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There is a lot of playoff talk in this NBA Today podcast. Predictions about who will win Saturday's Game 7 and both conference finals. There is talk of hard fouls, great coaching, elite defenders, free t-shirts and LeBron James. Luc Richard volunteers to play one-on-one during All-Star Weekend, if they'd have that event. And more.

Then there's more insight than some Suns fans might want into 2007, which is the year Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns thought they would win a title, but lost to the Spurs in a horribly controversial suspension-riddled second-round series. The Suns, as we knew them, would never be the same again.

Jalen Rose was on that Suns team, which he brought up after I asked him about Rick Carlisle, whom Rose once played for:

He made sure we ran hard at shootaround. He made sure we broke a sweat. He made sure we're prepared for the other team's sets. We knew if we were doubling the post. We knew how we were playing pick and roll. Are we hedging on this player, going under on that one. Are we double-teaming? How are we going to play those down screens certain players are coming off ...

We knew everything.

When you've played for a coach like that, it must be hard to play for a coach who doesn't have those same qualities.

I played for the Phoenix Suns. 2007. My last season. As were playing against the San Antonio Spurs. And I remember us coming to our first practice before Game 1. And we brought it in. And we were excited about our playoffs getting started. And Coach D'Antoni put in some film. It was Steve behind the back. Amare slam dunk. Shawn Marion with the block. Raja Bell with the charge. It was a highlight film of our team. They have showed me making a shot on there, and I was barely even playing.

So after that he as like all right, we're going to run and down, go through our set plays and whatnot, and we're going to get out of here.

And I looked at Kurt Thomas. I hit him with an elbow. I'm like hold on. I gotta say something.

So I did my Arnold Horshack from "Welcome Back, Kotter."

I'm like "ooh, ooh, ooh, hey coach. I gotta ask a question. Are we going to talk about how we're going to defend Tim Duncan on the post? Are we going to talk about Manu Ginobili in pick and roll? Keeping Tony Parker out of the paint?"

He looked at me in front of the entire team and coaching staff and said: "We're not worried about what they do. If we play to the best of our abilities, and do what we're supposed to do, there is no way they can beat us. We don't mind if Tim goes off. If Tim goes off, that means everybody else is quiet."

So, people gave us a pass. And we were a great team. And Robert Horry did knock my guy Steve Nash into the scoreboard. And Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw got up off the bench and I should have been paying attention and being a vet, and grabbed Amare -- maybe I'd have a ring to this day.

They walked out on the floor, they get suspended late in the series, and we did lose that game.

But we really lost the series in Game 1. When the guy that couldn't beat us by himself -- Tim Duncan -- he only had 40 and 20 in Game 1. [Ed. note: Actually 33 and 16.]

So that's really when we lost the series.

You're saying that if Rick Carlisle coached that team ...

Breeze through. I have a 'chip. I would have a 'chip.

That's gotta be a bad feeling.

It is what it is.

During the great lockout of 2011, ESPN.com's NBA team put together a fun little project, which was ranking every player in the NBA.

We did the #NBArank project, as far as we know, in an entirely new way: We crowd-sourced it. More than 100 voters participated; all kinds of staffers at ESPN.com and the local sites, as well as nearly all of the TrueHoop Network. (We have used the same technique, by the way, to predict how many games every NBA team will win, before the season starts, and beat Vegas. It's an interesting system, but not a perfect one.)

It was a little tricky to figure out precisely whom to include -- at the fringes, in the summer, it's hard to know who is in and who is out of the league. We settled on some rules that left us with, as it happened, precisely 500 players.

As soon as that was decided, well, somebody had to be good ol' Mr. 500.

Hold that thought.

---

John Hollinger (Insider) says that for the Sixers to win Game 7, they need to play a lot of Lavoy Allen.

He's been the one player that seemingly can neutralize Kevin Garnett's otherwise massive plus-minus advantage. Garnett is plus-55 for the series -- that's plus-58 when Allen is off the court and minus-3 when he's on it. One much-discussed key is Allen's ability to push Garnett further out and contest his shots, and the numbers back that up -- Garnett is 6-of-17 inside 15 feet against Allen and 19-of-26 when he's off the court. The regular-season numbers, albeit in a smaller sample, support this trend. Garnett was 1-for-7 from the field when Allen played, 21-for-34 when he sat.

But in terms of plus-minus, the impact has been just as great on the offensive end. The change in Philly's production based on the Allen-Garnett dynamic has been jarring: If Allen plays and Garnett doesn't, the Sixers score 121.2 points per 100 possessions; if both play, it's 103.2; and if it's just Garnett, Philly nets only 78.2.

Obviously, it's ridiculous to assign that big a swing to two players, but the data backs up the idea that Allen has made a huge impact (in fact, he quietly leads the team in playoff PER at 18.70, given his ability on the boards and around the basket), and he needs to play a major role in Game 7 if Philly wants to pull the upset.

(Statistical support for this story from NBA.com.)

Also worth noting: The Celtics get 48.5 rebounds per 48 minutes when Allen is on the bench. When Allen plays, that number falls all the way to 31.7. Big difference.

Lavoy Allen is young, big and making his presence felt.

---

I recently visited the Sixers' locker room on a mission to talk to Allen. It went like this:

We ranked NBA players 1 to 500 last summer. Somebody had to be Mr. 500. I can't imagine that felt great.

I didn't really worry about it too much. I got a little publicity. That's what I liked about it. People didn't know who I was before that. So I didn't really worry about it too much.

