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Former New York Times and current Grantland basketball writer Jonathan Abrams takes the time to do things right, digging in deep to tell us amazing stories, like one of the first and still the best Royce White profile, the definitive guide to Stephen Jackson's thinking and of course the oral history of the Malice at the Palace. Each of this stories is nuanced and textured and fun to read. Like a little book.

And now he's going to write a big book. The deal is freshly signed. Boys Among Men: How a Generation of High Schoolers Chasing Their NBA Dreams Changed the Game and Themselves tells the story of players who jumped directly from high school to the NBA, from Moses Malone in 1974 to Amir Johnson in 2005.

When's it coming out, you ask? You can't rush these things. I asked Abrams that question, and he mumbled something about 2015. But it's happening.

So odd to me, that people wonder why Jason Collins' coming out made bigger waves than Brittney Griner's.

Well, gather 'round, because I'm about to explain.

1. How many WNBA players are out? As of 2005, Michele Van Gorp, Sue Wicks and Sheryl Swoopes. That was eight years ago.
2. That the WNBA doesn't make news like the NBA is elemental. It is a lower profile sport.
3. We don't know precisely the obstacles Collins faced in coming out. But we do know that in NBA, MLB, NFL and NHL history no other active player has overcome them before, despite thousands of athletes over more than a century.
4. Jason Collins is a man.

Whoa. What? Huh? That last point?

If I thought it would work, here's where I'd drop 5,000 words of queer theory on you. Or you can take my word for it that gay men and women have long faced subtly different obstacles in gaining mainstream embrace. For men, a particular issue has been that society's powerbrokers -- disproportionately heterosexual men -- have long acted scared of gay men, and particularly of being sexually assaulted by them.

That quickens the pulse of the people who set the agenda, particularly in the male-dominated sphere of pro sports. For many sports fans that gave Collins' announcement a "wow" factor -- likely subconscious -- that Griner's cool announcement lacked.

This is why we hear so much about group showering whenever gay athletes are discussed. The shower is where a lot of heterosexual men hate to be reminded gay men exist, even if they can handle that reality perfectly well in other settings.

Compared to women or gay men, heterosexual men lack practice coping with sexualization, and are easily alarmed.

So chalk that up as the first fear: That the open existence of homosexual men makes some heterosexual men feel unsafe. This prompts fear. Fear and hatred have always walked hand in hand. Hatred, of course, is the key obstacle Collins will face.

Would you believe there's another fear in play that's even trickier to write about? The second is that admiring professional athletes' bodies -- no small part of what sports fans have long done daily -- just got weird for the ardently heterosexual male. Jason Collins is asking fans to tour their own psyches in a challenging new way.

And here's where I really think you ought to read what one of America's most decorated writers (be warned, it's PG-13 or beyond), Sherman Alexie, has to say about about how we see gay athletes, in The Stranger.

So who are the best-looking men in the USA? The answer, obviously, is professional athletes. I mean, Jesus, Google-Image Adrian Peterson. Study how cut, shredded, and jacked he is.

Cut. Shredded. Jacked. Those are violent straight-boy adjectives that mean "beautiful." But we straight boys aren't supposed to think of other men as beautiful. We're supposed to think of the most physically gifted men as warrior soldiers, as dangerous demigods.

And there's the rub: When we're talking about professional athletes, we are mostly talking about males passionately admiring the physical attributes and abilities of other males. It might not be homosexual, but it certainly is homoerotic.

So when Jason Collins, an NBA basketball player, announced this week that he was gay and became the first active athlete in the four major professional American sports leagues to come out of the closet, I was proud of him. And I was aroused, politically speaking.

He's the Jackie Robinson of homosexual basketball big men.

He's seven feet and 250 pounds of man-loving man.

And he's an aging center in the last days of his professional career who might not be signed by a team next season.

Homophobic basketball fans will disparage his skills, somehow equating his NBA benchwarmer status with his sexuality. But let's not forget that Collins is still one of the best 1,000 basketball players in the world. He has always been better than his modest statistics would indicate, and his teams have been dramatically more efficient with him on the court. He is better at hoops than 99.9 percent of you are at anything you do. He might not be a demigod, but he's certainly a semi-demigod. Moreover, his basketball colleagues universally praise him as a physically and mentally tough player. In his prime, he ably battled that behemoth known as Shaquille O'Neal. Most of all, Collins is widely regarded as one of the finest gentlemen to ever play the game. Generous, wise, and supportive, he's a natural leader. And he has a degree from Stanford University.

In other words, he's a highly attractive dude.

 

On video, it looks like strategy.

Stephen Curry, the NBA's newest and slightest superstar, who has been killing the Nuggets on ankles so brittle he recently tweeted "no ankle left unturned lol," was minding his own business, jogging through the lane three-and-a-half minutes into Game 5, when the Nuggets' Kenneth Faried stepped backward, directly into Curry's tender foot.

It wasn't an isolated event.

"Three or four plays in the first four minutes," estimates Curry, who says "of course" the Nuggets were trying to rough him up.

I knew this was coming. Intentional fouls, I've been increasingly realizing, are the go-to method of controlling superstars. Curry, with a skinny build and weak ankles, is more vulnerable than anybody. As he emerged as a player who could decide a series, the clock was ticking. He would get roughed up. It made too much sense.

"Some dirty plays early," pointed out Curry's coach, Mark Jackson, who later said this of Faried: "Take a look ... the screen on Curry by the foul line is a shot at his ankle. Clearly. That can't be debated. ... I've got inside information that some people don't like that brand of basketball and they clearly didn't co-sign it. So they wanted me to know they had no parts in what was taking place."

Jackson -- whose team has committed all kinds of hard fouls in this series (ask Andre Iguodala about Andrew Bogut) and this season, including some that caused injury -- spoke passionately in defense of hard play, and even hard fouls. But he stressed it was important for both teams to go to the trouble to avoid injuring each other.

