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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.

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.

As the visualization above shows, the NBA hasn’t always had a problem producing 20-point, 10-rebound seasons. But this season, for the first time in since rebounds became an official statistic (1950-51), we did not see a player average at least 20 points and 10 rebounds per game.

What are some possible reasons for this year’s unprecedented lack of any? We explore some possibilities:

Theory 1: A slower pace makes dominating scorers more scarce

The average NBA game is slower than it used to be decades ago.

This is a big point and can’t be understated. There just aren’t as many rebounds available because there are fewer shots. Most games in the 70s and 80s often saw over 100 possessions per game compared to the mid-to-high 90s we see now.

It is a statistically significant drop with a lot of reasons behind it. But the drop of about 15 percent will move a 23-point scorer right under 20 PPG. And a 11-rebound per game guy will drop below double digits too.

It may not be glamorous, but it’s the truth.

How does this affect our 20-10 study?

This season, 11 players averaged 20 points per game. Just 10 years ago, that number more than doubled with 26 (including Michael Jordan just making the cut in his final season). Go back another decade to that ‘92-93 season and there were 19 who hit the mark and another who finished at 19.9 (Nick Anderson).

Rewind another decade to ‘82-83 and a whopping 25 players averaged at least 20 PPG, with another four finishing a half point shy of joining them.

If just getting to 20 points per game is this much tougher, the likelihood of simultaneously getting 10 boards a game is way less probable.

Theory 2: Big men are not primary scorers anymore

Of the 289 different instances in which a player has recorded a 20-10 season in our sample, 211 have been 6’9” or taller. That’s a shade over 73 percent of the time. In the 1992-93 season when an all-time highwater mark of 10 players averaged 20-10 seasons, six of the top 10 scorers in the NBA were 6’9” or taller (Karl Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Shaquille O’Neal and Derrick Coleman). This season only two of the top 10 scorers were that tall (Kevin Durant and LaMarcus Aldridge).

Theory 3: The modern NBA features stars joining forces

With his size and athleticism, Dwight Howard should be a shoo-in for 10 rebounds per game. But he’s only averaging about 17 points per game this season, compared to an average of 20.6 in his previous five seasons. Now playing with Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol takes shots away from Howard (10.6 FGA/game this season after averaging 13.4 in his previous two seasons in Orlando) this season and thus, he scores less.

After posting consecutive 20-10 seasons before joining the Heat, Chris Bosh has not averaged those marks in three seasons since joining the Miami Heat. With LeBron James’ rebounding numbers increasing in each season on South Beach (7.5 then 7.9 before a career-high 8.0 this season), it appears that he will not get enough chances to be a 20-10 guy again so long as he plays in this current version of the Heat.

The perfect example of this is Kevin Garnett, a nine-time 20-10 guy who essentially ushered in the era of stars joining forces to win titles when he joined Paul Pierce and Ray Allen on the Boston Celtics in ‘07-08. Garnett recorded nine consecutive 20-10 seasons in Minnesota. In six seasons as a Celtic, he hasn’t reached either the 20-point or 10-rebound plateau in any single season.

Bottom line: the star system reduces individual numbers, making the likelihood of 20-10 seasons increasingly less likely.

Theory 4: Injuries

This could just be a fluke situation. In previous seasons, some of our 20-10 regulars were Kevin Love and Howard. Both of those players had to either play through injuries or in the case of Love, be shelved for most of the season.

Theory 5: Rules changes

Another factor could be the confluence of some new rules to increase scoring overall. In 2004, new hand-checking rules went into effect in an attempt to increase scoring. In turn, the league became more guard-orientated where ball-hungry guards dominated possessions. It put more scoring responsibility into the hands of ball-handlers, who are not usually strong rebounders. Gone were the days of Wilt, Russell and Jabbar when offenses were run through a big.

What do you think? Which theory holds the most water? Got any others?

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.

The Thunder have announced that Russell Westbrook will undergo surgery to repair a torn meniscus after an injury in the second quarter of Game 2. At this time it's not known how long he'll be out.