You didn't look at the people ahead of you and think, Come on!

No. No. Not really.

All right, look, that was us. ESPN.com.

That was you?

We had 150 or so voters, and we ranked all the NBA players. I'm here to apologize. We were wrong.

It's all good.

If I asked you who 482 was, do you know who that was?

I have no idea.

But you know who number 500 was, though, right?

I do. I do.

I should thank you guys.

You're very big about this. But I'm telling you, we're watching you play, and emailing each other and saying, Man, we did a bad job on that.

I don't blame you guys. A lot of guys on the list hadn't played an NBA game yet. Someone had to be at the bottom.

The truth of the matter is, there are a lot of players we hadn't seen play much. We did a bad job. But you're killing it out there now. We couldn't have been more wrong. You're going to be ranked much higher next year, I promise you that.

Thank you.

There are 100 reasons to buy an NBA team. I'm sure some people will tell you it's a good business, and for some people it probably is. There are tax advantages. In places like Salt Lake City and Oklahoma City, owners talk convincingly of civic duty.

For Bruce Ratner, a team offered a sophisticated real estate pay, because a stadium was a key to using eminent domain for his sprawling downtown Brooklyn Yards development. For Mikhail Prokhorov, it made him an internationally recognized name, which did wonders for his domestic political career.

Some owners presumably just love basketball.

But there's another reason, one that is blatantly real, but that owners will seldom acknowledge: It's the ultimate fan experience. If you're the owner, you get to hang out in the locker room. You get to hang out in press conferences. You get to sit courtside, within earshot of timeouts. You get to slap five with players in key moments of games. You get to invite people like Julius Erving to hang out with you -- and they show up.

There are not a lot of ways to get into that exhilarating swirl of sports and celebrity. There are not a lot of ways to look so cool.

How much would you pay for that? In the case of some number of owners -- a number that's bigger than you'd think -- I'd argue the number is millions upon millions.

In Myles Brown's ongoing, must-read Jimmy Goldstein Chronicles for GQ, Goldstein tells that he once considered buying a team. Pay particular attention to the reason he's no longer interested:

I've always had ownership in the back of my mind and never quite had the financial assurances to do it on my own. Many of these teams are bought with groups of investors. Sometimes a general partner has a very small financial stake, but is still considered the owner. That would have been a way that perhaps I could have done it, but I'm not good with partners. I like to do things on my own. As my financial resources increased over the years, the prices increased at an even more rapid pace. So it never worked out for me to buy a team by myself.

David Stern, a few years back, was twisting my arm to buy the Milwaukee franchise when it was for sale because I'm from Milwaukee and one of the conditions of the sale from Herb Kohl would be that the new owner would have to agree not to move the team. So I'm sure that David figured because I'm from Milwaukee that would be a perfect fit. But at the time when I first started exploring that, Michael Jordan stepped in and was a more attractive buyer, obviously. That didn't go through and then Herb Kohl took it off the market. Since then, I haven't really seriously considered it. Right now, I have such terrific access to everything that goes on in the NBA that I don't feel I need to be an owner at this point if I could afford it.

It's great, it's fine. Buy a team for whatever reason you want!

But if you look at the kinds of bad decisions teams have made through the years, one of the trends is certainly overvaluing celebrity. A disproportionate number of bad general managers are famous former players. A disproportionate number of overpaid players are the kind of big-name, crowd-pleasing high-scorers owners love to be around.

No small chunk of how owners do business is about the very wealthy creating cool experiences and cool public images for themselves.

The owners even set policies (revenue sharing, draft picks for bad teams) that I would argue do far more to keep incompetent owners from looking foolish than they do to make the league any better for players, coaches or fans.

The title of owner works like the best backstage pass in the world, with some public cachet to boot.

Hats off to Jimmy Goldstein for getting himself an all-access pass through his charisma, ability to build relationships, time commitment and love of the game -- instead of just his millions.

Wow. This is a Laker fan playing Gotye, singing his pleas for Kobe Bryant to end the Hero Ball approach to crunch time. Of course it's set to the tune of "Somebody that I Used to Know."

You didn't have to take that shot.
Just drive the lane and dump it off to either Pau or Bynum.
Those two guys are really tall,
And when you keep it for yourself we never score enough.

You didn't have to hog the ball.
You're triple-teamed so kick it out to either Blake or Sessions.
I know that they don't shoot so well,
but you're really not the Kobe that we used to know.

In retrospect, the referees lost control of the game early in the second quarter. Tyler Hansbrough fouled the daylights out of Dwyane Wade. Some would point out he "made a play on the ball," as if first hitting the Spalding mitigated a karate chop to the face of the mid-air guy. In slow motion ... wow. With a menacing scowl, Hansbrough met the Heat star in the sky. The fouling begins not with the right hand but with the left -- a forearm to the base of the neck that would have been a hard foul all by itself. Then the right arm windmilled through the ball, Wade's arms, and -- changing paths now, evidently to ensure maximum effect -- veered directly to Wade's eye and temple. Both, of course, are part of an athlete's head, which scientists are increasingly sure can sustain permanent brain damage from seemingly minor impacts like this.

Wade fell to the court, and stayed face down for a while.

Hansbrough slapped a cool low-five with his teammate Lou Amundson -- mission accomplished.

