series for a column. Before Game 4 in Memphis, I witnessed an amusing scene in the Grizzlies locker room, which was empty except for Zach Randolph and Tony Allen sitting at their lockers. Allen was playfully lecturing Z-Bo about the nuances of help defense and the job of the big man in a defensive rotation. Z-Bo smiled, knowing everything Allen was saying was correct. Then, shaking his head, he said, “The big man can never win.”

It was one of those snapshots when players reveal not only something about their approach to the craft but also a bit of who they are as people. Those are the moments you live for when you cover a sport, when the characters become fuller and the images become brighter -- when athletes become real people.

That’s all this conversation about openly gay athletes has ever been about it, our collective willingness to afford them the dignity of self-expression. A human being simply can’t live in fear of his or her own identity. Anyone who has could tell you how torturous it is. Jason Collins understood that, and that realization fueled his decision to come out as an openly gay man on Monday.

Collins called coming out “the right thing.” Some of that is a political imperative, but more than anything, Collins made a quality-of-life decision, just as did Golden State executive Rick Welts and anyone else who’s opted, as Collins wrote, to be whole. That means taking all of the different fragments in life -- work, family, friends, passions, maybe school or worship -- and bringing them together and becoming a complete person.

Sports was one of the last places in American public life where that was impossible, but Collins has righted that.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- As news of the injury to Oklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook reverberated through the NBA on Friday, the Los Angeles Clippers and Memphis Grizzlies reacted to the Westbrook’s possible absence in a potential second-round series between the Thunder and the winner of the first-round series between the Clippers and Grizzlies.

“[The Thunder] are still a great team even without him, but he’s a huge part of their offense and a great player,” Clippers forward Blake Griffin said. “So it does leave them vulnerable but we can’t really look to that yet. We can’t be focused on that. We have to take care of business first of all here, then set our sights on that.”

The Thunder announced on Friday that Westbrook will undergo surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee. The procedure has yet to be scheduled and there is currently no timetable for his return, according to Thunder team officials. Should Westbrook be sidelined for an extended period and Oklahoma City advances to the second round, he'd miss a series against either the Clippers or the Grizzlies.

Griffin, who suffered a torn meniscus in his left knee while training for the Olympics last July, said the recovery time can vary player to player, depending on the severity of the injury.

“As long as you’re not repairing, you can come back pretty quickly,” Griffin said. “But you’re a step slow. It takes a little bit to get that feeling back and to get the swelling completely out and all that.”

Grizzlies forward Tayshaun Prince said the Thunder’s depth will keep Oklahoma City very competitive, but that injuries can have a major impact on any team’s title chances.

“They’ve got a good enough team to where they’ll still be focused,” Prince said. “No matter what five guys they have on the court, they’ll play hard regardless, so they’ll always have a chance. But obviously we know that’s a big piece to their puzzle. Everybody’s vulnerable when you lose a big piece.”

Prince referenced the near-perfect health enjoyed by the Detroit Pistons’ 2004 championship team for whom he played all 82 games, and the Pistons' 2008 team with a hobbled Chauncey Billups that lost the conference finals to the Boston Celtics.

Clippers guard Jamal Crawford offered compassion for Westbrook while also acknowledging that the injury has implications in the competitive Western Conference bracket.

“As a competitor, you know you’re only a play away from being hurt, so you never want to see that happen,” Crawford said. “[Westbrook] is one of the best players in the league, so it makes this more interesting. That’s for sure.”

Like Crawford, many players on the Clippers and Grizzlies expressed their sympathy for Westbrook, who’s never missed a game during his five season in the NBA. Clippers guard Chris Paul said he spoke to Westbrook on the phone on Friday morning after news of Westbrook’s torn meniscus became public.

“[Westbrook] is a really good friend of mine, and I actually talked to him before we came to practice this morning,” Paul said. “I told him I feel for him, and praying for him, and I hope he’s back soon.”

Paul rejected the notion that Westbrook’s injury will have any impact on the Clippers’ current series with the Grizzlies, which the Clippers lead 2-1.

“It doesn’t do anything for our series,” Paul said.

Clippers veteran guard Billups agreed with Paul. He sternly insisted the injury has absolutely no bearing on the Clippers’ first-round matchup with the Grizzlies. He interrupted a question about the ramifications of Westbrook’s absence to drive home the point.

“It’s got nothing to do with this series,” Billups said. “I hope he gets healthy, but it has nothing to do with this series.”

Westbrook’s injury occurred when Houston Rockets guard Patrick Beverley lunged at the ball in search of a steal as Westbrook dribbled the ball to the sideline to call a time-out. Upon contact with Beverley, Westbrook fell to the floor, then rose, hopping to the bench in pain.

“That’s a freakish accident, that play,” Prince said. “I’m pretty sure the Oklahoma City fans will be pretty pissed off at Beverly.”