How will the Thunder be different without Westbrook, who has literally never missed a game? ESPN Insider David Thorpe has watched the Thunder closely all year and offers the following thoughts:

1. Especially tough for this offense to adjust
The worst thing about this is that they have built a wheel around two spokes: Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. This is not Miami or San Antonio, or Utah with its flex offense of recent years. The Thunder offense is a series of isolations for the two main guys, with other actions sprinkled in here or there. That makes this, seemingly, as good a challenge as you can have. They have never worked on scoring without Westbrook because they have never had to.

Gregg Popovich takes long minutes of the regular season to mix in bench guys to prep for whatever might happen. The Thunder could have done that. They had all season to prepare the bench for these kinds of things. They didn't do that. They were never forced to do that, and they never chose to do that.

2. Reggie Jackson's opportunity
Reggie Jackson is a dynamic one-on-one scorer. He'll get the lion's share of the minutes that would have gone to Westbrook. He's not the same player. He plays much more below the rim, but for an occasional dunk. But he can get a lot of good things done.

What he doesn't have is Westbrook's spirit or fight. That's something the team will really miss.

Westbrook's demeanor is so incredibly valuable. At times he is the worst decision-maker in the NBA. It's like World B. Free sometimes. But he makes up for that with incredible attitude, drive and commitment. The Thunder aren't going to have that from the point guard position.

3. Not about the defense
Westbrook is an athletic playmaker on defense. He's not a great defensive player, but he contributes on a lot of plays.

4. Kevin Martin can do more
Kevin Martin has been a dynamic scorer in the past. Even this year, when much less has been asked of him, he has formed one of the NBA's most efficient duos with Nick Collison. They are literally one of the most effective combinations of players in the NBA. Martin can certainly handle more of the scoring load against the Rockets, who are one of the worst defensive teams in the playoffs.

5. Rockets not the problem
Without Westbrook the Rockets are certainly good enough to win two out of five against the Rockets. It's going to get more difficult after that against the Grizzlies or Clippers. But on the Rockets only Omer Asik is a problem. Nobody else on the Rockets causes a lot of problems when the Thunder are trying to score.

6. OK without Westbrook in short stints
There are some lineups without Westbrook that did well this season. (A search of NBA.com/stats shows, for instance, that Martin, Jackson, Derek Fisher, Kevin Durant and Nick Collison have been effective.) This team is better built than, say the Bulls, to win without their point guard in the postseason. The Bulls lost their best player, but the Thunder lost their second-best player, and have several more talented players left.

Kevin Durant it one of the best scorers in the history of the world. Kevin Martin is among the highest ranked in the league in points per possession and points per touch. Jackson has good numbers too. This is not like subbing in C.J. Watson.

7. Whole bunch of Durant?
It may be that Kevin Durant shoots a million times without Westbrook on the court. This will be a gigantic test of Scott Brooks. Tom Thibodeau certainly responded to Rose's absence by getting his guys to play very hard and together. That's the challenge for Scott.

How will the team take this news? I don't think they'll take it lightly.

The media will bring up the Harden trade again and again. That's a challenge to the players on the roster now.

Let me tell you nobody is rejoicing over there. But with the quality of players on that roster, guys like Serge Ibaka, Nick Collison, Kevin Martin and Reggie Jackson are thinking "I know I can step up and do more."

They're not going to be sleepwalking. I think they'll be ready and will win Game 3. The question is how they adjust to the idea over time, in Game 4 or Game 5. Are they thinking they need to hold on while Westbrook is gone for a while, or are they thinking he's gone for good? The latter idea is a much harder one to adjust to.

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

Let's introduce this year's contestants:

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

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

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

The Rockets had a shot against the banged up Spurs. That's the thinking.

But there's no worse West draw than opening on the road in Loud City.

To avoid that all the Rockets merely had to muster one more win. It could have been in Wednesday's overtime loss to the Lakers, Monday's loss to the Suns or last Friday's loss to the Grizzlies. For that matter there have also been close losses to the Suns (again), Mavericks, Bucks and Wizards in recent weeks. A good showing in any of those, and the Rockets would be perched much more happily in the seventh seed.

What galls Rockets blogger Rahat Huq of Red94 is that it has all been so predictable. Of course the Rockets would crumble late against the Lakers.

NBA.com's advanced stats tool says that this season in the final minute of games within five points, the Rockets shoot worse than 30 percent from the floor -- despite having one of the league's best offenses generally.