What mission could that have been? What page were they on together, exactly? A clue came from the post-game comments from the franchise's most respected voice. After that game, physical to the point that the fun plays have almost all been forgotten, Pacers president Larry Bird declared how disgusted he was with how "soft" his team had been. Could it be taken any other way than Bird was ordering up more of the same, and harder, in Game 6 -- just like he once did as a Celtic player, precipitating Kevin McHale's clotheslining of Kurt Rambis?

Game 5 had plenty more in store. In real time, commentator Steve Kerr mused about a Flagrant 2 for Hansbrough, which would have resulted in his ejection. It seemed a bit harsh at the time, but in retrospect, it would have been brilliant. In failing to eject Hansbrough, the referees whiffed on their last chance to control the game, took a pass on fulfilling the NBA's mission to prevent the spread of violence and set a precedent that would encourage one dangerous foul after another, all game long.

Moments later, Hansbrough had the ball and room to roll. The only thing between him and the hoop was ... Udonis Haslem -- Wade's avenging angel since they were rookies together.

Uh-oh.

Hansbrough slowed. Instead of a power dunk, now he was thinking jumper. Haslem swung two arms right through Hansbrough's shooting arm and -- oops! -- caught a whole bunch of face. Hansbrough's head ricocheted. In slow motion he looked like a crash test dummy at the moment of impact. (If you're a mom or a dad or somebody who loves Tyler Hansbrough you'd hate to watch it.)

That hardly ended it. Before the final horn, one had no choice but to wonder if the Heat had held a team meeting about the value of hitting people in the face. David West would be bitter about Shane Battier's knocking him down. West would bash LeBron James on the top of the head with an elbow. Mario Chalmers would snuff out a Paul George drive with a play to the face much like Haslem's, only without Haslem's force. The most violent play of the bunch would come in garbage time, when Heat reserve Dexter Pittman presented his high-speed forearm to the neck of a sprinting Lance Stephenson, which was reminiscent of the ugliest play of last year's playoffs: Andrew Bynum's assault on J.J. Barea.

Despite a rare playoff game filled with beautiful fast-break moments, the story of the NBA would transform, thanks to all those hard playoff fouls, to a story of violence as the league office in New York decides how many players to suspend for Game 6.

And none of it had to happen.

---

The NBA has it exactly right: The game is better when it's not violent.

There are business reasons for that: Although some fans will tell you they're thrilled by the no-extra-charge sprinkling of mixed martial arts, by and large the league operates with the fear of riling a finicky general sports audience that is terrified of the spectacle of these players -- predominantly black -- behaving violently. In baseball and hockey it's "boys will be boys" but in this sport it's treated like the end of civilization as we know it when they start taking swings. Harsh penalties have essentially eliminated not only bench-clearing brawls but also punches and even most blatant elbows. There's a reason the Wests and Haslems have learned to attack using the elbow of a straight arm.

There are also basketball reasons to police rough play more in this sport than others. This sport is at its best when the action is free-flowing. Both of those hard fouls were designed in part to keep the Wades and Hansbroughs of the world from finishing at the rim with power dunks. But, of course, those power dunks are exactly what the league and its fans rightly want. That is the sport at its best. Two guys knocking each other in the noggin -- you can get that from all kinds of dumber, less skilled, less athletic games.

This is the sport where people fly to the hoop, and the vast majority of "hard playoff fouls" are designed to scare players from even trying to take off.

It's like using a jet fighter as a battering ram. Nothing dumber.

Old-timers tell fish tales of a game that was both vastly better and far more violent years ago. But the video reveals the truth: Through the NBA's "glory days" players had almost no muscle, didn't run nearly as fast or jump as high, didn't take defense anywhere near as seriously and endured precious little contact. Not to mention, the scores in those days were through the roof compared to today, precisely because so very many of those offensive players were entirely unmolested by defense. The most famous hard foul of yesteryear, Kevin McHale's clotheslining of Kurt Rambis, was such a big deal because it was such a massive departure from the norm. A few years ago Jason Kidd threw Jannero Pargo the court every bit as hard, and nobody remembers it because players go down that hard all the time.

Nowadays bigger, stronger bodies collide play after play, at elevations off the court few could imagine three decades ago. The forces in play are vastly greater, the knowledge of brain damage that much more acute. The league does far more than ever to prevent the escalation of violence, because it has to and should.

That is why referees are lectured again and again about keeping control of games, and dealing harshly with the kinds of fouls that might lead to escalation. This is why the work of Game 5's referees, Derrick Stafford, Greg Willard and Jason Phillips, is being second-guessed by the league as we speak.

---

Of all the dumb moments of Game 5 -- and there were several, including Danny Granger injuring his own ankle while trying to put a hard foul on James (the second time he twisted his ankle, when he had to leave the game for good) and Mike Miller playing an extended period with a Nike on one foot and a sock on the other -- none was dumber than the referees' huddle moments after Hansbrough's foul.

Everyone at home with or without a DVR, every fan in the seats and the people at league offices in New York all had replay of the video to watch. And they did. Miami fans who reacted mildly in real time saw it on the arena's big screen and were suddenly livid. It was a lot worse in replay, which made Hansbrough's intentions clear as something beyond blocking a shot.

The poor referees were just about the only people in the world who could not see it again, and they were the only people in the world who got to decide Hansbrough's penalty.

In retrospect, a Flagrant 2 would have been the right call, for two reasons. The first is, we now know with the unfair benefit of hindsight, that it would have prevented several more blows to the head. The second, though, is that thanks to the oddities of NBA rules, that call would would have triggered a video review, finally putting the referees on an equal information footing with Joe and Jane Fan in the tenth row.