On TNT later, Charles Barkley explained: "I've been on teams where you say ... this dude's too comfortable. Every time you get a chance, hit him. You want him to be thinking about 'Where am I going to get hit at next time?' You can't go out there like you're at a shootaround."

Shaquille O'Neal heartily co-signed, saying Jackson went too far in calling such a thing "dirty," insisting instead it's just the nature of the game. (Every retired player will tell you it was way rougher when they played. That's what they do, even though there's little evidence the game was really more physical back then.)

Here's the thing, though: Forget the teams for a second. Forget rooting for Denver or Golden State. Forget the tail-chasing debate about what's "dirty."

Put yourselves in the position of the people who are charged with keeping players safe: The NBA. They're the ones who have fallen asleep on the job here.

If you're the NBA, or any fan of basketball, you want nothing more than for Curry -- the most exciting player in these playoffs -- to keep creating artistic moments that fire the imagination. You want to see skilled players doing the skilled things that make this league unique, and distinct from MMA. You want this for every player.

In short, you don't want to see Curry play his best in Game 6 only if he proves his ankles can withstand intentional attack. (We already know they probably can't ... he has missed dozens of games from plays with no contact at all.) You want him at his best in Game 6 because the other team is not "hitting him every chance they get."

And we could have that, right now.

Teams are roughing up opposing stars because it works. It works because many intentional fouls are missed entirely by the referees, and those that are noticed, even dangerous ones, are punished too lightly to make it stop.

Barkley and O'Neal played in an NBA where there was no strategic reason not to rough a guy like Curry up. You "hit" him 10 times a night as a team, you get called for four or five. That's the cost. The benefit is he is intimidated, fearing for safety, and diminished as a scoring threat all night long, for every play of his night. The benefit is bigger than the cost! Someone with SportVu data can probably do the math: Six or seven extra free throws is a small price to pay for a dozen extra hits -- many uncalled -- that result in a cowed, hobbled or injured opposing star. That's a fantastic trade for the more aggressive team.

That's "playoff basketball."

No coach will go on record against it. They want the ability to hit players early and often, both because it's a valuable tactic for a team and because it's a particularly valuable tactic for coaches. Intentional fouls take power from superstars -- who'd dominate even more without fear of injury -- and give it to he who can order up the hits.

The problem, though, is that it's 2013, and the league has more than enough tools, right now, to clean all of this up. Getting away scot-free with a lot of cheap shots is a key reason this is a winning strategy. But why, in a world where every court is encircled by cameras, where everyone at home benefits from truly instant HD replay from all kinds of angles, would the people making the key decisions of the game not have real-time access to that crucial information? Why would we shrug and say "we can't catch 'em all" when we totally can?

You have no idea how many times a night, thanks to the magic of watching ESPN or TNT in HD with a remote control in my hand, I know precisely whether there was a foul or not, even as the referees have no idea. It's crazy. And it makes the NBA look crazy. Why do the people with the beer and the popcorn on the couch have better real-time information than the people making game-deciding calls?

NBA referees are the best in the world, but everybody thinks they're terrible because of this. And meanwhile, the game is not being called nearly as accurately, quickly or comprehensively as it could be.

My HoopIdea: Get away from stopping the game for video review. And graduate to a courtside referee or two, with as many TV screens as would be helpful, showing every angle imaginable. This video referee crew would constantly review all the best angles of what is happening right now as it happens. They might be a few seconds behind real time if they need to rewind briefly, but not much. They'd essentially know everything video could know, without having to stop the game to huddle around a single monitor. And when they know something the referees on the court missed, they'd be able to tell them at the next dead ball, or even sooner.

The plays where the video makes the referees look foolish ... they're usually at dead balls anyway.

Before you tell me this is loco, realize the league already does this. They review the games after they're over, for instance a whole day later. And then they "correct" the referees' work when it was egregiously wrong, either by apologizing for a missed call, and then warning, fining or suspending somebody for a flop, a dirty play, fighting or anything else.

I'm baffled by the delay. Players are hitting each other as part of team-wide strategy -- endorsed by Barkley, O'Neal and oddly, even Mark Jackson -- because they help them win games.

As long as the real punishment only comes after the game, there are still wins to be had for teams who are beating people up. Whatever the NBA believes can be gleaned from video, glean it when it's still useful to decide the game, when it's still useful to keep up with the fans at home, and to make the strategy of Tackle Basketball stop working.

The league's executives, from David Stern to Stu Jackson, have been clear they do not want teams taking the floor planning to hurt each other. Time to do something about it.

It's late in a close game, your team has the ball, and they need to decide what to do.

Pick and roll? Isolation? Drive and kick? This shooter? That one?

These are tough decisions and precisely why coaches get the big bucks.

Too bad so many teams keep screwing these decisions up in these playoffs.

My radical proposal, developed over the last several years of obsessing over this stuff: Whatever your team does, it ought to be something with a good chance of succeeding. There are lots of right answers.

I'd bet big money time will make clearer that the wrong answer is to call timeout to set up an isolation play. No matter your opinion of advanced stats, these things are all true:

• Timeouts hurt the offense and help the defense.
• Isolations consistently rank as just about the least effective type of NBA play.
• It's essentially impossible to find evidence any player is predictably efficient against the double team.
• "Any random open player" has been shown to be a better option than a covered superstar, and it's not close.

And yet, look what has been happening in these playoffs.

THUNDER GAME 4 vs. ROCKETS

This has been the season that many teams have seen the light about moving the ball to the open man. For instance, instead of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade vs. the world, the Heat have surrounded their stars with deadly shooters. Predictably, it has made a massive difference.

The Spurs were counted out as old, but dusted almost everybody by continuing their long-term worship of uncontested shots.

See the trend there? Good teams that don't play Hero Ball sweep the first round.

Meanwhile, of the league's three top contending teams (Miami, San Antonio, Oklahoma City) this season, the Thunder were always the holdouts. They have long believed in isolation hoops. Perhaps this is no surprise ... their coach had a playing career that coincided almost perfectly with the heyday of isolation play. Smart research has long shown that the Thunder's offense is at its best when Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook shot a little bit less, but the team sure does not run plays with that in mind. Their strategic approach has always been built around the idea that they want those guys shooting the rock.