The unspeakable
At Grizzlies practice on Wednesday, Tony Allen was asked very generally what adjustments his team needed to make in Game 3. Allen catalogued the greatest hits -- rebounding, “X factor” Eric Bledsoe, pick-and-roll coverage and “we need to try to make someone else beat us.”

Allen wasn’t referring to the aforementioned Bledsoe, rather Chris Paul.

Reporters are in the clarity business, so one asked Allen to confirm that Paul was, indeed, the person of interest. Allen conceded that he was. “I didn’t want to say his name,” Allen said. “I don’t mind talking about it. He is who he is. He’s an All-Star point guard. He’s been a pain in our behind these last two games, and we want to go out there and try to do our best to do a better job of containing him.”

Since Allen has been fixated on Paul since the Clippers point guard banked in the game winner in Game 2 on Monday night, it bears considering whether Allen will draw Him as his primary defensive assignment in Game 3. Cross-matching is fraught with risk because the rest of Memphis’ backcourt is on the small side, which means Chauncey Billups could post up and Jamal Crawford could rise and shoot. But the alternative -- having Paul probe the middle of the court unfettered -- could be fatal for Memphis.

The block
After battling foul trouble in Game 1, when he finished with only 10 points in 25 minutes, Blake Griffin quickly established himself as the focal point of the Clippers’ offense early in Game 2. Possession after possession in the first quarter, the Clippers fed Griffin down on the block, at one point on four consecutive possessions -- left, then right, then left, then right.

There’s still a vocal contingent that believes Griffin’s post game is nothing more than a jack-in-the-box -- a long windup followed by a random burst -- but Griffin beat Zach Randolph, Marc Gasol and Darrell Arthur with jump steps, spins to get baseline when the defender crowded him, spins to get middle when the defense was stretched. All the while, Griffin did his John Wooden Best, acting quickly but never hurrying.

The Grizzlies looked for Gasol down low, as well. Gasol drew mismatches, then dragged the likes of Caron Butler to the post. Arthur pinned DeAndre Jordan at the elbow to allow Gasol to move low a step ahead of his defender. And they had Gasol roll deeper with the intention of getting him the ball closer to the basket.

All of this highlights one truism -- the Clippers need Griffin and the Grizzlies really need Gasol to score down low.

The whistle
Last season’s seven-game tilt between the Clippers and Grizzlies was an absolute slugfest. Perhaps in response, this season’s series has been officiated far more tightly, at least through the first two games. There’s some debate as to whom that favors, but the Grizzlies seem far more frustrated by the bevy of foul calls than the Clippers.

Asked on Wednesday how to avoid the kind of ticky-tack fouls that are hampering his team, a salty Lionel Hollins responded, “Stop committing ticky-tack fouls.”

Hollins has seen his team give up several points in the series by fouling 30 feet from the basket while the Clippers are in the bonus. The Grizzlies know better. They also know they’re the superior defensive team, albeit the one with less foot speed. As they come home for Game 3, the Grizzlies need to focus less on gladiating and more on what they do best as a defense -- sending opponents to destinations on the floor they have no desire to visit. Do that, and the rest will take care of itself.

The freak
The word is out on Bledsoe who, in 32 total minutes, has outrebounded the 7-foot Gasol, wreaked havoc on the Grizzlies’ backcourt and injected into the series an element of chaos. That's a quality that normally favors Memphis, but has worked to the Clippers’ benefit over the first two games.

Allen is right -- Bledsoe is the series’ X factor, the player whose speed exposes the Grizzlies’ lack thereof, and whose pressure upsets an opponent that needs a modicum of space to get what it wants offensively.

No instructions exist to contain Bledsoe, apart from waiting for him to self-combust, which will happen from time to time. Bledsoe averaged 16 minutes over the first two games, but Vinny Del Negro kept him on the floor during the Clippers’ fourth-quarter surge in Game 1. The Clippers’ coach has gradually invested a level of trust in Bledsoe, one that will continue to pay dividends when the game calls for some guerrilla warfare.

The coach
Speaking of Del Negro, a number of NBA insiders and observers have come to a similar conclusion: He’s coached his tail off over the first two games of the series.

Rather than shorten the Clippers’ rotation, the much-maligned Del Negro returned to what worked in November and December, when the Clippers played championship-level basketball for nearly eight weeks -- two well-defined units, with extended minutes for Paul and Griffin and slightly abbreviated stints for the starting wings.

So far as play calling, Del Negro still defers much of it to Paul, but has also installed a number of nifty sets that use Paul off the ball in order to get him some live catches and destabilize the Grizzlies’ sturdy defense. And watch for another pretty scheme where Paul dishes the ball off to the wing, makes a UCLA cut before reversing course to set a back screen for Griffin.

These are just a couple of examples. Each game, the Clippers show off a few new wrinkles in what’s been an otherwise rudimentary offense during Del Negro’s tenure as coach. The stuff is working -- and Del Negro and staff deserve praise.