Some say the league does not want to have everything decided by video. But they are deciding it that way right now, today, in New York, where league officials are watching nothing but video. From the rules:

League will review every flagrant, called or not. The League Office will consider the following factors (as well as any other relevant facts and circumstances) in determining whether to classify a foul as Flagrant “1” or Flagrant “2”, to reclassify a flagrant foul, or to impose a fine and/or suspension on the player involved: how hard the foul was; the outcome of the foul (e.g., whether it led to an altercation); and the level of the injury sustained by the player who was fouled.

It is great that the league is using video to get to the bottom of these things. It's the best available tool for investigating flagrant fouls, flopping, and a hundred other kinds of calls.

But why so slow? Here the NBA is losing a battle with the information age. On these tough-to-get-right-in-real-time calls, the league is fooled nightly, and everybody knows it.

Meanwhile, whole wars are being fought, missiles fired, bombs dropped, combat teams deployed based on real-time decisions, based on video beamed around the world. Barack Obama oversees Navy Seals by television, and gets Osama bin Laden as a result.

The NBA is no war, at least it's not supposed to be, but the same kinds of information can be processed just as fast. Which means where there used to be three options there are now four:

1. Get things blatantly wrong now and again and deal with the fact there will be a certain error rate.
2. Stop games almost constantly to review video, making the game a horrible TV product just as TV replaces tickets as the biggest revenue source.
3. Review video in New York and hand down punishments a day or two after the game.
4. Review video in real time.

No. 4 is, to me, obviously where the league is headed. There can't be blatant mistakes every night -- not the way people consume the game now. They can't make us wait while referees watch. And waiting for the real people to review the tape ... how could that possibly take so long? It's a few seconds of video. It's impossible to watch for more than a minute or two. Make up your mind and move on.

Here's my HoopIdea: The reviews in New York must happen instantly, mid-game, so that a player can be ejected or not while it still matters, and can still prevent a game from getting out of hand. Alternately, and better: Have a fourth, video-enabled referee on the sidelines, reviewing everything all the time. That referee would have started reviewing on video the moment the play was whistled dead, and could have easily had a good, lasting decision in the interim before Wade stepped to the line. That referee could also quickly and permanently solve flopping, traveling, out of bounds and so much more.

It's not how things used to be done, but it didn't used to be that every fan had better information than the referees. It's where this is headed, and it'll make a better game, one where it will make little sense for players to try to fool the referees with hard fouls, flops or anything else.

Some key moments of Game 4 between the Clippers and Spurs were not basketball at all. And with bricklayers like DeAndre Jordan and Reggie Evans parading to the line, it was a decent reason to change the channel.

"I hate it," says Gregg Popovich, the Spurs coach who made the whole thing happen. "It's ugly. But it's something that's available."

What he's talking about is what used to be called "Hack-a-Shaq," where, instead of playing defense, or grabbing a rebound to get the ball back, a team simply fouls a horrible free throw shooter, often with the ball nowhere in the vicinity, and forces them to struggle through the freebies.

It should probably be called "Hack-whoever-Gregg Popovich-says-to-hack," these days, though, as the Spurs dominate this field.

And yet the coach who does it most hates it. Fans hate it. Players, surely, prefer to play, not hack. Surely this is no referee's idea of a game well played. Even David Stern is on record against it. In 2008, Stern railed against hack-a-Shaq tactics to ESPN.com's J.A. Adande, saying he didn’t like "the idea that, 'Hey, look at me, I'm going to hit this guy as soon as the ball goes into play, even though he's standing under the other basket.'"

If everybody hates it ... why would it ever happen?

Because -- as an unintended consequence of the current rules is that in certain situations -- breaking the rules in this precise way can give a team an advantage.

In other words, the rules made Gregg Popovich do it.

Imagine if the penalty for robbing a bank was that you had to give half the money back. The rules, in that situation, would essentially beg people to rob banks.

Change the rulebook, though, and you can say goodbye to this forever. Nobody will miss it.

How to change the rulebook?

We're open to ideas. But here's a basic principle to consider: Breaking the rules should never help your team. If teams are breaking rules to gain an advantage, clearly the penalties are out of whack.

Now in basketball, there's something odd, that most sports don't have. We have a longstanding tradition of fouling intentionally to get the ball back. It happens late in almost every close game. Some of you might be thinking that any rule that eliminates Hack-a-Whoever would need to somehow preserve that.

To which we'd say: You sure about that?

One simple solution: Let fouled teams decide if they'd rather have the free throw, or the ball out of bounds. After any foul, Hack-a-Whoever or otherwise. You'd quickly have no reason to foul to get the ball back, because fouling would not get you the ball back. Then you'd also get a lot more games ending with a lot more basketball being played. And who's against that?