The Thunder roster, led by the stars, are so doggone good that makes for a top-five NBA' offense anyway. But when Westbrook went down to a knee injury, a scary new decision faced Oklahoma City. Without Westbrook, would they finally see the value in open shooters? Or would they double down in their commitment to superstars, only this time with just one left?

The problem with having only one superstar is that my mom could draw up the defensive scheme. (On Monday night's broadcast Chris Webber saw what the Rockets were doing late to cover Durant and declared it the first time in his entire life he had seen a full-court double-team.) It's easy to make sure Durant faces a ton of defense every possession, and so what if he occasionally beats 'em all?

The result was the Rockets -- perhaps the worst defensive team in the playoffs -- held one of the league's best offensive teams (60-game winners) to a grand total of three buckets over the game's five final minutes. In that time Derek Fisher, Kevin Martin, Serge Ibaka and Thabo Sefolosha spent all kinds of time -- on video, it's glaring -- standing all alone in position to catch and shoot. Research shows open role players in those kinds of situations are vastly more effective than covered stars. According to NBA.com's stats tool, however, those four together combined for a grand total of one attempt, while Durant and fill-in Westbrook -- Reggie Jackson, took all the shots.

Simply put, with more respect for open shooters, and less fascination with who's shooting, the Thunder absolutely could have scored more. And they only had to score a tiny bit more to, you know, end the series.

It came to a hilarious head with 12 seconds left. The Thunder had been force-feeding Durant so religiously the defense scarcely looked at anybody else. And yet, in the face of evidence timeouts only help the defense, and despite a Rockets team scrambling to get in place, the Thunder called a timeout.

They hadn't run an actual play in a half-hour, and weren't about to. What could there have been to talk about? It was the stuff of Twitter jokes:

@truehoop "just to confirm guys, we're going with Kevin. I know you know, just wanted to emphasise. So, yeah... ' - Scott Brooks.

— Anton Trees (@as_trees) April 30, 2013

 

After letting the defense get set, the Thunder flirted with turning the ball over, and ended up losing valuable seconds trying to establish Durant. He gave up his dribble in the face of tough defense, almost turned it over trying to get it to Jackson, who scrambled to create a Hail Mary out of a broken play that failed at the buzzer.

Would it kill you to run a pick-and-roll?

ROCKETS GAME 4 vs. THUNDER
All the things I just wrote about Durant and the Thunder go double for the Rockets and James Harden. Kevin McHale uses Harden like you used your favorite new song when you were 12 -- again and again and again until it's completely worn out.

As much as the Thunder offense was good all season but bad in crunch time, the Rockets are the kings of that particular dynamic, and have been for the same reason all season. They're also famously the most analytical team in the league, meaning almost certainly somebody is telling McHale this is a bad idea, but he's doing it anyway.

The Rockets' late-game offense consisted largely of Harden shooting tough shots against the Thunder's hand-picked defenders, Sefolosha and in one case after a switch, Ibaka, with teammates standing still and watching with the shot clock expiring. These are awful conditions for an offense -- how strange for the offense to have set up the conditions that precise way.

Non-Harden players made two of five shots in the final five minutes. None of Harden's three shots were all that close. One was an airball.

This is an old trend from the Lakers, which has been generally true throughout Kobe Bryant's career: The team builds a lead playing some kind of team-focused ball, and then the offense grinds to a halt late in games when the offense focuses increasingly on the team's "best option." In reality the team's best option is to keep using the screens, cuts, passes and movement of people and the ball that got them the lead in the first place.

KNICKS vs. CELTICS GAME 4
The Celtics won this game. Here's an exchange that shows why: With 1:12 left in regulation and the Knicks up two, Paul Pierce took a handoff from Kevin Garnett on the left side. Everyone knows Pierce is the Celtics' closer, and everyone knows his go-to closing move is a nifty little fall away jumper around the free throw line. By the time Pierce got to his spot and elevated, Tyson Chandler, Carmelo Anthony and Raymond Felton formed a nice crowd around him.

But ... surprise! Pierce didn't shoot. He passed. Back to Garnett. Who had roughly 400 square miles of open space all around him, as the defense had been wholly duped into crunch time hero worship. Garnett stepped into a nice tidy open jump shot. Not a hero shot at all -- and therefore a wonderful one, with very high expected points per possession. The best shots are open shots.

Meanwhile the Knicks, like the Thunder, were missing a key scorer -- in this instance J.R. Smith was out. And like the Thunder they used that as an excuse to go Hero Ball all the way.

So on the next possession New York got the ball to Carmelo Anthony, who was very well covered by long, lean Jeff Green, and missed a 29-footer as the clock expired.

It was as the Knicks believed there was literally magic in Anthony's fingertips. For much of the season the Knicks were a study in ball movement, with shooters hoisting open 3s at record rates. They tossed that playbook for this game, however, instead having Anthony launch 35 shots almost all of which were heavily covered. He missed 25.

The Knicks averaged more than 19 assists per game this year but finished this 53-minute overtime game with 10. It's easy to see why -- because in situations when a covered Anthony would have once passed to the open man -- and there were plenty of them -- out of a misguided conviction it was best for his team, in this game he fired away.

In the final five minutes of regulation plus overtime a collection of the Knicks most efficient shooters -- Steve Novak, Jason Kidd and Tyson Chandler -- didn't take a single shot, while Anthony shot a mighty ten and made but two. Non-Anthony Knicks, meanwhile, were three-of-six over those crucial ten minutes.

The role of a coach is to guide a team to run the plays that give the team the best possible chance of success. If you were an NBA owner, how long would you keep believing in a coach whose teams used the exact opposite approach when it mattered most, running plays that would predictably get bad results?

