So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous weekend, along with ones you will remember forever.

Speed Kills

Chris Ryan: Like everyone else, I was wondering how the Thunder, and specifically Kevin Durant, would cope without Russell Westbrook. I hadn't considered the possibility that Durant might compensate for his running buddy's absence by playing like him.

The NBA playoffs are upon us, with 16 teams competing for the Larry O'Brien Trophy. But what about the other guys? What about the teams we wish were in the playoffs? We may know, in our heads, that they didn't do enough to get into the postseason, but that doesn't change how we feel in our hearts. We'd like to see these teams competing in Bill Simmons's Entertaining as Hell Tournament, but until that day, we'll just have to write longingly about why we wish they had made it to the promised land.

Portland Trail Blazers

Sean Fennessey: This isn't exactly a song for the Blazers because the Blazers were hard to watch this year. Nic Batum was long and lean and aggressively French, J.J. Hickson played like an exploding can of soda, and Weber State's Damian Lillard was a revelation to those who enjoy tiny-man dunks but don't much care for consistency. (He is only the Rookie of the Year because Anthony Davis hasn't totally figured out how to play basketball yet. He will.) I won't miss those Blazers and I certainly won't miss their bench, mostly because their bench doesn't exist beyond the many terrified faces of Meyers Leonard.

So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you will remember forever.

Crime Scene

Chris Ryan: This is LeBron James's shot chart for this season, specifically his behind-the-arc shot chart. You see the area in the left-center, where James is 26-of-74? Isn't it weird that area isn't littered with skeletons and burned-out Cutlass Supremes and tattered American flags and crashed F-15s? I think it's weird, too. Because that's where LeBron is ending entire worlds, on a nightly basis. Statistically, it might not be his most effective shooting zone, but emotionally, narratively, this is where he likes to take opposing teams by the heart and squeeze the life out of them. It's the dramatic weight with which these shots go down that make them noticeable. There was the dagger in the Celtics the other night, and then, last night, in his homecoming game in Cleveland, he did this:

So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you will remember forever.

Pure and Easy

Today marks the start of my 24th month as an Angeleno. Much of that time has been spent in an office about 50 yards from Staples Center, where last year, a lockout-shortened NBA season meant a different basketball game just about every night. Of all the sports memories I’ll take from these two years, what I’ve gotten to see there will be at the top. I’ve seen LeBron James three times, and Kevin Durant one more than that. I’ve watched one of the 10 best players ever play his home games, often enough that it almost feels routine (it never quite gets there). Years from now, though, when I talk about my favorite part of seeing the NBA so close, I’ll talk about Chris Paul.

So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you will remember forever.

Italian Ice

There’s really no way around it anymore — Marco Belinelli has become the most clutch player in the NBA. It started in Boston less than a week ago. With the Bulls and Celtics tied in overtime, Belinelli put up a twisting, fall-away, physics-defying shot with 3.1 seconds left to secure the win. If it had ended there, I can understand how it might be considered an aberration. But it didn’t. Last night, with the game again tied, Marco dropped in a game-sealing, acrobatic lay-in with only a second left to down the Pistons:

So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you will remember forever.

Milestones

So, LeBron reached a milestone yesterday in amassing 20,000 points (along with tallying 5k assists) — the youngest player to ever do so since, well, since forever. So while the importance of that accomplishment and his performance in general is all fine and dandy to talk about, what I want to focus on is something more subtle. Look at what he said at the halftime interview:

"While I'm accomplishing it, we're also winning at halftime, so that's a good thing."

Which got me thinking … How many NBA players have reached significant statistical markers that were overshadowed by a poor performance from their team or from themselves? Here are a few quick ones (read: Los Angeles-heavy ones) that I thought of/that Google search yielded:

So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you will remember forever.

A Tale of Two Cities

(GIFs by HeyBelinda)
Earlier this week, one of our copy editors asked me my thoughts on the idea of the Clippers replacing the Lakers as Los Angeles's basketball team. I told him that I was ignoring it. He answered that if he wasn't sure that I was a Lakers fan before, he sure was now.

But after last night's games, I think it's finally time I turned to face the music and the emergence of this "new" Lob City team.

When the Houston Rockets pried Omer Asik away from the Bulls with an aggressive offer sheet, the most pressing question (after "Who?" and "Him?") was if he could maintain his effectiveness with greater playing time. As a backup center in Chicago, the towering Turk had spent only 15 minutes on the floor per game. But in that limited sample, there were intriguing indicators that he could be a valuable big man. He was an elite rebounder — averaging more than 17 boards per 48 minutes — and his defensive rating was 92, which meant he surrendered fewer points per possession than Dwight Howard's career-best.

Now, Asik is considered a "surprise," despite being a very similar player to the one we saw as a reserve on the Bulls. In truth, he's gotten better. His rebounding rate is slightly up, his free throw shooting has improved, and he's committing fewer fouls (a consequence of needing to stay on the floor, one category in which he's slipped is shot-blocking). Asik has become more comfortable on offense and is now supplementing those wounded-circus-bear reverse layup attempts with new tricks, such as a cutting catch-and-kick to the corner after rolling off a bone-melting pick at the top of the key. In general, he's proved that his success in Chicago could be replicated on a larger scale, even if some of that success was bolstered by playing alongside Joakim Noah and the Bulls' army of smothering wraiths.