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• There is plenty of video footage out there of Kevin Durant playing in summer leagues, rec ball and, most memorably, at Barry Farms in Washington D.C. over the last few years. One thing that has long made an impression on me is that in these games, when Durant has no real coach, no real offensive sets and nothing stopping him from doing whatever he wants, he has shown a powerful tendency to do one thing: Shoot 3s off the dribble. It is kind of his thing. You can see why: Because of his sweet stroke and extraordinary length, he makes that shot more than just about anybody. When Durant takes that shot, it is seldom under real duress from a defender. But it's just about never the best shot any team can get. Almost no player shoots as well off the dribble as compared to catching and firing. There's very little chance to draw a foul. And finally, he's not giving the defense an opportunity to make a mistake that might lead to something easy -- he's more than capable of either getting a layup or drawing a double team and kicking to an open teammates -- both better options. But it's Durant's pet move, and in Game 4 it worked, as it has in others. But I hope the Thunder don't come to believe they don't need an actual offense late in close games. They do.
• Lots of people are talking about how Kobe Bryant has whiffed a few times in these playoffs. People are noticing this, which is good and new, if you're interested in an honest assessment of what's going on. But these misses aren't so different from what has always happened. It's all on video. By far the most common thing in any Laker late game possession, for the last decade-plus, is that the Lakers run an isolation play for Bryant, and he makes something like a quarter to a third of the shots. He's right in step with that in these playoffs. These are tough shots, and always have been. What's not true is that he used to make them all the time. Bryant's true shooting percentage -- which includes 3s and free throws -- in the last five minutes of games within five points in these playoffs is at 51.3 percent, better than he shot in the regular season. What's changing, I'd wager, is that people are more aware and starting to notice the misses more.
• Calling an isolation -- a play where, essentially, four Lakers watch -- is the antithesis of telling Laker bigs Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum to get more involved. In other words, if you want them involved, run a play that involves them. As it was, the two almost never touched the ball, even when they did try to get position, and finished with a combined two shots in the fourth quarter.
• I'm always pining for Bryant to hit the open Laker. He did, to great effect, down the stretch of Game 4, passing to Steve Blake in the corner. Blake put the ball on the floor and nailed a runner. Score one for team ball. (For all the Heat's stars, wide-open Udonis Haslem from nine feet is still a great option.)
• John Hollinger (Insider) points out the Lakers have been amazing in crunch time all year ... on defense. And that's exactly where they fell apart late in Game 4: "We have a great crunch-time defense that can't get stops, and nobody is talking about it because they're focusing on the entirely predictable fact that Bryant took a lot of forced shots late in a close game. Moreover, nobody is talking about what the defensive decline signifies -- and one could argue that Bryant's shooting failures fall into this category as well. Put simply, I strongly suspect the Lakers are out of gas. They've used too much energy getting to this point, playing Bryant, Bynum and Gasol maximum minutes to compile regular-season wins and a good playoff seed, and then needing to do it again in both playoff rounds, with no rest in between. Bryant played 40 minutes Saturday; Bynum played 43 and Gasol 39. That's nothing unusual; for the postseason they've averaging 39.5, 38.5, and 36.0, respectively. Against a team full of fleet 23-year-olds on a back-to-back, you can see how that might take a toll. And that it might take a toll, in particular, toward the end of a game in which the best players all played heavy minutes."
• Fans from outside L.A. obsess about how the referees treat the Lakers. For all I know, there's nothing to it, and it's a waste of time to speculate without real evidence. However, if there's a person on the planet whose war stories I'd love on that issue, it's Derek Fisher. He has been on both sides many times. Would be fascinating for us, and potentially expensive for him, if he'd talk about it.
• When I went to his "Train Like a Pro" session years ago, David Thorpe taught us that a lot of people, when they intend to explode forward, initiate that move by taking a step backward. He calls it the "negative step." Try standing in your triple-threat position with the ball, looking at the hoop, only with an empty pop can placed on the court just behind each heel. Then explode forward. Likely, you'll kick one of those cans half across the gym with a flying backward heel. This is something you can quickly learn not to do, and when you do, you are that much faster getting where you want to go. In any case, I'm telling you all this because Durant has one of the most enormous and obvious negative steps in the game. Called fairly, it would have cost the Thunder a key backcourt call this weekend. I suspect he could learn not to do that easily, which would make him a little faster going past his man, and prevent those awkward calls from stepping out of bounds when driving from the side.
• Late in Game 4, Steve Kerr said "you know the Lakers are going to continue to go at Harden with Kobe." Which is true, you do know that. But the weird part is why is that so set in stone? Bryant finished the game 3-for-12 when guarded by Harden. (And 0-for-4 when guarded by Kevin Durant, per ESPN Stats & Info.) For the record, against Thabo Sefolosha, the player with the better defensive reputation, Bryant was 6-for-7, with 18 points. That's not to say Harden is the better defender, but there's certainly no reason for either coach to think Bryant-on-Harden in isolation is a mismatch that favors the Lakers.

Statistical support for this story from NBA.com.

Why can't Dwyane Wade score? Are the Heat done? If they lose to the Pacers, will they break up the team? Who's going to win the West? Who's going to win the East?

And, most importantly, who are the best NBA players who can't jump?

Serious playoff insight from Luc Richard Mbah a Moute and David Thorpe on NBA Today.

The NBA's most distinctive super fan says he uses different tricks to get good seats in every city. Most of the tricks have to do with who he knows, Jimmy Goldstein says in GQ.

In San Antonio, Goldstein tells Myles Brown (whom you may know from the TrueHoop Network's A Wolf Among Wolves) he knows everybody, and when he's in town they simply add an additional amazing seat just for him.

Other news of his friendships from around the league:

Tony Parker and I have been good friends. We run into each other in France and we always have a little chat before the games. He opened a nightclub in San Antonio now that he wants to take me to after the games, that kind of thing.

I have friends on every team and every team thinks I'm there to root for them. I try to put on a neutral stance as much as possible when I go to the games, with the exception of the Lakers games. The Lakers players are all aware that I root for the other team. With the exception of Kobe, they seem to take it pretty well.