"It's going to get ugly." That's how a source close to the ownership group attempting to purchase the Sacramento Kings and move them to Seattle described the next steps after the NBA relocation committee recommended that the team should stay put.

The Seattle group isn't taking no for an answer. They plan to take their case to the Board of Governors during a meeting scheduled two weeks from now to formally vote on the Seattle proposal.

In a statement posted Monday night on the group's Web site, SonicsArena.com, lead investor Chris Hansen vowed to fight.

"While this represents yet another obstacle to achieving our goal," wrote Hansen in a letter addressed to Sonics fans, "I just wanted to reassure all of you that we have numerous options at our disposal and have absolutely no plans to give up."

In the statement, Hansen made clear the aggressive argument he plans to make to the Board of Governors. He said that his group is "one of the best ownership groups ever assembled," has offered "a much higher price" for the Kings and has "a much more solid Arena plan" in Seattle than the proposal to build a new arena in Sacramento.

The task ahead of the Seattle group is challenging: They must convince at least half of the league's owners to vote against the relocation committee's recommendation. According to the source, multiple owners indicated in private conversations they intend to vote along the lines of the recommendation. The Seattle group has to hope that the entire Board of Governors is more favorable to its position than the seven-member committee, which included four owners from small markets.

Working against the Seattle group is the sentiment Stern expressed on NBA TV in explaining the decision.

"I didn't see a unanimous vote coming," he told reporter Dei Lynam, "but they decided as strong as the Seattle bid was -- and it was very strong -- there's some benefit that should be given to a city that has supported us for so long and has stepped up to contribute to building a new building as well."

It's clear the recommendation caught the Seattle group off guard. Investor Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, told local radio host Mitch Levy that he was "horribly, horribly disappointed" by the decision. But the decision isn't final yet, and the Seattle group still believes it can win the fight for the Kings.

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?

Phoenix guard Kendall Marshall might have the NBA's best Twitter game, as we discussed with him on TrueHoop TV last week. In the second of two episodes we get the back story behind @KButter5 tweets like "So apparently yelling 'GET A BUCKET' is frowned upon at an 8th grade girls lacrosse game. My bad."