So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you will remember forever.

I'm a Bad, Bad Man

Kevin Durant had two great plays against the Hawks (Josh Smith, to be specific) in Atlanta's Philips Arena last night:

After that dunk:

So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you will remember forever.

This Is Happening

One of the best things about sports is the way it can turn the crusty, cold analysts among us into childlike believers in magic and chemistry and destiny once in a while. Not that all of those things are hokum; chemistry, roster fit, and the willingness to sacrifice for the greater good are enormously important things in building an elite NBA team. But over the long haul, numbers and stat-based trends usually win out, and the teams that look the best on paper typically beat other teams four times in seven games.

And yet when the Warriors celebrated like teenagers after Draymond Green's last-second layup, and then again after LeBron's game-ending miss, the thought darted through my head: "Something special might be happening in Golden State." No, Zach! Those thoughts are for teenage you, and for the builders of false narratives about mythical heroes and clutch winners. You must banish those thoughts before approaching the keyboard!

For most of the year, Miami is for Lamborghini-driving Argentines and frat bros with barbed-wire tats at Wet Willie’s. But for a brief, fragile window, during the annual Art Basel, the city is Little Downtown New York. Whether by happy accident or cunning scheduling, the Knicks just happened to play the Heat right in the middle of Art Basel this year. Adding to an orgiastic week of art shows, musical performances (A$AP Rocky rapping at the Delano Hotel), parties with gratis champagne, and half the taggers from Bushwick skateboarding into the Design District, there was also a matchup between the two best teams in the Eastern Conference. Advantage: David Stern.

This couldn’t have been more different from the first time the Knicks and Heat tangled. Held in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the game took place when parts of New York were still shrouded in darkness, when subways were flooded and the battered citizenry was subsiding on Utz bodega chips. Miami might not have tanked, exactly, but it’s difficult to imagine Coach Spoelstra delivering a fiery oratory in which he pounded on lockers and demanded that his soldiers send the fans in Madison Square Garden back to their cold, dark rat traps in sadness. After absorbing a pounding from the Knicks, members of the Heat smiled and embraced their temporary betters. That’s not usually what occurs when a team gets the breaks beaten off by a conference rival in a season opener.

But last night’s game? Everyone knew that one counted.

Going into last night’s mondo-hyped inter-borough showdown, the Brooklyn Nets boasted an 8-4 record — an admirable start for any team, but especially impressive for one that finished 22-44 last season. Nevertheless, the New York Knicks have captivated the imagination of the city, and in the process spawned a fledgling (but absurd) public campaign propelling Carmelo Anthony as the NBA’s Most Valuable Player.

And so, with slightly over a minute remaining in the first half of Monday’s game at the Barclays Center, Anthony was greeted at the foul line by an echoing “MVP” chant. Nets loyalists countered with enough baritone boos to partially drown out the visitors, but the message was sent. Even in Brooklyn’s new arena, this is the Knicks’ town.

Heading into tonight’s game against Orlando, New York is the only undefeated team in the NBA. Save the pillowcase–of–snow globes thumping inflicted by the Miami Heat in the playoffs, the Knicks have gone 22-6 under the glowering tenure of Mike Woodson. The story line has been simple: The Knicks are buying into Woodson’s ideology and Carmelo Anthony has been brainwashed into trying hard for sustained periods of time. Should the Knicks dispatch the Magic and the Spurs, “MVP” chants at the Garden are inevitable.

Yet New York’s success is not a result of Anthony’s maturation into a bona fide superstar. While he has worked harder on defense, much of his game is the same. His field goal percentage, true shooting percentage, rebounds, and offensive rating are all roughly at career averages. In fact, with Anthony's assists at a career low of 1.5 per game, an argument could be made that the Knicks' offensive brilliance has been a result of him doing less, not more.

But if not Anthony, who deserves credit for the Knicks’ pristine start? Surprisingly, it’s the team’s oft-maligned front office. Really.

During Sunday night's game against Atlanta, Russell Westbrook and Thabo Sefolosha of the Oklahoma City Thunder finished the first quarter by barking at each other on the sidelines until their teammates squired them to opposite corners of the huddle. It was an ugly scene in an ugly loss. Despite a Gemstar-sharp performance by new acquisition Kevin Martin, the Thunder were selfish, exasperated, and disjointed.

With two losses in their first three games, the defending Western Conference champs have not resembled the glowing dynamo that engulfed opponents in blue flames last season. And it was impossible to forget that the Hawks, who were win-less and without star forward Josh Smith, were the same club that James Harden disemboweled with a 45-point outburst only a few days earlier.

These are marvelous times.

On Saturday night, a national television audience watched the Brooklyn Nets defeat the Toronto Raptors in the transplanted franchise’s new home. From your soiled barcalounger, you may have heard the “Brooooooooooklyn” chants and seen Brook Lopez draw countless foul shots with his herky-jerky release. But you missed so, so much. Here’s an on-the-ground report of what really went down in the mean seats of the Barclays Center on opening night.