Every now and then Kobe surprises me by walking up to me shaking hands and giving me a nice smile. But for the most part, he ignores me. He doesn't look at me and even went to the extent of telling Pau Gasol not to say hello to me. He's never explained why.

Pau and I were very good friends before he got traded to the Lakers. After he became a Laker, he's standing at the baseline during the Lakers warm ups and he would never say hello. Finally, during the All Star Weekend a couple years ago, when I ran into him and he wasn't putting on his "Laker face" so to speak, he gave me a big hug and apologized for not being friendly to me at the games, but told me that it was because Kobe asked him not to be friendly to me.

• Isn't it time for James Harden to get his own shoe? And should it be modeled on this?
• Video of the 9-0 run that sealed Game 2 for the Thunder.
• John Hollinger argues that R.C. Buford should have been Executive of the Year (Insider). The trade Buford made with Larry Bird (who won the award) that sent George Hill to Indy for Kawhi Leonard is just one example of Buford's unappreciated brilliance: "That's a solid move for Indy, and for the chunk of the league's GMs that just throw stuff at the wall and hope something sticks, that's about as deeply as they saw it. But for San Antonio, I don't think people realize what a spectacularly good trade this was. Not just because it gave the Spurs a defender at the 3 who proved better than people expected, but because of the cap ramifications. Leonard is on a rookie contract and will make $1.8 million, $1.9 million and $2.9 million in the coming three seasons; Hill, meanwhile, will re-sign a somewhere between $5 and $7 million a pop as a restricted free agent. Over the next three seasons the Spurs will save about $12 million as a result of making this trade, without losing anything on the court."
• Meanwhile, ClipperBlog's Charlie Widdoes doesn't understand why Clippers GM Neil Olshey didn't win EOY: "The Clippers made a bigger improvement this year than the Pacers, and no one can question that they did so because they got Chris Paul. When you get a player of that caliber and the move works as planned, history says you get rewarded with the Executive of the Year award. It doesn’t matter how it happened, when LeBron James signed with the Heat, Pat Riley won the Executive of the Year award. In my mind, when you get Chris Paul, every other executive has to top that."
• Even after Duncan retires, the Spurs will be good for as long as Gregg Popovich and his system are in place.
• The Celtics clamped down on their pick-and-roll defense in Game 3.
• Chris Bosh's absence puts a strain on LeBron James, and reveals just how terrible the Heat's top role players have been.
• Do fans in Indiana have the swag to pull this off?

• Mike Meister, founder and head coach at the Thunder Sports Institute, e-mails a question some stat geek may be able to address: "Looking at how the Thunder made their comeback reinforces what I teach my teams: Players love to practice halfcourt shots or running 3s, but mine get chewed out for it all the time. My experience with almost 70 teams and my own playing experience is that you win more games with layups and free throws than you will with jumpers, especially 3s. I don't have access to Synergy or Elias, but I scanned through articles and tend to find more instances of this trend. My question, which maybe will be something you would look into anyway, is: Are more NBA games won on free throws and layups than on jumpers? Especially deeper mid-range and 3s. I know overall for the game, yes, but just looking at crunch time scoring and maybe especially the last two minutes."
• What can the Clippers do to slow down the Spurs offense? Perhaps they'll try to make Boris Diaw a scorer.
• So Bill Laimbeer and Isiah Thomas walk into a diner ...
• We noted on Wednesday that the Lakers and Thunder don't draw a lot of charges. (TrueHoop reader Michael's great point: Teams with quality rim protectors, like these two, don't have to resort to charges to stop layups and dunks.) Charges are not the same as flops. But they are prime opportunities to flop. And sure enough, there won't be a Flop of the Night today, for the simple reason that after a night of Sixers, Celtics, Lakers and Thunder, we can't find clear video of an obvious flop. Now, if history is any precedent, tonight's action, which includes the Heat, Clippers and Spurs, will feature plenty.
• The Brooklyn Nets logo has roots in old New York City subway signs.
• Has Sebastian Telfair found a home in Phoenix?
• Grantland's Michael Kruse digs deep into why we don't have ads on jerseys: "Tradition is an incomplete explanation. That $370 million sits fat like a hanging curve. It takes a special kind of credulity to think owners of teams in major American sports who are so resolute in all manners of revenue extraction simply shrug their shoulders here because of some particular reverence for convention. Ads on jerseys will unsettle the fans? They will not. It'll be like new Facebook or something, when everybody bellyaches for about 10 minutes and then it's just Facebook. We'll get used to ads on jerseys, and fast, and the owners know this. Because we always do. Because we get used to things like the TaxSlayer.com Gator Bowl and extra points getting kicked into not just a net but an Allstate ad. That's a Coors Light Cold Hard Fact. So what's really the reason for this country's faux-prudish reluctance to put ads on jerseys?"
• How one man learned to love the Spurs.
• Chris Paul and Eric Bledsoe have been a tremendous combination in the playoffs, and were in the regular season too ... so why don't they play together more?
• Rashard Lewis made $23,336 per minute of basketball played this year.
• SI's Zach Lowe on James Harden's role in Oklahoma City's end-of-game offense: "Oklahoma City players attempted 120 shots in the regular season during games in which the scoring margin was three points or fewer in the last three minutes of regulation and overtime. Durant and Westbrook took 103 of those shots, per NBA.com. Harden took five. He made one. James Harden, Sixth Man of the Year and likely All-Star next season, made one basket the entire season in the last three minutes of a close game. He has already taken five such shots in six postseason games, compared to six attempts for Durant. This is a sea change happening instantly, a strategic switch so dramatic you almost wonder if Scott Brooks has been waiting all season to unleash Harden on unsuspecting defenses.
• Thunder fans react positively to their Game 2 win. (Via @Okastro)
• Wait, left-handed Greg Monroe is actually right-handed?