Close games have been this team's kryptonite, Huq says, for a very specific reason:

The Rockets choking in the clutch is nothing new. In fact, I wrote about it just the other day. Their league-leading offense shrinks to one of the worst in basketball in late-game situations. So this is a problem you saw coming. Why it became so tough to stomach was because of the stakes and the stage, and a duration which felt like an eternity.

As is pretty much the case anytime the Rockets are involved in a close game in the fourth quarter, the team completely abandoned its pick and roll offense, resorting to the dreaded “hero-ball spread.” For those who have been living in a cave this is a set where, essentially, James Harden holds the ball at the top of the key while the other four players spread out of the way. Harden then dribbles the ball for about 20 seconds and chucks up some variation of a contested jumper, whether it be from straightaway 3 or of the stepback variety within 2-point range.

Hero Ball, or isolating your best player with the ball and letting him create for himself, is one of those things that looks dumber with time. Not long ago there was no way to know if it was the best approach or not. Increasingly, though, the evidence is making clear it's far better to attack the defense at its weakest. (Hero Ball does the opposite.)

So, why are the Rockets, such a smart team, using this approach?

Huq would like to find out:

When a team gets blown out, its on the players. When they lose close games, especially in the exact same manner every time, that’s on the coaching. Whether ISOball is the call from the bench, or Harden is going off cue is a subject for later debate, but there is simply no justification for some of the completely unimaginative plays the Rockets have run out of timeouts.

Throw a wrinkle in here and there. Instead of four guys watching Harden, how about three guys watching Harden while one guy bends over to tie his shoes! I don’t know … do something to vary it. There is literally no excuse for the game to end last night, on a critical possession, with Jeremy Lin chucking a desperation 3-pointer after Harden dribbled away 20 seconds from the shot clock. None.

"But what did he do?" I can hear you thinking. "Any coach can roll the ball out for those three guys and earn a bunch of wins, right?"

I could build a case that simply keeping the Heat doing what they do for this long merits serious consideration for Erik Spoelstra as coach of the year:

• Keeping calm and carrying on through incredible highs (a title, second-longest winning streak in NBA history) and lows (assembling one of the league's most notorious superteams and then not winning it all, not to mention the biggest horse pill of invective and doubt in NBA history).
• Building and maintaining relationships with a prickly array of powerbrokers -- any one of whom could undermine him -- from Pat Riley and Micky Arison to LeBron James and Dwyane Wade.
• Improving a great team.

To be honest, I knew all that, and had no urge to campaign for Spoelstra. But then I read this from Tom Haberstroh, about the Heat's short-handed victory over the Spurs on Sunday:

When Popovich called a full timeout with 32 seconds left with the Spurs ahead by one point and with possession, it gave Spoelstra an opportunity to lay out his game plan for the rest of the game. Spoelstra, who once helped build Pat Riley and former Heat coach Stan Van Gundy an advanced stats database, has seen the numbers: taking timeouts in late-game situations hurts a team's ability to score. Spoelstra had two timeouts to burn, but he told the team to save them.

"We talked about it during the (Spurs') timeout," Spoelstra said. "If we forced a miss, we'd go for it."

Sure enough, Duncan ended up missing his ensuing shot and Ray Allen found Bosh for the go-ahead trey after reaching a dead end in the left corner.

"It was probably a better look than anything we could've diagrammed," Spoelstra said.

This is big.

To understand how big, you have to understand how impossibly tough it is for coaches to come around to the idea that the best thing for their team might be ... less coaching.

By the time you have put in the insane hours that it takes to become an NBA head coach, often generally at the expense of a quality family life or anything else that matters much, you have to really be attached to something.

For many coaches, the thing they're attached to is the idea of calling the shots. Which is most fun and momentous in late-game timeouts. Watch any sports movie ... that's when coaches coach. Those are the moments that make all those sacrifices worth it.

On top of that, NBA coaches are a group of men who are generally allergic to the idea of "letting things run their course." Other than a super-empowered, can't-be-fired Phil Jackson here or there, taking the hands off the controls is not a brand of wisdom that resonates in this pack of alpha dogs. These are the high priests of effort and determination and focus and doing things. Unless you're extremely driven and among the most freaky of control freaks, you're unlikely to make it to the top of the coaching pile while believing in the power of not doing things.