The Glass
Finding signs of encouragement after a 21-point loss can be like leading a search party in the dark, but if the Grizzlies are looking for some reassurance, it should come in the near certainty that they won’t be outrebounded again by a 2-to-1 margin. If that seemed unprecedented, that's because it was. Memphis didn't come anywhere close to a margin like that in any game during the regular season.

There’s a general belief that rebounding doesn’t slump in the NBA. A team like the Grizzlies, which dominated the boards in the regular season (second in overall rebounding rate), doesn’t forget how to ply its trade. Short of injury or a deliberate strategy like a zone defense or fronting the post -- tactics that can make it harder to crash the glass -- a debacle such as Saturday night's is an outlier.

The Grizzlies better hope so. They’re not a team endowed with much perimeter firepower or natural athleticism. They win basketball games by controlling possessions, something they simply can’t accomplish if the Clippers are collecting 42 percent of their misses.

The Point God
Chris Paul exerts an element of control over a basketball game that’s uncanny, and this hasn't been news in ages. What’s more interesting to observe is how he manages his role within the emotional and strategic contours of that game, not unlike LeBron James, in a sense. Is Paul creating for others, or hunting shots for himself? Is he conserving energy off the ball, or is he in Probe Mode?

On Saturday night, the answer was all of the above, and that’s really where Paul needs to be for the Clippers to achieve their full potential as an offensive club. We saw some new wrinkles to the Clippers’ half-court game, with Paul not exclusively an initiator but also a scorer. He came off screens for live-ball catches in a couple of inventive sets, the kind of stuff we haven’t always seen from the Clippers. But Paul also claimed several possessions for himself to test the mobility of the Memphis big men.

For Memphis, the pick-and-roll coverage has to improve, and the Grizzlies know that. They’re an exceptionally well-prepared group that’s completely devoted to the execution of a very intelligent defensive system. Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins and several players laid it out Sunday at practice.

“The guards have to do a better job of pushing up on the ball handlers,” Mike Conley said. “They were flipping the screens, so our big would show one way, but then their big would flip the screen and Chris would see it. I’d run into the screen pretty good and he’d get a full head of steam on our big man, and you can’t guard him when he’s got a full head of steam with the confidence he has in the paint.”

A defense might not be able to take away Paul’s confidence, but it can take away some real estate.

The Gamble
OK, so who’s going to defend Paul? A tough question because there’s no entirely satisfying answer. In Game 1, Hollins opted for Conley. This wasn’t an unreasonable conclusion.

Conley did an acceptable job of checking Paul during last year’s playoff series. Paul certainly created some quality shots, but he worked for just about everything and spent a fair amount of time in spots on the floor where he had no interest being.

But on Saturday, it wasn’t just that Paul got where he wanted to go, but that he got there in such little traffic. As Blake Griffin said, there was something extremely un-Grizzly about the Clippers' "getting what they wanted," and it can largely be attributed to the little resistance encountered by Paul.

The obvious alternative would be to stick Tony Allen on Paul, but that presents other risks, such as Chauncey Billups dragging Conley into the post. We saw Billups draw Conley on a switch in Game 1 and then promptly back Conley down before draining an easy midrange shot over him.

There are no good choices for guarding Paul, but that might be a risk the Grizzlies have to take. If nothing else, it’s putting your best defender where he’s most useful.

The Center
The league has only a handful of players through whom you can run your offense at the high post. Marc Gasol is one of them. On the possessions when Memphis’ offense is at its most fluid and attractive, chances are Gasol is stationed at the elbow.

The Grizzlies need Gasol to spend time at that spot and feed his teammates, but they also need him to generate some offense for himself, which is why Gasol’s ratio of low-post to high-post touches has been increasing recently. When Gasol is aggressive down on the block, he’s effective, and it’s not as if working down low strips him of his ability to be a playmaker. Instead of playing high-low with Zach Randolph, the Grizzlies can play block to block -- horizontal passes rather than vertical ones.

Having Gasol set up in the low post has its drawbacks. For one, it cramps Randolph a bit. The right block is where Randolph makes his living and serves his team best, and he needs a ribbon of empty space around him. But the Grizzlies do a nice job of staggering the minutes of their big men, which should provide Gasol with plenty of feeds closer to the basket.

The Spark
When the Clippers were ripping off 17 straight wins in December, the margins of victory could be credited to the performance of the second unit, which was decimating the league. Between Eric Bledsoe’s bedlam, Jamal Crawford’s marksmanship, Matt Barnes’ wiliness, Lamar Odom’s versatility and Ronny Turiaf’s … turiafity, the Clippers featured the most exciting and most productive bench in basketball. When excitement and productivity meet, you’re generally in a good place.

That’s the world the Clippers returned to in Game 1. “It felt like December” was something we heard a lot Saturday night and into Sunday, and nothing triggered that sense of deja vu more than the play of the bench.

The Grizzlies do chaos very well themselves, even if their complementary players aren't as talented. They also encountered this last April, so there’s no element of surprise. What they have to do now is neutralize to some degree the energy generated by the Clippers’ reinforcements.