Sometimes being an NBA official is tough. But this time, referee Michael Smith had a gimme.

About five feet in front of him, the Celtics' Kevin Garnett delivered an offensive foul combination platter to Sixers swingman Andre Iguodala: One part moving pick, another part flying elbow.

Now that's a foul.

Replays only made things clearer. Later, even Charles Oakley -- a high priest of physical play -- would take to Twitter to chastise anyone who'd question the call.

Smith did the obvious thing: He blew his whistle.

And that surprised the hell out of everybody.

---

Broadcasters could scarcely hide their astonishment. It was a matter of seconds before the Boston crowd was apoplectic, chanting in unison a word that begins "bull" and ends unprintable. Even back in the TV studio, where the mood was less partisan, there was little support for Smith's call, which was said to have been to the letter of the law, but not the spirit.

The reason? The game was on the line.

The Celtics were trailing by three with 10 seconds left. With Smith's whistle, the Celtics went from living on the prayer of a tying 3 to doomed.

It was one of the more obviously correct calls imaginable. But it befuddled so many because there's an idea out there that referees ought not decide games.

Even Iguodala was surprised. Garnett hit him so hard the Sixer said his ribcage still hurt a day later. Iguodala said on the NBA Today podcast that when he heard the whistle, in that pressure-packed moment, he assumed it had nothing to do with the blow he had suffered, saying he "actually thought the whistle was for something else."

Which is amazing, if you think about it. Iguodala knows the rules, and he knows Garnett broke them. He also knew Smith was standing right there.

But Iguodala also knows this: "In that situation, they always say you can't have a call determine the game."

The NBA would insist playcalls are the same all game long. And the NBA is a decade into going to some trouble -- inspired, sources say, by a private and public campaign by Mavericks owner Mark Cuban -- to make it that way.

But it's a stretch to say that's what's happening on the court. Players certainly believe they have more leeway late in games, and there's evidence referees swallow whistles. For instance, the 2011 book "Scorecasting" found offensive fouls are 40 percent less likely to be called in overtime, compared to the first 48 minutes -- a trend that would explain the broad surprise at Smith's call.

---

In 2008, the NBA's independent investigator Lawrence Pedowitz published his report on refereeing in the wake of the Tim Donaghy scandal.

He included a section on "old" vs. "new" refereeing styles:

In an effort to improve both actual and perceived referee performance, the NBA, during the past six years, has tried to move toward a clearly articulated refereeing philosophy that adheres strictly to a literal and consistent interpretation of the rules. Previously, referees were inclined to employ an approach that allowed for more discretion. That approach -- which was also aimed at getting calls right -- varied somewhat with the circumstances of the game.

The approach has been described to us as the “art of refereeing” or “game management,” and has aspects of common sense, a desire not to interrupt the flow of the game (thereby showcasing the talent of the players), and rough justice.

Then Pedowitz listed examples gleaned from his interviews with every official, including:

Referees might avoid calling a foul on a play with significant contact at the end of a close game, consistent with the view that players rather than referees should determine a game’s outcome.

We all get what this means -- referees want to tread carefully, to have light impact. But even that is not real. When there's a hard foul late in a close game, referees don't really have an option of not deciding the game. They can essentially call it by the book and decide the game for the fouled team, or call something less and decide it for the other team. (The band Rush knows all about this: "If you choose not to decide you still have made the choice.")

For instance, referees decided for the Sixers and Celtics in getting those teams out of the first round.

---

If any two teams know the power of the old way of refereeing, where referees issue only small punishments late, it's these Sixers and these Celtics. Both teams won their first-round series with some old-fashioned crunch time referee timidity.

On video, Spencer Hawes' foul of Omer Asik at the end of the Sixers' series-clinching Game 6 was inseparable from all kinds of plays that have been whistled flagrant. It took a massive amount of force to keep the massive, open and full-speed Asik from even attempting a shot. Hawes put everything he had into yanking Asik sideways from the base of his neck, throwing him to the ground with no hope of scoring.

But even though referees were there with a great view of everything, only a regular foul was called. The city of Chicago isn't the only place people believe that decision wasn't rooted in the rulebook -- which would support the flagrant -- but in the reality that there were seven seconds left in a game the Bulls led by one. A flagrant would have given the Bulls the lead, free throws and the ball. A flagrant would have "decided the game," or darned close.

Letting players decide the game has a dark counterpart in these situations, too: A less violent foul would not have worked. That close to the hoop, with an offensive player that open, any normal foul would have let Asik win the game by finishing at the rim, putting the Bulls up three with a free throw still to shoot. This oddity of NBA rules, and their enforcement, forced Hawes to make his attack a particularly violent one.

It's odd that breaking the rules by fouling ever helps a team win. It's nuts that there are cases like this where throwing the opponent wildly off balance is the only way to win.

Of course you know what happened. It worked beautifully. Hawes' foul was, arguably, the play of the Sixers' season. Asik couldn't get a decent shot off. He missed both free throws. The Bulls didn't get the ball back, because no flagrant was called. Iguodala got the rebound, drove hard to the hoop, was fouled by Asik and won the game for the Sixers at the line.

But the story doesn't end there.