The first ever HoopIdea was about speeding up crunch time. While digging into all those late-game shenanigans, I got the idea that, while coaches insist late-game timeouts are amazingly helpful to their teams -- it's a central tenet of how we see the game -- perhaps that was simply never true.

And sure enough, Beckley Mason dug in and found strong and consistent evidence of precisely that. If timeouts are helping anything, it's the defense, not the offense. If your team has the ball and you call a timeout, you're coming out of that break less likely to score than if you had never called it.

It was a piece of news I discussed with several coaches, and by and large they simply didn't want to hear it, for reasons that I understand. Many predicted doom for any team that skips those opportunities for coaches to pass wisdom to players. Nobody wants to believe the team gets better when they do less. But sometimes it's true, even for the men in charge.

Spoelstra evidently did something amazing. He saw the evidence, and in a big game against the most respected in the business in Gregg Popovich, he adjusted to it. And it worked.

Spoelstra's not the first coach to forego a timeout, nor will he be the last. Nor does one incident of anything prove much. Plenty of coaches have done plenty of masterful things.

But you know what Spoelstra did? Everything he could. Everything possible to be as smart as possible in helping his team win, even when that meant stepping out of the center. People who keep doing everything they can to get better at something tend to get really good.

Spoelstra's not just coaching the team with the best record in basketball. He's also doing so while adjusting to whatever it is that can make his team better, even if, once in a while, that means less of him. Of all plays, that's the toughest for most coaches to draw up.

Before the game, Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau predicted a "cage match."

Physicality, in other words, would be Chicago's solution to Miami's big, strong and super-quick LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, who tend to make layup after layup. Good, solid defense doesn't cut it against those two. The recipe? When they get a step on their defenders, when layups and dunks look likely ... tackle them, hit them, bring them down out of the sky.

It started a few minutes into the game, when an eager Kirk Hinrich, despite having perfect defensive position, crashed into an open-court James rather than attempt to strip the ball, draw the charge or contest at the rim. Minutes later, Hinrich was directly in James' path, in position to draw a charge or try to poke the ball away. His move? A bear hug that ended with his own head whacking the floor hard.

Moments later, James was zeroing in on a reverse layup or dunk, and the Bulls' Taj Gibson -- in no position to touch the ball -- swung hard and connected with his hand directly to James' head. Instead of dunking, James ended up on the floor, checking his teeth. And that was just the first quarter.

Why, again, is this fun to watch?

Although the Heat have sent the league video of hard fouls on James and Wade, with particular emphasis on hits to the head, players like James seldom admit such things affect them -- even as a growing body of data suggests the best players put off driving when they don't feel they have to.

Two weeks ago James denied hard fouls affected his thinking, saying after a win in Philadelphia: "I'm a football player. I'm good. I can't worry about what may happen. I live in the moment. I'm an attack guy. I'm an attack player. I don't really make my mark on the perimeter."

But after the loss to the Bulls, James was more frank, telling ESPN.com's Michael Wallace: "A lot of my fouls are not basketball plays. First of all, Kirk Hinrich in the first quarter basically grabbed me with two hands and brought me to the ground. The last one, Taj Gibson was able to collar me around my shoulder and bring me to the ground. Those are not defensive ... those are not basketball plays."

In an era when the NBA is watching closely to reduce concussions and head injuries, James was obviously hit hard in the head by Gibson twice, and also endured an open-court collaring that was initially ruled a flagrant. James' head also was struck once by a driving Nate Robinson, and for good measure, again as a parting gift from a Bulls fan as James made his way, after the loss, to the locker room. Wade also was sent sprawling to the floor spectacularly and regularly.

On ESPN, Bill Simmons called Wednesday night's Bulls win over the Heat the most important regular-season game since the 1990s. The winning strategy was from the 1990s, too. It's called Tackle Basketball.

It's not an accident. It's a strategy that works because of a loophole in the NBA's rules.

Stu Jackson is the NBA vice president of basketball operations, the man responsible for keeping those rules dialed in correctly. He's frank that he hates how the famously rough Knicks played back in the day, and touts rule changes as having made the game much more pleasing, and about artistry. Jackson says "that what keeps us up at night" in his department is the fear that the game would return to the artless way it was played in the 1990s.

I wonder how Jackson and crew slept Wednesday night.

