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Jesse Wright, strength coach for the 76ers, recently got himself a technology budget, something he'd never had before with the Sixers, a gift from his new GM Sam Hinkie.

He's stressed about it though.

"You've got a blank slate!" I said to him, failing to reassure.

"I can't get everything," he told me, "but I need to get the right things."

What are the right things for an NBA team that wants healthy, fit players and is willing to spend on technology?

Wright and I were taking in the NBA vendors show, an unpublicized sideshow at the draft combine, held each year in a Chicago hotel ballroom.

What are the disruptive digital technologies that offer a clear injury prevention payoff? Some candidates:

Next generation compression

The NormaTec system is the pair of black sleeves you sometimes see athletes wearing over their legs when television cameras look into the locker room before games. They compress the large muscles in the legs to improve blood flow and speed recovery.

The systems have been around since 2007 and are an established, widely used technology to help athletes speed recovery. Every single player on the Miami Heat has a $5,000 deluxe-version NormaTec Pro of their own. LeBron James owns three, including a custom, personally-fitted hips and legs version.

Custom fits aren't normally required. The sleeves are made from thick industrial nylon and zip closed around the leg. Air fills the sleeve; the tightness is controlled by embedded pressure sensors.

One leg of a NormaTec sleeve is split into five section compartments, overlapping zones that fill with air from the control box. The bottom compartment fills first, and on up the leg. The pressure builds and the compression benefit kicks in. When the sleeve is fully pressurized air flows into and through the sleeves in computer-controlled pulses that further stimulate recovery.

Evidence for NormaTec's effectiveness is more anecdotal than empirical. Gilad Jacobs, the CEO of the Newton, Massachusetts, company says that's not because the systems haven't been tested. They have been, by the likes of the U.S. Olympic Committee which took dozens of NormaTecs to the London Olympics -- but the U.S.O.C. is not publishing what they have learned in sports science journals, according to Jacobs.

Identifying fatigue that can lead to injury

The core of the Catapult system is a wearable sensor package that tracks and radios precise body position data on a working athlete to a base computer. The system gets its precision from the many sensors in the package:

• a GPS sensor (that works far better outdoors than indoors)
• an accelerometer that measures the force associated with an athlete's movement
• a gyro sensor that measures rotational displacement and a magnetometer
• a compass, that measures directional vectors and validates rotational movements.

The package, a little larger than an apple core, weighs a few ounces and hides in the pocket of a snug-fitting under-jersey.

Data from the Catapult system relevant to injuries comes in two forms. Over time, once a baseline value has been established, the data can indicate when a player is fatigued and show patterns which differentiate between fatigue associated with improving fitness and fatigue associated with overuse. Athletes recovering from injury can see clearly if they apply equivalent and balanced forces when playing, running, jumping and cutting, or if they are favoring the non-injured shoulder/arm/hip/leg/foot.

Catapult was developed by sports scientists at the Australian Institute of Sport and has been used widely for the last six years by Australian Rules Football teams. (Catapult U.S. headquarters are in Atlanta.) League-wide the teams share data and study the results, according Catapult's Gary McCoy, leading to not just significantly fewer injuries but also more plays per game.

The system tells coaches how far and how fast athletes have moved throughout a practice. (Universally as far as I can tell, leagues disallow the systems during games.) The system also distills a player's work to a single number that reflects cumulative effort -- PlayerLoad. PlayerLoad is compatible with other measures of athlete effort that come from heart-rate monitors, from SportVu game-tracking or from simply asking players how they're feeling at a given time. It all goes into the big database that Catapult enables. "We create a dashboard for coaches to see their athletes and how they're working," said McCoy.

It's a versatile tool that teams look to for changing culture. McCoy also told me how one unidentified NBA team that uses Catapult (Celtics, Mavericks, Rockets, Knicks, Spurs are customers listed on the company website) decided to post PlayerLoad numbers on the wall after practice. The team was concerned about the loafing going on during practice and felt well-informed peer pressure could help.