Thanks to the resourcefulness of Chris Vernon, radio host at 92.9 ESPN Sports Radio in Memphis, the world was treated to video of Tony Allen's interpretation of Montell Jordan's "This is How We Do It" at Allen's Karaoke Night last week.



Objectively terrible, don't you think? Allen couldn't remember word one of the song.

On Saturday at Grizzlies' shootaround prior to Memphis' Game 1 matchup with the Los Angeles Clippers, Allen offered an explanation of the NBA's biggest karaoke fail in recent memory:

I thought I knew it. I froze up. You know what it was? I'm going to tell you what it was. The words were coming off the projector too slow, Man. So I was trying to read it and trying to remember what I knew, then look at the words and it didn't mix.

But I've been listening to that song ever since I left that place. There will be a comeback, definitely. Definitely.

There are second acts in Tony Allen's America.

It's time to roll out the 2013 TrueHoop Stat Geek Smackdown.

Let's introduce this year's contestants:

• Arturo Galletti is back again, representing the Wages of Wins school of basketball analytics. He's an electrical engineer by trade and and works on sport analysis in his free time.
• ESPN.com Insider Tom Haberstroh joins the field for the first time.
• Stephen Ilardi, a professor at Kansas, consultant to the Phoenix Suns and author of the book, "The Depression Cure."
• Jeffrey Ma, the 2010 champion, is back. The movie "21" and book "Bringing Down the House" are about his experience as a member of the MIT Blackjack Team. He wrote "The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big In Business" and is the CEO of tenXer.
• Benjamin Morris, who won the 2011 Smackdown, has a blog at Skeptical Sports Analysis.
• Matthew Stahlhut, a sports gambling consultant, is the reigning TrueHoop Stat Geek Smackdown champion and looks to defend his 2012 title.
• Henry Abbott's mom.
• The Crowd represents the collective wisdom of more than 100 ESPN.com writers and TrueHoop Network bloggers. A similar model (our annual Summer Forecast feature) has beaten the Las Vegas line on regular season win totals each of the past three seasons.

There's a consensus among our panel that the Heat, Thunder, Spurs, Nuggets and Pacers will advance. Mr. Ma is the lone dissenter in the Knicks-Celtics series, as he picked the Celtics in 6. In both 4 vs. 5 matchups, the field is divided, which means the outcome of those two series will likely set the pace for the Smackdown as we move forward.

One interesting item from The Crowd's picks: It has six of the eight series winners closing out the first round on the road, a counter-intuitive prediction in a sport where home teams tend to dominate. Is there wisdom in this crowd? Watch this space.

LOS ANGELES -- Give the Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets their due, the two teams played a frenetic, de facto playoff game. The Rockets ran the floor with abandon, fanning out in transition like birds in flight, and injecting the game with even more chaos than normal. The Lakers played a gutty game despite shooting the ball terribly. Whatever the Lakers lacked in proficiency, Pau Gasol made up for in moxie -- 17 points, 20 rebounds, 11 dimes. Dwight Howard’s presence underneath neutered the Rockets’ drive-and-kick game, as the Lakers prevailed 99-95 in overtime.

All 30 NBA teams were in action on Wednesday night, but “in action” is a term of art in April. The roster of notables who sat out the final night of the regular season: LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, David West, Paul George, Kevin Garnett, J.R. Smith, Roy Hibbert, Jason Terry, Jason Kidd, Al Horford, Tyson Chandler, Josh Smith, Nicolas Batum, Jeff Teague, Kyle Korver, Wesley Matthews and Goran Dragic. That doesn't include players such as Kobe Bryant, Kenneth Faried and Danilo Gallinari, each of whom suffered late-season injuries, nor Tim Duncan and Tony Parker, who left a very tight game in the third quarter, never to return.

Apart from the Lakers-Rockets buzzfest, the Utah Jazz played a sudden-death game at Memphis, while the Los Angeles Clippers and Sacramento Kings clashed in a competitive game at Sleep Train Arena. Beyond that, it was formalities.

A few of these absences have been chalked up to injuries of unknown severity, but most of the names on the list are game-ready. Wednesday night was the most egregious example of NBA truancy, but this isn’t a recent development. For the better part of the past few weeks, teams comfortable with their playoff seedings as well as many of those who can improve draft position by tanking have been holding key players out of games.

NBA coaches and organizations aren’t the culprits here. They’ve been charged with very clear objectives -- win meaningful games, mitigate risk in meaningless ones and build the franchise with young talent. In turn, they make the personnel decisions that help achieve these goals. Injuries are a too-common occurrence in the NBA. There’s also plenty of evidence to suggest that players who log heavy minutes are less likely to win in June. For teams outside the playoff race, a dreadful April can catapult them up the draft board.

All that being the case, what possible motivation does an NBA team have for exposing their best players to exhaustion or injury? For a team locked into a playoff position, the best strategy is to hermetically seal stars in bubble wrap until the games matter again.

We can’t incentivize certain behavior, then be irritated when people act on those motivations. So how do we deter the rash of DNPs we see every April, when the NBA schedule is three parts filler to one part substance?