This is not about babying James or anybody else. This is about the league encouraging the best possible version of the game, the one that works best for players and fans. Would you rather see James dunk or get hit in the head? Would you rather see Hinrich meet James in the air or in a bear hug?

This is ultimately about answering this question: What is basketball, and is tackling part of it?

The walls of my office are covered in hoops books. Some are of the “how to play” variety. I just took a stack of them -- by everyone from Walt Frazier to John Wooden -- over to a comfortable seat and spent an hour reading up on how the experts say good defense ought to be played.

They talk about footwork and brains. They talk about keeping your torso between your man and the basket, staying on the balls of your feet, knees bent, hands up and mind alert. They talk about staying on the ground for fakes and talking to teammates. They also talk about many layers of thought: tracking both the ball and your man, memorizing the tendencies of every player on the court, knowing who likes to go left, who telegraphs passes, who never passes, whom you should never leave open.

It’s the art and science of basketball, in a shape-shifting formula of movement, work ethic, preparation, smarts, muscle and know-how, all working toward the common goal: making sure you don’t get beat.

But in the NBA in 2013, even if you do get beat ... defenses have one move left, and it’s not described in books.

The move goes like this: That guy with the ball? Clobber him. The harder the better.

It happens in every game, every night.

We tell ourselves fouls are mistakes, a surplus of effort or grit from players going a bit too hard trying to play the kind of defense described in those books. And some fouls are like that.

Other times it’s a lot less nuanced. Other times it has nothing to do with basketball. Instead, it’s the opposite of sportsmanship.

Many of the players doing this are among the nicest in sports. They are neither imbalanced, deranged nor in need of help.

So why would generally even-keeled men endanger their colleagues by making what should be the game’s prettiest plays -- flashy finishes at the rim -- into the ugly kind of basketball that is proven to turn off casual fans?

They’re doing it because it works. The fact of the matter is that, because of a flaw in the NBA rulebook that’s only truly becoming clear, it’s almost always better for NBA teams to foul really hard than give up a layup or dunk. The cost of the hard foul is a pittance compared to the benefits. They don't just stop fantastic baskets, they also make potent scorers think twice about driving at all. Everyone on the court knows a couple of free throws is a bargain for all that.

That’s why these days very hard foulers are getting high-fives from teammates and pats on the backs from coaches; they are helping their team win on a technicality.

And it’s going to keep happening until the league does something about it.

Danny Ainge does things unconventionally -- and they often work out.

That's always fun.

But how does the Celtics' front office really work? It's hard to say, because it's a small team, and generally a tight-lipped one. (It's tough to find more a more politic panelist at MIT Sloan than the Celtics' assistant GM Mike Zarren.)

Writing for SBNation, Paul Flannery found a way into Boston's thinking, with a fantastic profile of Ryan McDonough, 33-year-old Boston assistant GM. McDonough's not exactly a stat geek, nor is he simply a scout. He's all that and more.

One of Boston's biggest accomplishments was finding a player as good as Avery Bradley in the middle of the first round -- but that took a lot more than scouting. It was also a case of relationship building, teaching and perseverance. Flannery writes:

The Celtics sent Bradley to their D-League affiliate in Maine where Austin Ainge was coaching. McDonough went with him after consulting with Doc Rivers and the coaching staff.

"(McDonough) knows the game and what he does, I think more than a lot of guys, he actually listens," says Rivers. "He checked with us. I gave him specific things. He went to our coaches. A lot of guys won’t do that. They have their own game plan for guys. I think that helped Avery in a big way."

After games, McDonough and Austin Ainge would sit down with Bradley and watch video of all his plays.

McDonough monitored his ankle treatment and his workouts.

"He’s a pretty bright kid," McDonough says. "Very observant. He’s very receptive, a quick learner. It’s rewarding when you work with somebody and see him come so quickly so fast, to now where in my estimation he’s the best perimeter defender in the league, a year after he was down in the D-League."

Now ensconced as an NBA starter, Bradley smiles at the memory.

"He was the one who was always there," Bradley says. "He would literally make notes of things that I need to work on. He helped me out so much. He took it seriously and I appreciate him for that. He’s been watching me play since I was 17 years old, which is cool."

You see that? He built a bridge between the NBA head coach, the D-League coaching staff, the medical staff and the player. It's not luck Bradley mastered the skills the Celtics could most use.