Jumping to test fatigue

Force plate technology wasn't on display at the vendor show but it was presented by Phil Wagner from Palo Alto-based Sparta Performance Science at the Midwest Sports Performance Conference held at the University of Kansas last weekend. Kansas has the force plates installed and uses the Sparta software to monitor athletes.

Sparta is also known for training Jeremy Lin prior to his rise to fame with the Knicks.

Wagner has athletes do a vertical jump on the force plate which produces a three phase “movement signature.” The pre-jump “load” phase, the key transition “explode” phase and the energy-sustaining “drive” phase appear as peaks and dips in the resulting data graph. Sparta delivers the data graphs from jump tests to Kansas players and coaches through a private Web interface.

Evidence suggests these movement signatures can be injury predictive. Given all of the running and jumping basketball players do, when ground force production (what's measured in the jump test) is inefficient the joints and tendons at the root of those inefficiencies pay a price and break down.

When measured at regular intervals during the season the jump test will also show fatigue. Players who say they feel 100 percent but produce significantly less force than they do at their peak clearly lack explosiveness, a surefire indicator that fatigue has set in.

Peak Performance Project (P3), a sports training company in Santa Barbara, has a similar technology, but uses right- and left-lateral jumps to measure force production. P3 has had an ongoing affiliation with the Utah Jazz since 2007. Both P3 and Sparta Science are currently talking to other NBA teams interested in adopting their systems.

Brad Stenger is a New York City-based journalist and researcher.

David Thorpe's latest postseason MVP rankings are posted (Insider). Stephen Curry doesn't top the list anymore. We discuss:

A while back I found that players who play a ton of minutes don't win NBA titles anymore.

It used to happen all the time. Michael Jordan did it constantly. But it has been almost a decade since any player has pulled that off, even though a who's who of MVPs and the like have attempted it.

What interests me is: What happens? Those players who still play huge minutes ... what's happening to them?

I just took a peak at the top 20 players in total minutes played this season.

Now, think about this -- these are the NBA's Iron Men. Not just the ones who some coach theorized could pull off massive minutes. These are the ones who really did. This season.

If coaches are managing minutes correctly, you could expect this group to be among the NBA's least likely to get injured as the season moved into the playoffs. These are, presumably, theoretically, the men who can take it.

Were they?

As a group, they have indeed had it very rough.

I found these 20 players fall into four categories:

Catastrophic injury: Kobe Bryant, David Lee, Luol Deng, Russell Westbrook

This is amazing and scary. A full fifth of the 20 NBA players with the heaviest minutes load this year are either certain not to contribute any more this season, or are unlikely to.

Kobe Bryant, fourth on the NBA's list of minutes played this season, stars in this group with a ruptured Achilles. But he's part of an All-Star cast. Russell Westbrook's knee injury will keep him out for the rest of the playoffs and has dealt the Thunder's title chances a serious blow. He was 17th this season in total minutes played -- but was much higher on the list before some late-season rest.

All-Star Warrior David Lee has been getting back on the court in short stints, but by and large his hip injury has been a defining storyline in these playoffs. He was 12th in minutes played this year.

What would the Bulls, going toe-to-toe against the Heat with a short bench, give to have their typical minutes leader Luol Deng back? But he is out possibly for the rest of the playoffs with complications from a spinal tap, related to an infection. Many would assume that would have nothing to do with heavy minutes. That could be so. But don't forget that exhausted bodies can malfunction in many different ways.

Honorable mention: Derrick Rose is still out after being 24th in minutes per game last season. Over the 38 games before his season-ending injury, Rajon Rondo played 37.4 minutes per game, good for 13th in the NBA this year.

Banged up: Stephen Curry, James Harden, Deron Williams

Stephen Curry's playoff injury saga -- he has been a near scratch for many games -- comes on ankles that played the seventh most minutes in the league this season. And he's playing against the Spurs, the team that has always been so strategic in managing minutes in the regular season, to keep the injury-prone (Manu Ginobili) and aging (Tim Duncan) at their best. Should the Warriors have protected him a bit more to have him firing on all cylinders now? Worth considering for next year?