There's simply no fool-proof way to wipe out ShamBall entirely from the latter portions of the NBA schedule, but there are some smart measures to consider:

• Shorten the season: Two points here: (1) Each game shaved off the schedule increases the probability that the race for seeding will be more competitive. As a rule, a greater number of games means greater distance between teams in the standings. Most years, a 44-, 58- or 72-game season would likely create a jumble, and jumbles are good for competition. While there would certainly be seasons when a top seed (or any other seed) could be locked up early, it's simply tougher to do with fewer games. (2) There's a reason these guys are resting, they're exhausted and banged up. Fewer games mean fewer minutes, which would diminish the need for rest or healing.
• Stop giving teams a reason to tank: The current lottery system rewards failure, plain and simple. So long as that's the case, the bottom-feeders -- many of whom are no joy to watch even when they're trying -- are thinking about probabilities that improve with each loss. There are several ways to go here, ranging from the elimination of the lottery (or the draft, but I'm dreaming) to a lottery that includes all 30 teams. It could be unweighted, or even calibrated to reward success after a team has been mathematically eliminated from the playoff picture.
• Give the Bill Simmons Plan a go: "[S]tage a weeklong, single-elimination, 16-team tournament between the nonplayoff teams for the 8-seeds. (No conferences, just No. 15 through No. 30 seeded in order.) The higher seeds would host the first two rounds (eight games in all) from Sunday through Wednesday; the last two rounds (The Final FourGotten) would rotate every year in New York or Los Angeles on Friday night and Sunday afternoon, becoming something of a Fun Sports Weekend along the lines of All-Star Weekend. Friday night's winners would clinch playoff berths. Sunday's winner gets two carrots: the chance to pick their playoff conference (you can go East or West), as well as the No. 10 pick in the upcoming draft (that's a supplemental pick; they'd get their own first-rounder as well)."

April should be the climax of the NBA's regular season, a time when the game's most outstanding players are showcasing their skills as an appetizer for the postseason. That's hard to do when stars are in suits.

---

Mike Conley | Tony Allen | Tayshaun Prince | Zach Randolph | Marc Gasol
Minutes Played: 540
Offensive Rating: 102.2 points per 100 possessions
Defensive Rating: 88.8 points per 100 possessions

How it works defensively
We traditionally begin Killer Lineup with the offensive analysis, but when the Memphis Grizzlies are the subject, that’s burying the lead. Memphis’ defense ranks second in the league behind Indiana (and plays in the Western Conference, home to 11 of the 15 most efficient offenses) and has set the standard of consistency in the West over the past few seasons.

That’s impressive when you consider the slow-footed Randolph is the primary big defender in the pick-and-roll, Mike Conley is a Lilliputian and Tayshaun Prince is slight of frame and relatively new to the Grizzlies' system. But the system in Memphis is now so refined, so precise in its mission, that the personnel is almost secondary to its overarching principles.

Over the course of a few seasons, the Grizzlies’ pick-and-roll coverage has evolved from damage control to steady, and from steady to stranglehold. The Grizzlies down every screen with the intention of pushing the ball handler to the baseline. That’s every high screen-and-roll, every angle screen-and-roll and every side screen-and-roll.

Even if the Grizzlies wanted to toy with the idea of using the hard show as their primary defensive pick-and-roll tactic, that’s asking Randolph to jump out high, then dash back to find his man down low. The jumping out isn’t the problem. It’s the dashing back -- a brutal commute for a guy who moves the way he does. Randolph will occasionally stab or “short show,” but only when Conley is running under the pick.

The coverage schemes have worked, and we can attribute that to a common understanding of what each of the other four guys is going to do. The core of this unit has logged a lot of court time together, and it’s evident in their movements.

The big men intuitively can tell when Conley is going to get over a pick and when he won’t. That buys them a step or two, which is the difference between being in position for the ball handler’s attack, or being off-balanced while backpedaling against an oncoming driver.

Randolph’s teammates know he prefers not to leave the body of the guys he’s defending -- a job he’s confident he can do -- rather than be responsible for guarding open space or helping, a task he’s just not as naturally equipped for. This being the case, Conley, Tony Allen, Prince and Marc Gasol are a little more attuned to the possibility that they might need to rotate or, for the perimeter guys, at least stunt very hard.

On pick-and-rolls, Gasol is an avid reader. He drops carefully, gauging angles and sizing up the ball handler while shading the roll man, if necessary. Allen and Conley know Gasol’s tendencies, and on the rare occasions he gets beat in isolation, Allen almost always funnels the penetrator to a crowded spot, while Conley usually gets it done.

Conley used to struggle defending the pick-and-roll. Early in his career, he got hit a ton trying to fight around screens. Today he ranks as one of the more punctual point guards in the league at getting over or under a high pick. That’s essential for these big men, especially Randolph. The Grizzlies help Conley out in this capacity by having him to pressure the ball handler way out to 25 feet or so. This gives Conley the option to scamper under the pick without great risk that the ball handler will launch a shot from that distance.