The Sixers retreated to their locker room to savor the win and gather their belongings for a trip to the second round. On the locker room television, the Hawks and Celtics were fighting for the right to face the Sixers next.

The Celtics were up two points with 3.1 seconds left -- the Hawks were inbounding under their own hoop, praying to tie the game. In Philadelphia, Hawes was watching.

Two things happened. First Celtic Marquis Daniels held Hawk Al Horford, rather blatantly. It's to referee Bill Kennedy's credit that he called anything. But replays show the hold happened before the ball had been inbounded, and the NBA would later admit the call came late. This was a particular point of emphasis from the league to the referees a few years ago. When the foul occurs before the ball is inbounded, as this clearly did, the correct call is one free throw for the Hawks, and then the ball out of bounds again. That would have been a huge help to the Hawks' chances, in a game they really lost by one point (before an intentional foul). Instead it was ruled the foul was after the ball had been inbounded, giving the Hawks no relief at all: Once again they got the ball out of bounds.

Whether Kennedy didn't see the sequence of events, or didn't want to have too big an impact, is unknown.

But what is known is that he had a front-row seat for the next play. The bigger, stronger Horford caught the ball by the hoop, and Daniels was faced with the same no-brainer of a choice Hawes had. He was beat, with no way of winning by following the rulebook, or making a basketball play.

So Daniels grabbed Horford around the shoulders and hurled him earthbound. The Hawes foul looked more like a flagrant than this one, but it was certainly not a play on the ball. Kennedy called a regular foul. Horford missed one of two free throws and the Celtics advanced to meet the Sixers.

Credit both Daniels and Hawes with great, game-saving plays that are in the interest of their teams -- but not their league.

---

There is only one alternative to referees deciding games. Iguodala: "That means anything goes."

That's what Garnett, Hawes and Daniels were all counting on.

Otherwise, why would Garnett -- one of the NBA's most respected veterans, a champion and a professional who knows all the little particulars of winning -- put his team in jeopardy with such a reckless play, right in front of a referee, in such a moment?

It's not like he tripped. He took a calculated risk even though, as he'd later admit, he had been warned in the same game about such plays.

Imagine the outrage if, say, JaVale McGee had done the same thing in the second quarter. A chorus of pundits would sing of his ignorance. But this was Garnett, and it's clear he wasn't being dumb at all. He was being brilliant. He was playing with the assumption Smith simply would not doom the Celtics with his whistle, which gave him a special way to get his teammate Paul Pierce wide open for a game-tying 3.

Garnett is not being called a fool. Instead, the referee is being questioned.

Garnett was playing very well under the old way of refereeing. But the new way is better. Way better, in fact, because it rewards the best basketball plays, as opposed to hardest fouls.

As Dave McMenamim reported on ESPN LA, Kobe Bryant says he is against flopping and does not intentionally take charges.

"We got a couple guys that take charges, but for the most part, the one guy that took a charge is now playing in Oklahoma," Bryant said of his longtime teammate Derek Fisher, who is now with the Thunder. "I don't take charges. Metta [World Peace] don't take charges. Steve [Blake] will take a charge every now and then, but most everybody else just stands up and plays."

Let it be noted that Pau Gasol has been known to take to the court in the name of drawing an offensive foul. But all in all, the Lakers are very much wallflowers in the NBA's flopping party.

"I don't flop," continued Bryant. "We all know what flopping is when we see it. The stuff that you see is where guys aren't really getting hit at all and are just flailing around like a fish out of water. That's kind of like, where are your balls at?"

Although Bryant makes clear charges and flops are not always synonymous, block/charge collisions are a particular hot spot for flopping. Bucks forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute recently estimated that "40 to 50 percent" of NBA charges are flops -- calls made based on the defender staging a theatrical reaction to minimal contact.

In fact, it’s worth questioning whether the entire concept of the block/charge call needs to be rethought: When a strategy leads to lots of collisions, lots of falling down (legitimate and illegitimate), lots of faking, lots of whistles, lots of stoppages of play, lots of arguments and lots of real and potential injuries, and is designed mostly to prevent our most dynamic scorers from making exciting plays, is that something basketball needs?

Hoopdata shows that the Lakers join the Thunder as the two teams taking the least advantage; they are 29th and 30th on the season, respectively, in drawing charges. With charge-taker Fisher in Oklahoma City, it's likely the current incarnation of the Lake Show is dead last. (And true to his word, Bryant takes very few charges -- according to Hoopdata, just two in as many years.)

This is great news for anyone who is eager to see an NBA with less flopping. Here we see that a team that has won lots of titles and a team projected to do the same are showing the game can be played in a fan-pleasing and effective way without manufactured theatrics. That's fantastic and strong support for the argument that curtailing flopping won't hurt basketball.

One concern, however: David Thorpe points out the Lakers are the worst team in the NBA, by a wide margin, when it comes to creating turnovers. Defensive flops are, of course, designed to do just that. It would take some in-depth analysis to make a case that the Lakers would be better if they flopped more, but it could be so -- which would send a disturbing message.

Indeed, despite what the Lakers and Thunder show us, it might be that flopping does pay for some teams, with Miami (fourth in charges drawn this season) near the top of the list, and the Spurs and Clippers undeniably in the mix.

It will take more than resolute players, those willing to "stand up and play," to stop the flop.

It's the NBA's move. The only wrong answer is doing nothing, especially with one of the NBA’s greatest superstars, the commissioner and fans all speaking out against flopping. Only the rulebook, implicitly, is for it.

But that can change.