James Harden was underwhelming in the postseason -- he could barely eat while battling strep throat -- after playing the NBA's sixth-most regular season minutes. Deron Williams battled injuries all season, but still played the 19th most minutes. His Nets lost to the lower-seeded Bulls at home in a Game 7.

Didn't make the playoffs.

Say goodbye to Damian Lillard, who topped the minutes list, as well as DeMar DeRozan, Jrue Holiday, O.J. Mayo, Evan Turner, Kemba Walker and Nicolas Batum.

Dealing with it: Kevin Durant, Paul George, Klay Thompson, LeBron James

Halfway through the second round, a grand total of four of the NBA's top 20 players in minutes played are alive in the playoffs anywhere near firing on all cylinders, health-wise.

That's the same percentage that have had catastrophic injuries.

Hats off as well to Bucks Monta Ellis and Brandon Jennings, who made the playoffs intact after finishing in the NBA's top 20 in minutes played.

If Durant looked a little tired missing two free throws late in a Game 3 loss, it might have something to do with having played more regular-season minutes than every NBA player not called Damian Lillard. Indeed, unless the Thunder right the ship and win a chip, this will mark the 10th straight season nobody has both played 3,000 minutes and won a title. Durant is the only candidate remaining.

Youngsters George and Thompson were eighth and ninth in the league in minutes played (but at a hair below 3,000 minutes) and are performing well.

James -- in a season when his coach paid careful attention to managing his minutes -- still finished 16th in total minutes. And he's an interesting test case.

David Thorpe's theory is that the reason the NBA has changed to favor managing minutes is that defense has become a lot more work. Now it's five players moving constantly, while it used to be a lot of isolation basketball, with many players standing around watching as one guy pounded the ball into the post. Watch James at both ends and you'll see what Thorpe is talking about. There's not much standing around these days.

The Heat believe exhaustion due to long minutes is why James' performance tailed off badly in the 2011 Finals, which is something they have been trying to address ever since.

James has played 191 fewer regular-season minutes that he did two years ago. Did Spoelstra get him enough rest this time around? We'll find out in the next few weeks.

The Philadelphia 76ers have hired former Houston Rockets second-in-command Sam Hinkie as their new president of basketball operations and general manager.

Hinkie is a highly regarded behind-the-scenes NBA mind who has put in the work on every front, from mastering the nitty gritty of the CBA to traveling the backwaters of the globe scouting prospects. He has been a key figure in building Houston's analyst-thick Moneyball-style front office that has cleverly created advantages for itself -- figuring out how to win the James Harden sweepstakes is just one example. Using innovative contract structure trickery to haul in Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik through free-agency offers other teams couldn't match is another.

Some teams shoot from the hip. Rest assured, under Hinkie, the Sixers will adhere to well-honed long-term strategy. Assuming Hinkie is empowered to follow his principled approach, it would make no sense to bet against them as they wrestle with big decisions like whom to hire as head coach, and whether or not to retain the injured Andrew Bynum.

Effectively out of the loop, according to ESPN's Brian Windhorst, are the likes of Rod Thorn, Tony DiLeo and Doug Collins.

It's tough to say if this is a departure for the 76ers, or a return to the direction the franchise was headed in when Joshua Harris bought the team in 2011.

---

When a bundle of smart-guy Wall Streeters -- Josh Harris, Dave Blitzer, Art Wrubel & Co. -- bought the team in the summer of 2011, many thought Collins' days were numbered. It was assumed the Sixers would, in modern Wall Street style, become the Rockets East, using analytics to drive every little decision.

The guess was that the traditional hoops heads in the building -- Collins, Rod Thorn -- were on the way out, sooner or later, likely to be replaced by the ownership group's ready-made candidate, former player-agent Jason Levien, and his handpicked coaches and front-office people. The other key decision-maker, Ed Stefanski, didn't even wait for the other shoe to drop and took the first good job somewhere else, in Toronto.

Change was coming, sooner or later.

The traditional hoops people hung around, though. Most still had contracts, and it's not popular for new owners to clean house immediately. There's an element of paying your respects to how things have long been done.