• Mark Bradley of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: The notion struck midway through another second quarter in which the Atlanta Hawks were extracting, without Novocain and with great force, the “d” from Indiana. “The Pacers can’t guard the Hawks,” declared a correspondent watching from on high, “and the Hawks can guard the Pacers. How’d that happen?” These are the Hawks and this is the postseason, so who knows? But know this: The Hawks can win this series and if they do, it won’t be much of an upset now. Indiana, the East’s No. 3 seed, just spent two games in Philips Arena making a case for itself as the most overrated team in the history of basketball, and the unloved Hawks … well, they’ve been lovely. Yes, this best-of-seven is tied at 2, and yes, the Hawks will have to take a game in Indianapolis, where they lost twice last week by an aggregate 32 points, in order to advance, But the dynamics of this matchup have been inverted. The Pacers, with much to lose, seem capable of losing it all. The Hawks, whose modest mission this season was not to stink before the real rebuilding begins this summer, look like a team constructed by a master craftsman. … So what happens now? The Pacers are very good at home, but they’ve been handed real reason to doubt. The looks on their faces during that second quarter spoke of anger and frustration but mostly bewilderment. This series was theirs to win. They’re in peril of losing it to a team that was built to be torn down.
• Bob Kravitz of The Indianapolis Star: Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. So never mind what a certain not-so-humble (but good-looking) columnist wrote a couple of days back in this space: This Pacers-Hawks series isn’t over. It’s far from over. In fact, it’s just beginning, a best-of-three with two games in Indianapolis, after the Pacers’ 102-91 Game 4 loss to the Hawks. Mea culpa, mea culpa — which is Latin for “Man, did I get that wrong.” It still says here the Pacers win this series in six games — at some point I’m bound to be right about something — but it’s easy to lose the faith while watching the way they’ve regressed to the disconnected, defenseless style of play that marked the final week and a half of the regular season. What’s happened to this group? This was the league’s second-best defensive team in terms of points allowed. This was the league’s top defensive team in terms of field goal percentage allowed and three-point field goal percentage allowed. But they’re getting absolutely skewered by the Atlanta Hawks, who are making plays and leaving the Pacers players with hands on hips, shooting each other empty, angry glances. … Raise the red flags. Sound the alarm bells. This series, which never should have become a series, has left the Pacers with almost no margin of error. Color me fooled. And chastened.
• Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle: Finally, the ball did not bounce 12 feet in the air and stab the Rockets in the heart. Kevin Durant did not get the last shot. The Rockets held on. After consecutive games in which the Rockets did everything but close out a win, they held their breath as a pair of last-chance Oklahoma City shots came up short. When Reggie Jackson’s runner and Serge Ibaka putback missed, the Rockets escaped 105-103 on Monday night, sending the first-round series back to Oklahoma City with the Thunder leading 3-1 but giving the Rockets their first playoff win since 2009. “We know we can play with these guys,” said Chandler Parsons, who led the Rockets with 27 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists. “We know we can beat these guys. We were in the same situation the last two games. No way we were going to give it up.” They had clearly earned it, coming back from a 13-point deficit and making just enough stops with the game on the line to extend their season to Game 5 on Wednesday night. “Great win by us,” Rockets coach Kevin McHale said. “It was a gutsy win. I told our guys before the game, ‘One thing about our team, we’re not going to lay down.’ They fought all year long. We had different lineups. We’ve had different kinds of stuff happen. The one constant has been their willingness to go out and scrap and fight. I said, ‘There’s no way we’re going to lay an egg tonight.’ We went out and we fought hard.”
• John Rohde of The Oklahoman: The frenzied finish resulted in a 105-103 loss for the Thunder, which failed in its quest to sweep this best-of-7 opening-round playoff series. Leading 3-1, OKC will try to close out the series in Game 5 at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at Chesapeake Energy Arena. The best news arrived roughly 90 minutes later when the Thunder boarded its charter and returned home after four draining days away from home. The team left OKC on Friday afternoon just hours after learning three-time All-Star point guard Russell Westbrook would be out indefinitely with a lateral meniscus tear in his right knee. The following morning came news that Westbrook would be lost for the entire postseason after having surgery in Vail, Colo. Later that night was Game 3, the first contest in Thunder history with no Westbrook on the court. OKC jumped out to a 26-point lead and managed to hang on for a 104-101 victory. A collective sigh of relief was visible from Thunder players, even from veteran power forward Nick Collison, who admitted it had been an emotional 48 hours.
• Tim Smith of the New York Daily News: Ten days ago the Nets defended their home court at Barclays Center and opened their first-round series against the Bulls with a victory so resounding it seemed they were launching into a run that would carry them deep into the postseason. On Monday night, the Nets returned home having lost three straight games, including a triple-OT fiasco that followed an epic fourth-quarter collapse in Game 4. Gone was the ebullient spirit of that inaugural playoff game at Barclays Center, replaced by an atmosphere of desperation and disappointment as the Nets, in a 3-1 hole , stared down elimination. Only eight teams have rallied from that same deficit, but the Nets were 5-0 in Game 5 elimination games. There was hope. Brooklyn stoked that ember of hope and beat the Bulls at their own game, staving off elimination with a 110-91 victory . Now they head back to Chicago to face another elimination game on Thursday. “Our backs are against the wall right now,” said forward Gerald Wallace. “We’re in fighting spirit. We’re a fighting team and we’re not ready to go home. We feel like we’re better than this team. We feel like we’re good enough and a better team and we can come back and win three in a row just like they did.”
• Vaughn McClure of the Chicago Tribune: The Bulls needed Kirk Hinrich for all 59 minutes he played in a Game 4 triple-overtime win. Monday night in Game 5, they had to figure out how to proceed without him. The simple solution, with Hinrich sidelined by a bruised left calf, was a heavy dose of Nate Robinson, who was coming off his 34-point explosion in Game 4. The offensive-minded Robinson, however, is light years behind Hinrich in terms of defensive ability. Rookie Marquis Teague and Marco Belinelli spelled Robinson for brief stints, but Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau relied heavily on his diminutive point guard, playing him 43-plus minutes. As Hinrich watched from a row behind the bench, Robinson played with his typical high energy but failed to match his Game 4 output. He looked for his teammates more than his own shots for a good portion of the game and seemed to run out of steam in the end. He scored a team-high 20 points and had eight assists in the Bulls' 110-91 loss to the Nets. Robinson went 1-for-5 from 3-point range and committed three turnovers. His most costly miscue came with two minutes left in regulation. Robinson picked up his dribble against Deron Williams and tried to force a pass to Luol Deng. Nets forward Gerald Wallace stepped into the passing lane and broke free for the game-clinching dunk. "Had a crucial turnover down the stretch that really hurt us,'' Robinson said. "I take the blame for that, and that's something I have to do better."
• Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post: Faces crinkled and shoulders shrugged in befuddlement. The question: What now? The Nuggets, down 3-1 to Golden State in their opening round playoff series, have had few defensive answers to the Warriors' offensive onslaught. What to do? It is suddenly a tough question. "Uh ... I don't know," Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried said. "I really don't." Nuggets guard Andre Miller: "That's the coaches' decision to figure out the adjustments, who is guarding who, certain things like that. It's a pride thing, and I think the coaches will figure out a way to adjust to things." Nuggets guard Ty Lawson: "Man ... whatever the coaches come up with." The problem is, most everything the Nuggets have tried on defense in this series hasn't worked after Golden State's all-star forward, David Lee, went down with an injury in Game 1. Warriors coach Mark Jackson then went with a small, three-guard lineup that has given the Nuggets fits. Lee's absence has turned the Warriors from a conventional team to a wild card, from having a dual low-post game to running a spread — four shooters on the perimeter, each with the ability to create a shot for their teammates. As a result, the Nuggets' defense been stretched thin and distorted beyond recognition.
• Carl Steward of The Oakland Tribune: In 438 best-of-seven playoff series throughout NBA history, only eight teams have rallied from 3-1 deficits to win. But coach Mark Jackson is having nothing with the odds that favor the Warriors to advance as they head into Denver for Game 5 on Tuesday. "We expect to see a tough Denver Nuggets team that's fighting for its playoff life, that's prepared and ready to keep the series going," Jackson said Monday. "The most difficult game is the close-out game. I've got a young team, and if we keep doing what we're doing, we'll put ourselves in position to move on. But it's a tough task, because this is a very good Nuggets team." The last team to complete a comeback from being down 3-1 was the 2006 Phoenix Suns. Kobe Bryant led the seventh-seeded Los Angeles Lakers to the 3-1 advantage, but Phoenix won three games fairly handily to salvage the series. In 2003, the Orlando Magic got up 3-1 on top-seeded Detroit, but the Pistons rallied after the Magic's Tracy McGrady pronounced that it felt good to get out of the first round. The Warriors are making no such pronouncements. … Another number that doesn't favor the Nuggets: In seven of his eight seasons as Denver's coach, George Karl has failed to get out of the first round, three of those times with home-court advantage in the series.
• Ronald Tillery of The Commercial-Appeal: Lionel Hollins went with a trust factor over gut feeling. Who can I trust? That’s the question Hollins and Los Angeles Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro will ask themselves over and over again Tuesday night during a pivotal Game 5 of their Western Conference playoff series in Staples Center. Game 5 winners have gone on to win playoff series 83 percent of the time. So it’s no wonder that rotations shorten and coaches lean on a select group they deem old reliable in a long playoff series. “We’re trying to play the people who are producing and not have huge gaps or lulls,” Hollins said. “I’ve been trying to piecemeal rotations and keep our (starters) fresh. Everybody that got in (the rotation) during the regular season isn’t getting to trot out there. It’s just the way it is.” The series is knotted at 2-2 but the coaches couldn’t be further apart in philosophy. Hollins hasn’t dug deep into his bench and even regular-season super sub Bayless disappeared over the past three games. Conversely, Del Negro relied on most of his roster. He’s played all but two healthy players in the series.
• Phil Collin of the Los Angeles Daily News: They've bludgeoned each other for four games and they will for at least two more. But the more the Clippers and Memphis Grizzlies have at each other, the less pure basketball tactics will make a difference. In tonight's Game 5 of the best-of-7 Western Conference playoff series, mind over matter figures to trump anything out of a playbook in the Staples Center clash. "The biggest thing is a sense of urgency is going to be the key," Clippers guard Chauncey Billups said. "They played desperate basketball, now it's our turn. We have to make a few adjustments, but it's our turn now to play with a sense of urgency." The first-round series has been a classic case of NBA playoffs through the years. The teams are seeded fourth and fifth, and the team playing at home has been the aggressor and the victor. It's no surprise the series stands at 2-2, especially after they went the full seven a year ago. How close are these teams? To a man, they'll point out the one physical matchup that has illustrated the direction of this series, and it's rebounding. Win the rebound battle, win the game. And a closer look at the four games shows the margin of rebounding is eerily close to the margin of the final score.
• Jerry Brewer of The Seattle Times: As I've written before, this was the best time for the NBA to return, and now that Seattle feels left at the altar, old wounds have reopened, and old bitterness has resurfaced. With no expansion on the table, there is no clear path to acquire a team, and while the deal to build a $490 million Sodo arena could stay together for up to five years, can the fan base really stand to go through another relocation tug of war with an incumbent NBA city? It's impossible to trust that a victory is possible until Stern retires. Count the days until Feb. 1, 2014. Maybe then, when Adam Silver takes over as commissioner, the game will have clear rules. Hansen tried to win the right way. He tried to do it with transparency; no buying the Kings and pretending to want to stay in Sacramento. He tried to do it with record-setting money and a polished business plan. But the NBA is a liar's game, full of hypocrites, improper alliances, a lack of financial creativity and a commissioner who is more powerful than the owners he represents. Stern revises the rules according to his whims. It seems Seattle was destined to lose in this ever-changing game. We're back in a familiar place with that spirit-crushing league. Abandoned. Again.
• Ailene Voisin of The Sacramento Bee: "Justice prevailed," said Jerry Reynolds, who has been with the Kings since their inaugural 1985-86 season in Sacramento. "This is the right decision. Seattle is a great city that deserves an NBA franchise. And at some point, they'll have one." But … "But this is our team," Reynolds added forcefully, and note the high level of cooperation that was necessary to facilitate the public/private partnership for a downtown sports and entertainment complex. "Sacramento is a major-league city, and it simply has to have a major-league sports team to grow. "When we travel around the country and see how these arenas have revitalized downtowns in Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Miami, to name a few cities, I keep thinking that a downtown arena here can be just as special. And this was probably Sac's last best chance."