It’s rare to see Allen get hung up on a screen, and on the ball he’s arguably the best defender in basketball. Culturally and strategically, he and Gasol act as the bookends of the Grizzlies’ defense. It’s hard to succeed against this unit with the pick-and-roll, but Allen is a deterrent to isolate, because even a potent one-on-one player rarely produces efficiently against Allen. An opposing scorer will often look to draw a foul early on Allen in hopes of loosening the vise.

The Grizzlies view another one of Allen’s specialities, the deflection, as essential to their defensive strategy. The Grizzlies aren’t as fixed to playing a gap defense on every possession, where defending space is the primary goal. They're more of a defense that applies constant pressure on the ball and will gamble ranks possession of the ball as its primary goal. Allen, Conley and Prince are constantly aggressive, but they opt for big plays on the ball selectively. Before they commit to risk, they run a cost-benefit analysis, and calculate while simultaneously reading the offense and hounding the ball. Meanwhile, Gasol and Randolph employ a constant awareness that teammates on the perimeter might strike for the ball, an instinct that’s learned over time.

The arrival of Prince has improved the starting unit’s defensive performance by 4.5 points per 100 possessions. Prince doesn’t have Rudy Gay’s closing speed, nor can he shoot the gap for a steal as quickly, but he compensates in savvy. Prince saves himself several steps a game merely by being in the right place and can navigate screens and with his sheer intuition can beat a guy to his spot, something that makes life easier for everyone else.

All of these attributes in sum lure Grizz opponents into iffy decisions, because poor choices are all that remain for an offense once the Grizzlies have taken away the best stuff.
 

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How it works offensively
How do you design a functional offense with no real lethal perimeter threat, very little foot speed or elite athleticism up front, an offensive cipher at shooting guard, a point guard who isn’t inclined to light up the scoreboard and a veteran wing who’s more intuitive than dangerous?

Not an easy question for Memphis, because an offense that doesn’t force rotations and can’t get much separation from defenders has a tough time finding clean looks at the basket. Many believed the task would grow even more difficult with the departure of Gay, the one player on the floor who could create his own shot out of nothing. But Prince has stepped into Gay’s place in the starting lineup, and the Grizzlies’ offense hasn’t suffered -- 0.6 points per 100 possessions more efficient to be exact.

The ball isn’t nearly as sticky in Memphis as it was four months ago. Randolph still gets his share of post-ups down on the right block, but Prince isn’t hunting for many 1-on-1 opportunities. As a result, the Grizzlies have taken most of those isolation calls for Gay and converted them into more fluid offense, much of it centered around Gasol at the elbow.

Gasol has emerged as one of the NBA’s most interesting two-way players. He’s simultaneously cerebral and emotive, deferential and assertive. He’s happiest when playmaking, but still gets the urge to work over a smaller defender down on the box. That instinct is a good one, because the Grizzlies need Gasol’s scoring to be successful.

As it turns out, finding opportunities for Gasol isn’t all that difficult. The Grizzlies are increasingly looking for him in the low post, and if he draws a mismatch against the opposing power forward (or, better yet, a perimeter player), that practically initiates an auto-feed. The Grizzlies also run a sequence of high picks for Conley -- first Randolph, who often draws Gasol’s man on the dive, then Gasol, who then moves into open space against a rotating defense. Gasol will face-up or, increasingly, put the ball on the floor and take two big strides before unleashing a running hook or that big whooping crane dunk. A pick-and-pop from the free throw line, a fake handoff before a turnaround jumper or a flash to the high post to release pressure against a double-team of Randolph all work, too.

Strange as it sounds, Gasol is still figuring stuff out. Should he roll deeper to the hoop to draw the defense low, or does that infringe on Randolph’s space? Should he shuttle the ball to the weak side out of principle, or launch his shot without hesitation? Wait for a baseline cut or initiate movement himself? There’s a lot on Marc Gasol’s mind, but the contents make Memphis smarter.

Risk can intimidate a conservative young point guard, but Conley has gradually gained the confidence to play in deeper water. He’s a more willing prober and will turn the corner off a pick regardless of the big defender’s position. Conley is no longer worried about Randolph’s man cutting him off at the rim or whether Gay gets the big drumstick. He’s learned that the offense works best when he initiates. Sometimes nothing will develop and the Grizzlies will get into a play late, but that’s OK, so long as you know where the best alternatives are.

He’s been helped by the collective awareness of the Memphis staff, Gasol and, to a lesser extent, Randolph. They’re aware that Conley is a point guard who needs an alley going to the basket, especially when he goes right. When Gasol and Randolph offer picks, they’re mindful of not only where their opportunities await, but how their movement will impact the Conley Empowerment Plan.

Early and direct post-ups to Randolph used to be the mainstay diet of the Grizzlies’ offense, but defenses now scheme for these calls. To compound matters, Randolph has absorbed plenty of wear and tear, and the Grizzlies don’t feature any long-range shooters whom Randolph can find out of a double-team. These inconveniences of life in the Grizzlies' offense necessitate that he work more often in the pick-and-roll.