McDonough fits the profile of some of the best minds in NBA front offices: He didn't get his job by being a big-name player or a retired coach. In the mold of Sam Presti, Dave Griffin, Rob Hennigan and many others, he made his mark by sneaking in the side door (in this case by approaching Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck in a sports bar) and working incredibly hard, making contributions with undeniable value.

James Harden had just hit one of the prettier late-game shots of the season -- it turned out to be a game winner -- and the ball was in the Spurs' hands to see if they could match it.

Harden had taken a handoff from Omer Asik at the 3-point line. Asik threw a hip into Harden's man, Kawhi Leonard, leaving Harden to sprint toward the basket with only Tim Duncan between him and the paint. In the middle of 10 men, the game had become about two.

Or three. Because as Harden was running for the paint ... Asik was too. And fast. Duncan simply couldn't leave Houston's 7-footer all alone under the hoop with five seconds left, ready to turn a miss, or even a pass, into a game-winning dunk. Even as Harden rose to fire, Duncan fell back to put a body on Asik, putting his faith in a gaining Leonard to bother the shot.

Harden got the bucket, the highlight, and ... if the Rockets could muster 4.5 seconds of great defense, a rare win over the Spurs and a much-needed ounce of protection near the bottom of the West playoff standings.

The Spurs called timeout, and commentators did all they could -- they must make educated guesses about what's coming next. The local Houston team couldn't ignore one of the game's essential facts, namely that in the last six minutes the fourth, the Spurs' scoring had been as follows:

• Tony Parker free throw.
• Tony Parker free throw.
• Tony Parker bucket.
• Tony Parker free throw.
• Tony Parker free throw.
• Tony Parker bucket.
• Tony Parker free throw.
• Tony Parker free throw.

It's not like the Frenchman was hogging the ball, either. Over that span Leonard had missed a 3, Stephen Jackson a 2. Duncan and Danny Green each had shots blocked, and Duncan had another miss to boot.

"That's the guy," said Rockets commentator Clyde Drexler of Parker, as the Spurs took the huddle.

Drexler had just finished talking about stars like Harden, saying, "They come up with tough shots at the right time."

Parker was the guy. It was obvious.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich drew up his play. Under Pop, the Spurs have long been not just one of the winningest teams in basketball, but in all of sports -- even though Popovich often does unconventional things.

Sure enough, Parker didn't touch the ball. Instead Duncan, who had missed his last three shots and last scored way back in the third quarter, caught the inbound pass.

Duncan missed. The Rockets won.

The previous Spurs possession had, somehow, gone even worse. Up one with seconds left in the game, the Spurs had worked the ball all over the place to find Leonard for a corner 3, of all things. This was a head-scratcher, to conventional thinking: Two points would have nearly guaranteed victory, and Leonard's only points of the second half had been roughly an hour earlier in real time, mere seconds after halftime.

This baby was a line drive that beat up the side of the backboard, and the Spurs' hopes.

Who knows what Popovich was thinking?

In fact, it's not that hard to know. It's the same thing every play, more or less. He's looking for shots that have proved to be efficient over the long haul. With emphasis on the long haul, as opposed to over the last few minutes of play.

Pop explains this again and again, but people tend not to be curious. It does sound more than a little cardboard.

Usually that means open shots. In practical terms, calling a play for an uncontested shot (from the guy the defense chose to leave open) is the opposite of calling the play most coaches would seek, for big-name players like Harden or Parker, who are never left open.

Drexler, and almost everyone who watches or plays basketball, assigns huge value to two things:

• Who is shooting.
• How they have been shooting in the last few minutes.

If Popovich cares about either, they're way down on his list.

Wide-open Leonard in the corner? In terms of points-per-possession it's almost as valuable a shot as the Spurs have in their arsenal. The Spurs have won games like that.

Duncan at the free throw line? If you must have a covered shot -- and in 4.5 seconds it's tough to find an open man -- this has been reliable for more than a decade.

Even shooting 3s while up one in close games is proven strategy, in a rigorous analysis of many seasons' worth of data.

The Spurs lost this one, and it might be tempting to use it as evidence that Pop's approach has holes.