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.

The Washington Wizards' Jason Collins has just become the first athlete in a major North American team sport to come out of the closet while still playing in the league (assuming he catches on with a team for next year -- he's a free agent).

Read his inspiring story.

David Stern's office released the following statement on Monday: "As Adam Silver and I said to Jason, we have known the Collins family since Jason and Jarron joined the NBA in 2001 and they have been exemplary members of the NBA family. Jason has been a widely respected player and teammate throughout his career and we are proud he has assumed the leadership mantle on this very important issue."

In 2011, the commissioner discussed the issue at more length. Awkwardly, he both acknowledged the challenges to gay NBA players and made clear he, Stern, would not be the person to instigate change -- specifically saying he did not want to become a "social crusader" on that issue.

I pointed out that roughly 3,600 men had played in the NBA, but at that time precisely none had come out of the closet. And there had been more than a few hints at anti-gay rhetoric in the NBA. Just a few examples:

• In his 2007 book, retired player John Amaechi both came out of the closet and shared word of bigoted behavior from his former owner and coach.
• In 2009, TV cameras caught Kenyon Martin calling Mavericks owner Mark Cuban a gay slur (NSFW).
• In 2011, Kobe Bryant directed the same word Martin used at a referee.

My question for Stern, in 2011, in the wake of Bryant's comment: Do NBA players work in an environment that is hostile to gay people? Might that be why no active player has ever come out of the closet?

Stern's response: "I don't think so. But I think that left unresponded to, statements like [Bryant's] could lead to a hostile work environment, and we're not going to have it."

Why, then, I asked, in an era when it's hard to find large businesses without openly gay employees, had no NBA player ever come out?

"I don't want to become a social crusader on this issue," Stern said, "but I think sports, male sports, has traditionally not been an inviting environment for gay men to identify themselves. But eventually ... we will get to a place where it is not an issue in sports."

Stern predicted some player would come out: "It's going to be hard, but it'll happen, I have no doubt about it."

David Thorpe has been watching the Warriors versus Nuggets series closely and has an array of observations and thoughts. He shared them by phone, and they are transcribed (and lightly edited for length) here:

Mark Jackson is incredibly inspiring

Mark Jackson has been absolutely tremendous. Everyone always wants to talk about X's and O's, but I believe the coaching game is half emotional. And on that stuff, he's scoring a 10 out of 10. They show those clips of Jackson during timeouts and he's inspiring Every. Single. Time.

Think about LeBron James and how he has grown as a player. It's not really about strategy, compared to a few years ago. It's about mentality. His biggest adjustment has been concentration and attention to detail. He has always had that quickness and size advantage. Now he punishes you with those every time you make a mistake guarding him. Now he's more balanced on his jumper and holds his follow-through. All things he has always known but that now he values more.

Denver is getting outplayed in those aspects. The Warriors are playing for their lives, and the coaching has a ton to do with it.

Jackson has been like the corner man in a heavyweight bout. Respect your opponent, but realize we're better. He's using action words, words with violence, but in a good way. He's got charisma. And look at his players' faces and you can see they absolutely believe.