Before the new owners could reorganize, Collins led a low-expectations team into the playoffs (barely) as an eighth seed. Bulls star Derrick Rose tore his ACL in that series (as you may have heard). And then Joakim Noah got hurt too, alternating between missing time and playing badly hurt. The Bulls are known as the team whose spirit cannot be crushed, but in that series, they were broken. The Sixers became that rare eighth seed that beats a 1-seed -- and then they darn near repeated the accomplishment in the next round, taking the Celtics to a seventh game before bowing out.

It was plain to see, in the bowels of the arena during that playoff run, that the new owners -- in person and with all kinds of family in tow in the locker room, in the stands, in the news conferences, in the private club upstairs with VIP guests -- were falling head over heels for Collins. He knew it too. The team was winning. So soon! The giddiness was all around, and everyone smiled when Collins declared he was a "Sixer for life."

Not that long ago, then-coach Collins was the de facto king of the Sixers organization. The city was lukewarm on the players, but tune in to sports radio in the City of Brotherly Love in the summer of 2012, and nobody agreed on much -- it's Philly, after all -- but everyone agreed Collins was the center of the 76ers' universe.

Thorn was never expected to stay forever. As the apple of the owners' eyes, Collins was either going to be Thorn's de facto replacement, or the guy who made his actual replacement's job almost impossible to do. Whatever Collins wanted would matter. And he tended to want all kinds of things. He was hot and cold on young talents like Evan Turner, and his idea of a great free-agent signing was the perpetually disappointing center Kwame Brown, who was brought in with the theory he had the right kind of body to protect the paint, but has a block percentage worse than some guards.

The new owners interviewed a string of GM candidates in the summer of 2012, including smart up-and-comers Hinkie, the Celtics' highly respected assistant GM Mike Zarren, former Portland assistant GM Tom Penn and others. But they ended up hiring 76ers lifer Tony DiLeo (he has been with the team since 1990, in almost every position imaginable). Sources say he was the choice in part because he was the candidate who could operate in Collins' outsized shadow. For innovators like Hinkie, there would be little chance to succeed with Collins around.

Not coincidentally, around that time Levien extricated himself from the Sixers ownership group, instead partnering with billionaire Robert Pera. They bought the Grizzlies together last fall; Levien calls the shots now as CEO.

Meanwhile, the 2012-13 season began and things went badly for the team. Stat geeks laughed from afar at the collection of notoriously inefficient newcomers like Brown and Nick Young, as well as the impulsive drafting of Arnett Moultrie.

Most importantly, gone was Andre Iguodala. In his place was the perpetually injured Andrew Bynum.

The love affair between owners, city and Collins frayed quickly. The tone in the media soured. It stopped feeling like a team that could beat the top overall seed in the East. With a 34-48 record, the Sixers couldn't even make the playoffs.

On April 18, Collins announced he was stepping down as coach.

The owners have subtly signaled a doubling down on the kinds of quant analytic geekery that had once been Plan A. They hired Aaron Barzilai as the director of basketball analytics (something Collins was public about not valuing much) in November. They became one of the NBA's first 15 teams to use SportVu optical tracking technology. And, in a move that is increasingly a sign of an organization's new-breed strategic thinking (because of subtle advantages to savvy teams), last month they bought a D-League team -- to be called, of all things, the Delaware 87ers.

Meanwhile, the kind of aggressive new-breed thinking that Collins, Thorn, Stefanski et al always assumed would eventually rule the day in Philly, well ... it's back.

Hinkie has a track record of being respectful and humble, even as he outworks and out-thinks the competition. If history is any guide, he'll have little interest in rattling cages by identifying his arrival as a sea change from the way things have been done in Philadelphia.

And maybe that's accurate. In many ways, it's not a sea change. Now Joshua Harris' 76ers are back on course to where they were headed all along, despite the detour. They are once again on the path to becoming the Rockets East, complete with one of the Rockets' key executives.

Me? I picked Heat in seven. But ESPN.com insiders Amin Elhassan and Tom Haberstroh have seen enough. Forget the homecourt advantage the Bulls have eked out. They're saying Heat in five.