But I'm reminded of something a very smart stat geek told me once: The more they dig into the data, the more they find that Popovich does almost everything the right way. The two-for-one, the substitutions, the play calling, his tactical errors are few and far between, which is a big part of why Spurs wins can be greeted with shrugs -- it's a team that operates with machine-like efficiency. That efficiency isn't despite unconventional play calls, though. It's because of them, which isn't really food for thought in San Antonio, but it might be for 29 other teams.

Why is Popovich so rare in getting these things so right?

• The Thunder's schedule is about to take a turn for the easy, and all this will be forgotten. But they did just lose to the Nuggets and Grizzlies, which counts as worrisome for a team that's used to nothing but sunny news. Meanwhile, there has been some eye-opening ball-hoggery from Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. Against the Nuggets, the star duo combined for 44 field goal attempts and just 11 assists. Against the Grizzlies, it was 53 shots to a piddly six assists. Remember, their offense has long been at its best when the other players on the roster shoot more. Dean Oliver and Alok Pattani know this. I know this. I assume Scott Brooks know this. But until Durant and Westbrook know that victories are on the fingertips of open Serge Ibakas and Kevin Martins ... that offense won't be all it can be.
• Chris Paul becomes the NBA's first real-deal superstar to be called for a flop, after a whole mess of people on Twitter, and Beckley Mason on TrueHoop, insist on it.
• Thinking about LeBron James, Michael Jordan, minutes and exhaustion. A key difference I'd point out: The NBA has changed such that guys who play very long minutes don't win titles like they did in Jordan's day. Rest appears to be more valuable now than it once was, likely because defenses have become more active.
• Kate Fagan making wonderful points: "So, to recap: Women's basketball is maligned for not being as athletic as the men's game, but as women become more athletic, these players are often labeled unfeminine, and therefore unwatchable. Feel free to pause here and scratch your head."
• The West's top teams keep losing to the Nuggets.
• Is Portland locked into mediocrity?
• Mark Cuban sure does make the NBA more fun and interesting. There's no arguing that.
• Travis Wimberly of The Two Man Game talking Mavericks: "Here, I’m lodging a grievance with one thing in particular: the ability to consistently get the ball to the Mavs’ best scorers. As noted above, Dirk Nowitzki finished the week on an incredible shooting tear, yet had very few opportunities to actually put up shots. ... A large part of OJ Mayo’s struggles this year have stemmed from the Mavs’ need for him to handle the ball excessively, which again draws back to the same underlying problem. If the Mavs had point guards with credible fundamentals, they could get Mayo the ball at the appropriate times (as with Dirk) and allow him to focus exclusively on scoring. And you could probably say the same of several other Mavs scorers. Anybody miss Jason Kidd? Just kidding — I already know you do."
• CBS News asked economist David Berri about paying college athletes. His response includes this: "Every student that we hire to do things on campus we pay. I have a grader. She grades my exams for me. We pay her. We pay her enough so that she will not go work at Arby’s. That is what you do. In a market economy when people do things for you and they generate revenue for you, you pay them. Everybody does this. Everybody who is arguing the players should not be paid, have a job where they are being paid by somebody else. And if you told those people ‘We have a rule that says cannot get paid. Those are the rules.’, they would sue. That is not a rule that would stand up in court."

The Celtics were on the verge of collapse when the Heat came to town on Jan. 27. It wasn't merely the frustrating six-game losing streak, it was also the rumor: As the game progressed, whispers bounced around TD Garden that All-Star point guard Rajon Rondo, who was sitting out, had torn his ACL.

The Celtics hung tough with the defending champions that afternoon. The defensive struggle came down to the closing seconds of double overtime with the Heat trailing by one. With the shot clock winding down, LeBron James pulled up for a midrange jumper.

By the time James’ shot had been released, Paul Pierce had already abandoned his man, Shane Battier, at the 3-point line and headed to the paint to set up shop.

Four bodies crowded the missed shot. But only one player, Pierce, came away with the rock. It was Pierce’s 13th rebound of the day. The Celtics escaped with a 100-98 win, a flicker of title hopes still alive, if barely.

Although not what he’s most famous for, rebounds like that have always been typical of Pierce -- and more now than ever. The underlying truth about The Truth is that he’s always been a good rebounder, averaging 5.9 rebounds per game over the course of his career, an impressive number for any small forward.