Getting an old baller like Randolph to buy in requires some salesmanship. Randolph understands that pick-and-rolls mean he’s more likely to be facing single coverages, often against rotational defenders and/or guards. Those rotations create additional opportunities for the patented high-low game between Gasol and him. Yet pick-and-roll sequences still demand a whole lot more exertion than just establishing a beachhead on the edge of the paint and waiting for the ball. A rolling Randolph also puts the defense in motion, which allows supporting players like Prince and Allen to sneak behind the defense.

Prince has helped matters because he can pass and handle the ball, and these skills have precipitated new wrinkles in the offense. Now the Grizzlies can have Prince bring up the ball and screen down for Conley in the corner, or run 3-man, cornerish stuff with Prince, Conley and Gasol at the elbow.

Not that it’s easy for Memphis. For example, that 3-man action with the starting unit still means Allen and Randolph are manning the weak side, an invitation for defenses to tilt toward the ball. Allen can occasionally punish that negligence by cutting back door, but for every feed he gets underneath, there are still plenty of possessions where the Grizzlies’ lack of stretch can bottle things up, especially when the ball stops.

All this means that the Grizzlies have to work harder than most teams, as has been the case for a couple of seasons. It’s getting a little bit easier. Moving the ball to the second side of the floor in Memphis used to be like sledding uphill, but over the past couple of months, the terrain has leveled out a bit.

NBA players spend a fair amount of their lives in hotel rooms, and this doesn't come without risk. The biggest danger?

"When there's not an electrical outlet near the bed, you have to plug your phone in away from the bed," Oklahoma City big man Nick Collison says. "So you have to plug in your phone away from the bed, or try to dig in behind the bed and get to the back and try to avoid a hand and wrist injury."

According to Collison, there's a culinary shift among NBA players, as Japanese grill house Benihana is threatening to unseat The Cheesecake Factory as the chain restaurant of the moment.

Finally, Collison discusses the prospect of an openly gay player in the NBA.

"I think at first there would be guys in the league who would have a problem with it," Collison says. "But I do think that once people got over the initial news of one of their teammates being gay, I think guys would be fine with it.

"It's the ignorance of not knowing someone," Collison says. "The fear of the unknown."

Any offense dominated by Kobe Bryant becomes a blank slate when he’s not present. A few very general principles might remain, but the Los Angeles Lakers’ half-court offense was essentially starting from scratch. Over the weekend, Dwight Howard prescribed a slower, more inside-oriented offense as the best bet to mitigate Bryant's absence. Did the Lakers accept Howard's proposal? A few quick notes from the Lakers' 91-86 win over the San Antonio Spurs on Sunday night at Staples Center:

• What kinds of shots does an offense look for and how does it try to find them? The answers to those questions provide a general sketch of a team's core identity. The Lakers on Sunday night were a team looking to work the ball into their big men on the block, and achieving that in fairly conventional ways. Early on, the vast majority of possessions were simple posts up with an entry pass from the wing in a mostly static half court. The Lakers posted up 32 times, the Spurs eight. When the Lakers wanted buckets to ice the game late, they punched the ball into Howard on the left block one-on-one against Tim Duncan. Howard generated 15 true shot attempts out of post-up sets, scored 26 points on 9-for-15 shooting from the field and 8-for-17 from the free throw line.
• The starting unit produced fairly efficient offense during its stint to open the game. It wasn't gangbusters and the ball got sticky, but the Lakers found a number of looks at close range and their presence on the floor without dynamic wing scorers had the Spurs leaning low all night. Pau Gasol couldn't find the net, but he still demanded attention down low from the defense, and leveraged that attention to find shooters (for instance, a big 3-pointer by Steve Blake to give the Lakers a two-point lead with less than five minutes to go in the first half).
• With Bryant out, Blake stepped in as the Lakers' primary perimeter creator, and it's no surprise he saw a huge uptick in usage. Blake finished with 23 points, including 4-for-8 from beyond the arc. A lot of the Lakers' stuff originated with Howard and Gasol at the elbows to serve as traffic cones for Blake. The basic strategy for Blake was to penetrate into the teeth of the defense and hope something materializes -- either a close-range and/or makable shot, or a passing lane to an open shooter or rolling big man. His eight 3-point attempts materialized in a hodgepodge of ways: off a high angle pick-and-roll from Gasol, flaring to the wing for a catch in rhythm and a couple of the pull-up variety.
• The Lakers tried to create shot attempts early (e.g. Dwight Howard rim runs off Spurs misses) but they could never quite establish a pace. You have to think that’s something Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni will drill home prior to Wednesday night’s game. If the Lakers are going to look for shots on the box, then they should do it quickly. One of D’Antoni’s most steadfast beliefs is that the offense has the advantage for the first few seconds of a possession, but after the defense gets set -- especially one as well-tuned as the Spurs' -- it has the edge. When the clock ticked down and the Lakers needed to create something out of thin air, they went into Howard and Gasol at the end of the possessions. Where an offense goes when it's desperate tells us a lot about where an offense believes it's strongest.
• The Lakers' half-court offense started to decongest a little when they started running some corner sets on one side of the floor, while Howard set up on the opposite block. Once the Lakers swung the ball to the second side and the entry pass to Howard was made, he was in much better position to attack the rim. We can forget that Howard is an absolutely unguardable beast when he catches in close proximity to the basket. The Spurs doubled Howard on a couple of occasions in the first quarter -- defensive reads in at least one case -- but by the third quarter, the Spurs threw hard double teams at Howard on the catch as a matter of policy.
• It's not an enormous problem, but Metta World Peace has some sort of issue with delivering entry passes. Funny thing is, he doesn't make a lot of poor passes. Yet if there's any sort of front on the post player, World Peace gets anxious. He'll bail out and put the ball on the floor. Twice in the first quarter, World Peace looked off post players -- Gasol and Howard once each. The two possessions yield was a couple of free throw attempts.
• With Gasol and Howard on the floor together, the Lakers were outscored 50-47. When the two big men share the floor without both Bryant and Steve Nash, the Lakers are a minus-8 for the season in a smallish sample size of 83 minutes.