1. The Thunder seemed like an untouchable team for much of last year's playoffs, especially about the time I was riding a boat with Royce Young on an Oklahoma City canal. Then they were shattered by four straight losses. This season they looked untouchable much of the year, then things didn't just go a little south with the loss of Russell Westbrook. They got up 1-0 in this series but to my eyes, looked nervous all along. Their swagger broke, and you have to wonder about history repeating itself. Now it's 1-1. A couple of times, late in the close loss of Game 2, Kevin Durant quit on plays. Once he was not really fouled by Tony Allen, and fell to the floor in a bitter heap, complaining to the refs, as crunch time took off without him. In the closing seconds, the win still theoretically possible, he wanted an inbound pass but didn't get it. Thabo Sefolosha rightly raced the floor with the ball in his hand and time of the essence. When Sefolosha was ready to pass to a shooter ... Durant was barely over half-court and out of position. I feel like I can see the "not this again" movie playing in Durant's head. He needs a Joakim Noah gator-blood transfusion to get his head right to bang out these next three wins. If Durant doesn't believe that's possible ... it's not.
2. If you were Scott Brooks, which five players would you put on the floor to close games? He has a lot of good choices, but the Grizzlies make everything tough. In Game 2, the Thunder closed the game making one of their last six shots -- and that one was Derek Fisher's unguarded, meaningless final buzzer 3 to make a nine-point loss into a six-point loss. OKC's only real points in the final three minutes, at all, as a team, came when Durant missed badly and the rebound fell to Kendrick Perkins, who was fouled on the putback and made two free throws. In other words, the Thunder didn't score any buckets, or even really points, against the Grizzlies' real crunch-time defense.
3. I've been talking about the need for Durant to pass more. In general, it works. But not every time. The worst thing that can happen: That awful airball, where a doubled Durant dished to Fisher, who drove into a double-team and launched one of the decade's least likely attempts with 2:12 left.
4. Tony Allen launched a 3 with 38 seconds left in a four-point game. Wow. Mike Conley's biggest mistake of the game was giving it to him. (What was Lionel Hollins doing even letting Allen stand there?) He's 3-of-24 from 3-point land this season. Pretending that never happened got a lot easier for the Grizzlies when they snagged the offensive rebound.
5. Respect Fisher's crunch-time playoff steal game. In recent years, according to NBA.com/Stats, he gets a steal roughly every 30 minutes he plays. In these playoffs, in the final three minutes of close games, he has a steal every three minutes (and just missed on at least two more.) His secret? He's bold in leaving his man. His other secret? He's physical as hell, knowing that in that part of the game, referees tend not to call that.
6. No games in the whole league on Thursday. I'm told it's in fact not because of the "American Idol" final, but because several first-round series ended early, moving the start of some second-round series into last weekend. Now they need to stretch out the second round a tad to reduce the risk of a long layoff before the start of the conference finals, which has a fixed start.

The NBA sent around the most interesting list:

1. George Karl 404
2. Erik Spoelstra 190
3. Mike Woodson 127
4. Gregg Popovich 120
5. Frank Vogel 60
6. Lionel Hollins 55
7. Mark Jackson 47
8. Tom Thibodeau 40
9. Kevin McHale 17
10. P.J. Carlesimo 8
11. Vinny Del Negro 8
12. Larry Drew 6
13. Doc Rivers 4
14. Scott Brooks 3

What is that exactly? The final tallies of a marathon night of pingpong at some offseason association meeting for coaches? The results of some kind of snooker tournament?

No, no. It's none of that. Those are the final scores of this year's NBA Coach of the Year voting.

OK.

A selected smattering of Twitter responses:

• "Awards are jokes."
• "Facepalm."
• "WHAT THE BLOODY HELL."
• "I quit."
• "That's criminal."
• "Time to scrap the award."
• "LOL OMG fix this system."

Many of those comments are focused on the maligned Del Negro finishing ahead of the near-legendary Rivers, but that's only one of the many surprises on this list.

Now, here's the thing: That's voting with a history of a certain kind of logic. Sports writers and broadcasters vote, and tend not to vote for the guy they think is actually the best coach, but instead for the guy whose team was most surprisingly good.