“I felt like in every big game you can count on him for 10 rebounds, no matter who you are playing, or their size,” former Celtics assistant coach and current Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau said of Pierce. “He’s never been afraid to stick his nose in and he’ll scrap with everybody.”

Despite reliable output over the past 15 seasons, a decline on the glass would be expected at this juncture of any player’s career. Scrapping for boards is a brutal assignment for any player, let alone a 6-foot-7 35-year-old, playing through a pinched nerve in his neck, who was called “unathletic” even before logging almost 45,000 NBA minutes.

And yet this is the season Pierce is posting the best rebounding numbers of his career, amazingly grabbing a higher percentage of his team’s defensive rebounds than bigger, stronger, quicker and younger players like Marc Gasol, Nikola Pekovic, Roy Hibbert, JaVale McGee, Pau Gasol, David West and Carmelo Anthony.

Pierce has grabbed more rebounds per 36 minutes played this season (6.8) than any other season in his entire career, a startling feat that seems to defy the laws of NBA aging.

So what’s been the difference this season for Pierce? It’s simple really: This season, it's what the C's need.

“We talked about it,” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said. “Because of our size and at times we’ve been going small, he’s had to be a big rebounder. I think at his size, I don’t think there’s a better rebounder.”

Even at the start of the season, Rivers had been relying on Pierce to rebound. The burden intensified when two key Boston rebounders, Rondo and Jared Sullinger, were lost to injuries, and the Celtics' rebounding situation suddenly became dire. Outside of Kevin Garnett, the Celtics’ roster is loaded with poor rebounders. Who would grab the key misses?

The answer, increasingly, has been Pierce.

Over the 22 games since Rondo went down, Pierce has grabbed 21.9 percent of all available defensive rebounds, while posting a staggering 7.2 defensive rebounds per game. That number puts him in the NBA’s top 20 for defensive rebounds per game since Jan. 27.

Those aren’t just elite small forward rebounding numbers. Those are elite numbers for any player in the league. In fact, over that stretch, Pierce has bested All-Stars like LaMarcus Aldridge, Kevin Durant, Chris Bosh and even LeBron James on the defensive glass.

“I just try to do what I can to help the team win. Whether it’s scoring, my rebounding, or my passing, I have ability. I try to be consistent with it every night I go out there,” Pierce said.

“You know I coached Paul in 2002,” former USA Basketball head coach George Karl said, “I think he is one of these players in this league, when he puts his mind to something, he’s capable of getting it done.”

So how exactly has Pierce, so late in his career, been able to corral all these loose balls?

“It’s not the size or the quickness,” Rivers acknowledged. “Otherwise all those big guys you’ve seen in the league would be great rebounders. It’s more instinct and feel. And he has that. He can do that five years from now, he’ll be able to get rebounds.”

A video investigation supported by the NBA's stats site shows his 2013 rebounds result from many tricks: The Celtics' help-heavy defense sometimes leaves him guarding a big man in prime boarding position under the hoop. Somehow, he's a master of corralling missed free throws. And there are more than a few artful shoves and grabs. But his most consistent trick is something that might work in your pickup game: He guards players who don't rebound much, and then abandons them entirely, leaving himself free to run wherever a missed shot may go.

While his teammates take care of boxing out their men, Pierce leaves his man early -- for instance Battier on that key double-overtime rebounding play against the Heat -- which lets him swoop in to collect the rebound.

And Rivers, for one, says it's a key factor in determining wins and losses.

“When he rebounds, we’re better -- there’s no doubt,” Rivers said. “When he does it, it’s big for us, especially because we don’t have Rondo.”

The Celtics are 7-2 this season when Pierce grabs 10 or more rebounds, including 6-0 since Rondo has been out, earning the lifetime Celtic plenty of accolades from afar.

They are also, somehow, 16-6 since Rondo went down.

“Never underestimate what Pierce brings to that team,” Thibodeau said. “It’s just like last year, when people wrote this team off. You can never write this team off.”

Brian Robb writes for Celtics Hub, part of the TrueHoop Network.

ESPN.com's Tom Haberstroh has been digging into the numbers and finds this year's Heat are the second best crunch time team since new stats started being recorded in 1997. Despite LeBron James' reputation, the best team in those 17 years was another James-led team.