For a couple of hot seasons, LeBron James was the most polarizing athlete in sports. We've documented the causes ad nauseam, so no need to do so again. The most violent tides have receded, and when we look back at James' career at some point in the future, the rancor surrounding him between 2010 and 2012 likely will be regarded as a relatively brief dalliance with rage over the course of a monumental career. "The Decision" and the 2010-11 season certainly will be a prominent display in the official LeBron James retrospective, but I suspect it will be more incidental than we imagine now.

The generation's true enduring polarizer among hard-core NBA fans has been Kobe Bryant. However broad his appeal has been globally (if you want an illustration of this, visit China, where the five most popular NBA players are Kobe, Kobe, Kobe, Kobe and Yao), Bryant's persona among NBA fans in North America has always been wildly disparate. The legion of Kobe defenders is as rabid an individual fan base as there is in professional sports over the long term. Tim Tebow has held the No. 1 spot on the charts, but that's calmed.

The factions in the fan universe that love and loathe Kobe have been waging an endless war, one that has navigated his clash with Shaquille O'Neal, an event that first prompted many fans to choose a side. The Colorado rape case made him a crossover public figure, and now people who had seen few, if any, of his on-court exploits could offer commentary on Bryant, the human being. The mysterious Game 7 performance against Phoenix in the 2006 postseason, in which Bryant refused to shoot the ball down the stretch, added to the intrigue. Many regarded his behavior as repugnant, a confirmation that Bryant, despite his unyielding commitment to his craft and his catalog of wonders, was fundamentally selfish, a solipsist with little self-awareness in a team game, a guy out for himself.

There was the "ship his ass out" Bynum business, trading barbs in the media with marginal former teammates and other fodder for those with no love for Bryant. The past few years, analytics have gained traction in popular NBA debates. Empirical-minded critics produced hard evidence that Kobe's reputation as a clutch assassin was overblown. In this same recent period, Bryant fashioned a blunt candor, expressing on a regular -- even daily -- basis the kind of sentiments usually conveyed by older, crankier folks. The message has been clear: I really don't have much more to prove in this game, so why harness myself with a filter? What possible harm can the truth exact?

So for every count-the-rings loyalist, there are those who can't stand what they see as narcissism and a self-regard so shameless that it practically invites an emotional investment in the guy's failure. Not every Kobe skeptic's feelings are that strong, but it's safe to say there are a ton of people sitting in front of their screens and monitors, hoping the guy goes 0-for-5 down the stretch of a tight game.

When Bryant fell to the Staples Center floor Friday night in the fourth quarter, and it soon became evident that he ruptured an Achilles tendon, a profound sadness set in -- even among most of those who root against Bryant. A severe injury is not the kind of failure fair partisans want to witness an opponent suffer.

Bryant might offend, but he never withholds. The theater of NBA Basketball can't achieve its full potential without intensity, and Bryant has generated more of it than anyone in the game over the past 15 years. Championships, awards and recognition have rightly followed. While Bryant is in rehab -- and ultimately when he's gone -- we'll be deprived of all that, no matter where we stand on the Kobe continuum. Because even if you reside at the revulsion end, the origin of those judgments lies with him. Kobe makes you feel, as any exceptional performer or artist should. And that warrants our empathy.

Basketball is better when its most ambitious talents are on the floor to test the game's limits. Bryant has never stopped trying to stretch the boundaries of possibility. The Hero Ball, legitimacy of the myth-busting and self-absorption don't negate that. Bryant's body of work can still be the subject of examination and debate, but appreciation for mastery should always exceed any personal failings. This instinct allows us to fulfill one of basketball's cooler missions -- the collective celebration of the sport.