Almost everyone agrees Phil Jackson is right there with Red Auerbach in the "best coach ever" conversation -- an assertion nicely affirmed by the Lakers' disarray in his absence. But somehow Jackson won this award only once, way back in 1996. All those years all those voters believed he was the best ... but voted for someone else.

That tells you the NBA Coach of the Year award is for something other than being the NBA's best coach.

Different question: Who's the best coach?

Wouldn't you prefer an award that really was for the best coach? Isn't that what you want to know?

There's no reason we can't have that. In fact, ESPN Forecast -- a giant panel of voters who watch the NBA closely -- is ready to give you just that. Recognizing a need for a better way to identify the best coach in the NBA, we asked them today to identify the best coach in the NBA. We used a voting and scoring system similar to the NBA's. It took only a few hours, and the San Antonio Spurs' Gregg Popovich is the runaway winner. With the results from 70 voters in, the results:

OUR NEW PREDICTION ENGINE



The results for "Best coach in the NBA" powered by ESPN Forecast.

1. Gregg Popovich 690
2. Tom Thibodeau 433
3. Doc Rivers 262
4. Rick Carlisle 169
5. Erik Spoelstra 131
6. George Karl 72
7. Rick Adelman 39
8. Lionel Hollins 38
9. Frank Vogel 20
10. Mike Woodson 8
11. Mark Jackson 5
12. Scott Brooks 4
13. Kevin McHale 1

These results are far different from the real coach of the year vote, of course. Popovich went from fourth to first. Rivers shot up the list. Carlisle and Adelman didn't get a single vote of any kind in the NBA's contest, but both are respected and on the Forecast list.

That, I suggest, is the point of this exercise. Here, if you want it, is a list that uses smart information-gathering techniques to roughly approximate who we (everyone really -- media, fans, players, owners) truly believe coaches best.

Coaching is murky and tough to vote on with conviction. The best of it happens behind closed doors and away from microphones. Assistants do a lot of what matters. It's difficult to score. Maybe Phil's roster got him a lot of those wins. Tim Duncan might be the secret sauce of Popovich's intimidating win percentage. Voters seem to have historically bet that the coach of the "little team that could" must be doing a hell of a job.

But giving the award to someone other than who we think is the best coach has robbed the award of a great deal of authority. (The list of past winners is littered with the likes of Mike Schuler and Sam Mitchell -- guys the league as a whole has decided, upon review, really are not cut out to coach in this league.)

Karl, of course, is a respected NBA lifer on both lists. That he belongs somewhere up there is beyond doubt. But at the top?

The logic of his winning works like this: The Nuggets don't have an offensive superstar. That point is in the first line of the news story about Karl's victory. By and large such teams are seen as doomed -- despite the ongoing playoff success of the similarly starless Bulls and Pacers.

In this particular case, however, it's tricky. Stat geeks loved that roster from the start, and using different approaches, John Hollinger and several others predicted the Nuggets would be this good or better. (Some stat geeks say the big thing holding that roster back was ... Karl himself.) Not to mention, David Thorpe would argue that in the second half of the season, the Nuggets absolutely did have an offensive star, and his name is Ty Lawson.

Whether you buy what Hollinger or Thorpe had to say, I suspect you'll agree when I say the NBA's results do not really reflect who we truly believe are the best coaches in the NBA. Not these names, not in that order. If you owned a team, would you really pursue Karl over Popovich? Would you call Frank Vogel before Tom Thibodeau? Would you blow off calls from Rivers in favor of Del Negro? (Would you forget entirely recent championship- and award-winner Rick Carlisle?)

The big crime here, of course, is that the NBA's results, while satisfying a certain itch to reward surprising performance, are not anybody's real list of who is the best coach in the NBA.

And isn't that what this award ought to be?

A team gets its first All-Star in 16 years. They've been wandering, starless, through the desert, and finally, this guy's featured in the big game. In that game, he represents the ascent of a much maligned franchise, and the validation of the new owner's controversial signing.

Can you really argue that this team needs less of the star, be it by trade or minutes allotted?

Yes.