Who would have guessed two weeks ago that in a Denver versus Golden State series, Golden State would have far more energy?

To my eyes, the Warriors were exhausted in Game 2. But they blew out the Nuggets anyway.

Stephen Curry walking the path

Coach Jackson has been saying amazing, uplifting, inspiring things about Steph Curry. And Curry has been "walking the path" as one of the best guards in the playoffs. Thirty-footers are within his range, and right now he absolutely believes he's going to make it.

If you were the Clippers, and right now you could pick any guard to lead your team for the next series, would you pick Chris Paul or Curry? We could argue all day about this for another series, or for next year. But for right now, I'd argue you'd be better off with Steph. Shooting is just so valuable, and Curry is playing like a top-five NBA player. (This also makes me think about that video we made about Trey Burke. Six-footers who can shoot the lights out are to be drafted quickly!)

George Karl is not inspiring

Everything's so different now. You know how many games Kosta Koufos started in the regular season? Eighty-one! You know how many he has started in this series? TWO! (He has played 64 total minutes in the four games of the series.) Evan Fournier was out of the rotation almost all year and is now starting. They've been moving the ball as well as any team all year and now the point guards, Ty Lawson and Andre Miller, both think they have to score to save the team (Ed. note: Miller's assists are down from 8.1 per 36 minutes in the regular season to 5.3. Lawson's are up a hair, from 7.2 to 7.5). This is also a strange time to see what Koufos and JaVale McGee can do together.

I recognize that injuries to Danilo Gallinari and Kenneth Faried mean changes. But this is beyond what was necessary, and it seems to have had an unsettling effect on the team. They were once a breathtaking team in transition.

They are not what they have been.

The Nuggets have not come out with confidence, and they often look confused.

They keep forgetting to guard the top 3-point shooter in the league!

Kenneth Faried is not himself

Faried can't move. He looks like he's running in quicksand. I've long thought he might be the quickest power forward in the league. Now he looks like an older version of Spencer Hawes. He's Brad Miller, basically.

For the Nuggets to be the Nuggets, the team that reeled off 15 impressive wins in a row in the regular season, they have got to have the Manimal. Without David Lee in this series, the Nuggets should own the offensive glass. But Faried can't move. He's such a key to cleaning up all those misses on offense. This just isn't the same guy.

You probably heard about Faried kicking a hole in the locker room wall? I feel like I understand that. That's the dejection of incredible frustration related to his injury. In college, I was taught about how stroke victims get counseling to deal with the incredible anguish and frustration that comes with new limitations, and having to think about things you never had to think about before.

Faried has never had to think about beating people to loose balls. That just came naturally. But not now.

Defensive mistakes

The difference between how the Bulls have adjusted to injuries and the Nuggets is stark. Every Bull knows where to go at all times on defense, no matter who's in the game. They have been perfecting that for years. The Nuggets often seem not to know where to go.

In particular, Denver seems to be reacting to the passed ball, instead of anticipating where the play will be and heading there earlier. When in doubt, they should be running toward Curry. He's the best shooter in the world!

Warriors getting the most out of players

You could make the case halfway through this season that, on offense at least, Draymond Green was really not an NBA-quality player. He is literally playing for his basketball life.

And it looks like it. He is locked in to the idea of stopping the Nuggets at the point of attack. He's not just saying to himself that they're not going to score. He's saying they're not even going to get close. He is not the fastest guy on the floor, but he's so aggressive nobody can do anything against him anyway. Andre Miller scored a game winner against him, and it's almost like ever since then Draymond has said, "OK, that's not happening again."

Andrew Bogut has been a huge, huge, huge story. His energy and defensive presence have defined the interior play for the entire series. And on offense, well, in Game 4 he managed to score six field goals in 26 minutes. The Nuggets' big men, Koufos and McGee, managed just one bucket between them in more than 28 minutes.

Jarrett Jack's quickness makes a big difference, too. Denver is steering driving players toward the help. But Jack is so fast that he's just blowing right by them at full speed -- they're doing nothing to slow him down -- and then he loves to shoot a floater before the help can bother him. Against a lot of players, it's a good defensive approach to encourage the floater. But Jack loves it.

In his book "Relentless," legendary NBA trainer Tim Grover talks about what motivates his superstar clients Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade. Then he talks about different character types, the highest of which, in his judgment, is what he calls a "cleaner." Jordan, Bryant and Wade are, Grover says, all cleaners.

What about LeBron James, whom Grover does not train? Grover met James when the then high-schooler hanging around Grover's Chicago gym during Michael Jordan's comeback pickup games.

James is not a cleaner, says Grover -- who also primarily credits Wade with the Heat's 2012 title. James has a chance to become a cleaner, however, says Grover, right now in these playoffs.

A who's who of NBA players are on the shelf. A team made of Russell Westbrook, Derrick Rose, Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, Rajon Rondo, Danny Granger, David Lee, Danilo Gallinari, Amare Stoudemire, and Lou Williams would contend. Instead all those players and more are out for all or most of the playoffs.

Asking what caused all those injuries takes you on a bit of wild goose chase. There have always been injuries in all sports; I doubt we'll ever know if these are connected in some way or just a random and unlucky collection of events.

But there is a better question with more of an answer: Are there things we can do to reduce the likelihood of injuries in the future? That's what Working Bodies is all about. And that's where the research is not crystal clear, but has been getting incredibly busy.

Violent moments

Russell Westbrook was injured on a play where Patrick Beverley went all out to help his team win -- even if it was both a long shot to work, and obviously creating one of the highest risk moments of Westbrook's night.

In the aftermath many have talked about Beverley's intent -- as if it's a important to know if he wanted to injure Westbrook or not. I say let's skip that debate. We'll never know his intent, and who cares anyway. Let's talk risk. Risk we know. All by himself Beverley created a moment that in retrospect is costing Westbrook, the Thunder and NBA fans a bunch of performances that were dear to all of them.

If I roll a bowling ball down the corridor of my office building, I may well hurt somebody. I might do it only with the most fun of intentions. But if you manage the building ... who cares? What matters is I don't do it again. What matters is I value my co-workers safety a little more.