You can make these arguments when the All-Star is David Lee and the team is the Golden State Warriors.

Warriors-Nuggets was over early, supposedly. The Warriors had squandered Game 1, the game they had to steal. Denver is famously unbeatable at home, and here the Warriors had lost an opportunity for a Mile High victory to a creaky Andre Miller up-and-under. They were unlikely to get another opportunity like that one because -- and this is when it got really dire -- Lee had gone down with a torn hip flexor. Lee claimed that he had heard a "pop," which might as well have been the noise of a Warriors season bursting into ruin, all in one moment.

And yet, in destruction's wake, Golden State gained new life. The power forward's injury forced the Warriors to get creative. And oh, how it worked.

As a result, Lee should be less central to future Warriors plans.

Mark Jackson's most common lineup in the Warriors' victorious Round 1 was the Don Nelson fever dream of Stephen Curry, Jarrett Jack, Klay Thompson, Harrison Barnes and Andrew Bogut. You know how often that happened in the regular season? Once -- and for a mere minute in a March 8 loss to Houston. After appearing together in six playoff games, this particular lineup already has gotten 76 times more run than it ever got in the first 82 games.

Jackson can be forgiven for declining to play Barnes at power forward until now, though I wish he'd dabbled more with the idea this season. Barnes is a 20-year-old rookie. Asking him to guard NBA big men is a tall order -- he didn't even guard a lot of big men in college. He doesn't set the best screens, and it's not as if he's a dead-eye small-ball shooter, at 36 percent from 3. To gamble with the rookie as a "stretch 4" was quite the risk. What if Barnes crumbled? What if he whiffed on every screen and bricked every shot?

This is probably why Jackson came to his decision to go small with self-aware incredulity. As Jackson told it: "I came to my coaches early this morning. I said, 'Am I crazy to start Harrison at the 4? Somebody talk me out of it.' "

Nobody did, and the result was a Warriors unit that drowned the Nuggets in 3s. The lineup fired up 27.2 3-point attempts per 48 minutes, and hit a scalding 41.9 percent. By the end of Game 6, the Nuggets were dead, and this formerly untested lineup had played 26 percent of all minutes in the series. Beyond that, the Warriors succeeded with every lineup that featured Barnes at power forward (excluding a few that played less than a minute together). Harrison himself had quite a series, making 41 percent of his 3s, while making, for him, a quarter-season's worth of 3s in a mere six games.

That the Warriors thrived while playing small and shooting lots of 3s begs the question: Well, why don't they shoot more 3s sooner? Golden State finished this season a league-best 40.3 percent from deep. But it was only 15th in the league in pace-adjusted attempts (19.4 per game). It would seem like this team is leaving points on the table, points it can ill afford to squander with a roster that struggles to attack the rim or draw fouls. Why not let it rip?

The answer is that Golden State so rarely has more than three 3-point shooters on the floor at once, in part because Lee played so many minutes. To be clear, Lee is a skilled offensive player and he's clearly better than his primary backup, Carl Landry. The problem isn't that Lee or Landry is inadequate. The problem is 3s are incredibly valuable, and neither shoots them.

This means that Lee is, in some ways, a drag on his team's greatest offensive advantage. That's more than a mild issue when he's making more than $15 million in 2016, and offers some of the league's worst interior defense to boot.

Hypothetically, let's say that Lee's large contract precludes a helpful trade (or perhaps more accurately, Lee's relationship with management precludes a trade). At the very least, the Warriors have learned that spacing the floor with four 3-point shooters can be a great strategy.

Curry scares up marvelous amounts defensive attention on the perimeter. Klay Thompson, too. Place two more guys outside the arc, and you're stretching an opposing defense tissue-thin. Hello, more room for Curry's drives, more opportunities for Bogut's alley-oops and more explosive dunks from Barnes. In the NBA, extra space is like a PED; it imperceptibly helps an athlete reach new heights.

The Warriors can't get to this basketball Shangri-la while continuing to play Lee heavy minutes. If this team is to reach its potential going forward, it needs to either develop Lee's 3-point shot, trade him, or curtail his role.

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.