The NBA would like Beverley to place a little higher value on Westbrook's safety. Forget what's dirty or not, or unknowable things like who's thinking evil thoughts. What's likely to cause injuries? Let's reduce that. Let's get players thinking, just a little more, about making sure they don't end each other's seasons. That's where plays like Beverley's, as well as blows to the head, and any plays that risk players hitting their heads on the court -- all things we now know are more dangerous than we ever thought -- ought to be the kinds of things the rules and the referees aggressively discourage.

Players going all-out to help their teams win will always have their supporters. It's a macho world. You won't get NBA legends lining up to support the NBA on this kind of change. That's fine. But if you're in David Stern's office, it's a problem that a player could make a dangerous decision like that, reckless enough to possibly end the season of the most resilient player in NBA history, and not even be called for a common foul, let alone a flagrant or an ejection.

These violent high-risk moments could be much more scarce. Many are intentional, which means they're not inevitable or part of the game, and would be easy to stop if people wanted to. Much of the time playing with little care about injuring others helps your team. If you ran the league, wouldn't you have to fix that?

A marathon

There's another lingering question for the league to consider: Are player spending too much time exhausted, and does that put them at excessive risk to get injured?

A little detour into running: If you train to run 400 meters -- that's one lap of the track -- training will include some 100-meter sprints and some mile-or-longer runs. Training works like that, more or less. You attack from all angles. Train for a five kilometer (3.1 mile) race and you can bet you'll do some sprints, as well as some runs are much longer than 3.1 miles.

But then there's the marathon. It's 26.2 miles. And if you train for a marathon, almost no matter what training regimen you use, you'll never be asked to run more than 20 miles.

 

Pretty weird, huh? You want to do five miles fast as you can, you'll sometimes run ten. You want to do ten miles fast as you can, and training involves regular runs of 12 or 15.

Race 26.2, though, and even at elite levels, chances are race day will take you further than any other day of the year. Almost all the experts agree on this.

And the reasoning is simple: Get a lot of people running 25 miles, and you'll get a lot of people injured. It just happens that way. There's some kind of real limit around 20 miles. Push past that, and maybe some outliers can handle it, but for the broad population it's just courting trouble.

Marathoners have known about this for decades and have long been skipping the monster training runs.

Meanwhile, it's looking like the 82-game NBA regular season might work like one monster training run.

Exhaustion does weird stuff

From a 2010 Brad Stenger article published by the Medill School of Journalism:

Gregory Dupont from the University of Lille's Laboratory of Human Movement Studies in France monitored injuries during the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 UEFA Champions League seasons. He found the injury rate was six times higher when players played two matches per week versus one match per week. He published the study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine last April.

During the regular season NBA teams play 2-4 games per week and travel longer distances than a typical European soccer team.

Researchers have been putting little heart rate and motion sensors on soccer players in Europe. What they've been finding is something not unlike what marathon training regimens have long known: Get somebody exhausted, and their likelihood of injury skyrockets, even for the kinds of injuries you might think have nothing to do with fatigue.

When you're fresh, your soft tissue has a certain elasticity. Your muscles and tendons can cope with a normal amount of upset, like say, another player bashing into you while you're trying to call a timeout. Also, your own ability to be balanced and coordinated -- now we're talking nervous system stuff -- is good when you're in your comfort zone. On top of all that, when you're training a comfortable amount, it's a cinch to maintain good form.

Get yourself good and worn out, though, and a lot of those systems that keep you safe go away. I started training for marathons a few years ago, and the first time I ran 18 miles, I felt great most of the time, but with about two miles left things changed. I started to feel mighty brittle, like if somebody were to push me ever-so-gently from the side I would simply topple over. Not to mention I was bleary-eyed, imbalanced, with ragged form, and making poor decisions. Where you used to have these living, breathing, expanding, contracting things called muscles it feels like you now have old rope.

It's more than a little scary, in that state, to encounter the tiniest obstacles. A bumpy sidewalk, a twig in the street, a car that doesn't give you much room ... any and all can put you in peril. You have little ability to adjust to life's little challenges.

Research suggests you're an off-the-charts injury risk at that moment. And it feels like it.

In soccer they've been finding that same stuff. Exhausted players evidently lack normal range of motion, balance and coordination. An impact, fall or collision that might not injure a rested person might injure someone who has been going hard every day for months. In soccer, experts working with this theory have, amazingly, predicted injuries before they happen. Basically, they can look at who's running ragged out there, who's deep in the red zone of exhaustion. And then they have often been correct -- even though the injury ends up coming on a fluky-seeming play.

Word is spreading

Increasingly, NBA teams are tuning into the perils of exhaustion. One of those soccer experts who brags about predicting injuries is Italian Jean-Pierre Meerseman, who spoke at the Global Sports Management Summit in May in San Francisco. Many NBA bigwigs were in the audience, and they report he blew their minds with tales of knowing who'd be injured before the injury happened.

One NBA front office guy who tracks the work of Meerseman and others says he's increasingly coming to the view that the best approach for stars is to spend as much time as possible with their feet up. He's thinking the winning approach, given the rigorous schedule, might be to forego everything else, as in every practice all season, as well as every minute of play that wasn't essential.

A company called Apollo MIS, which recently merged with STATS, does some of that European-soccer style exhaustion tracking, and has some NBA clients. One of their most enthusiastic is the Spurs ... the very team which leads the league every year in intentionally sitting stars. A game when the schedule has been harsh on them? Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker sit. Ditto for any fourth quarter when the game isn't close. Even as some claim they've found the fountain of youth for Duncan and the like, they've even gotten in trouble with the league for it.

But the way the data is shaping up, it seems likely the league is going to face some tough choices: Change the schedule in a profound way to allow for meaningful rest and real in-season training. Or stare down the barrel of a growing body of evidence suggesting one of the things causing NBA injuries are decisions made by the NBA.