After All-Star forward David Lee went down with a torn hip flexor, it appeared this Golden State Warriors team was toast. The Nuggets were dealing with their own injured star, Danilo Gallinari, but the team’s depth and impressive second half of the regular season still put them as the odds-on favorite to win the series. Yet by replacing Lee’s production with a combination of Harrison Barnes, Draymond Green, and Carl Landry (and by riding Stephen Curry’s hot hand), Golden State roared back from a 1-0 series deficit to beat the Nuggets in six games and become the best story of the first round.

As was the case with the Nuggets, most are assuming that without Lee, Golden State’s matchup against the Spurs — a superior regular-season team inching closer to full strength thanks to the extra rest they received by making short work of the Lakers — will be the end of the road for the Warriors. But a funny thing might have happened for Golden State when Lee went down — they might have gotten better.

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.

Sleeping With the Lights On

netw3rk: The Boston Celtics exist in the minds of Eastern Conference playoff teams as something akin to the bogeyman. Even the Miami Heat — who certainly don't fear the Celtics — reach a pitch of intensity in their play against Boston, and a level of exaltation in their victories over them, that betrays a depth of hatred for the leprechauns unmatched by that for any other team.

When you put the bogeyman on his back, you stand over him and you do a dance. Every Eastern Conference team has a litany of Celtics grievances just waiting to be uncorked: the moving screens, the trash talk, the suffocating and gratingly physical defense that dared refs to blow the whistle every 10 seconds. And, yes, the winning. Because the KG-era Celtics didn’t just win; they stormed your arena, tore your relics out of their holy places, and gleefully salted your fields. That’s why, despite no longer being a truly elite team, the Celtics still have a sort of cultural hegemony over the Eastern Conference. The hatred they engender is the ultimate sign of respect.

Predicting the impact of Danilo Gallinari’s season-ending knee injury on Denver’s playoff hopes is one of the trickiest bits of analysis the NBA’s roulette wheel of injury luck has given us this season. The Nuggets might be one of the league’s deepest teams, full of wing types ready to sop up Gallinari’s minutes and ballhandling duties. But one of those wing types, the scorching Wilson Chandler, didn’t become a big-minutes fixture in George Karl’s rotation until mid-January — one of many in-season quirks that leaves us with dangerously small sample sizes almost everywhere we look. And an even more important Denver player, Ty Lawson, is dealing with plantar fasciitis. He might not return until the playoffs, and his health will be in question when he does take the court again.

A survey of the players and teams making moves in last night's NBA action.

1. The Thunder's Body Language

If you have Insider, you should check out David Thorpe's piece on the chemistry of the Oklahoma City Thunder. There's a lot of speculation in the article, a lot based on the very shaky science of body language, most of it suggesting that this is a more selfish Thunder team than ones we've seen in the past. The piece serves as a reminder that if it's spring, it must be time to judge every time Kevin Durant shakes his hands in the air to demand the ball, every time Russell Westbrook ignores him, and every time Serge Ibaka stares into space. Last night? They looked fine to me.

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.

The Silver Lining of the Neglect Bubble

netw3rk: Now riding their longest winning streak in 19 years, it's fair to say the Knicks are a good team; I could imagine them reaching the second round of the playoffs. The digit representing decades in my age has gone from two to three since the last time I thought the Knicks could or should reach the second round of the playoffs.

To be sure, other teams have been bad for stretches, missed the playoffs for stretches. But here's where the famed New York Bias enters. One way to think about NYB is as a constant focus on the narratives surrounding a New York City team from the media, irrespective of the team's relevance vis-à-vis wins and losses. This is viewed with annoyance from those on the outside as something approaching arrogance. To wit: Iman Shumpert's profile is boosted simply from his playing in New York, whereas, say, Dion Waiters is overlooked nationally because he plays in Cleveland. This is a fair gripe.

There's long been a general skepticism around the league about whether the Nuggets, so exciting and so dominant of late, can translate their regular-season success into true title contention. Three questions drive that skepticism:

1. Can they score in the clutch?

2. Can they score in the half court?

3. Can they defend well enough to beat elite offenses four times in seven games?

Denver has now won 14 straight after an improbable comeback against Philly on Thursday night that had George Karl telling Grantland this morning, “I woke up a lucky, lucky guy.” And though the schedule during that stretch has featured plenty of rest, close calls, and bad teams, it's also brought a handful of showdowns with the Western Conference’s elite — including two wins over the Thunder.

Denver has played top-five-level ball on both sides of the floor during this stretch — sort of a necessity for any 14-game winning streak. But dig a bit further, and watch the tape, and there are even more encouraging signs a real contender might be developing in the Rockies: The Nuggets are scoring well in the half court and destroying teams in crunch time.

Early in Denver's game with Phoenix on March 11, as a deflection sent the ball into the hands of Denver's Andre Iguodala, his teammate Wilson Chandler took off toward the opposite rim. As Iguodala moved the ball toward the center of the floor with a series of high, hard dribbles, forcing two retreating Phoenix defenders to shift toward him, an open pathway to the rim began to emerge in front of Chandler, bounding along the right flank. A quick shovel pass from Iguodala was easily secured by the galloping Chandler, who needed only two long, explosive strides to soar past a helpless Luis Scola for a vicious, two-handed dunk.

Best part about this other than JaVale McGee's reaction (which is not quite this, but pretty close) is how the Nuggets announcers go from calling it the shot of the century, to the shot of the year, to "guessing" it's going to be in the top 20 shots of the season. HAVE THE COURAGE OF YOUR CONVICTIONS, GUYS.

So far this season, the Nuggets’ Danilo Gallinari is shooting 42 37 percent from behind the 3-point line. This is kind of impressive, although unremarkable by itself, but when we account for shooting angles, something more noteworthy is revealed. First off, Gallinari shoots 3s from all over. He’s pretty active in the corners and at the top, but he’s most active along the wings; this season, well over half of his 3-point attempts have come from the wings, where he’s gone 41-for-123 (33.3 percent). Again, this is unremarkable. However, breaking it down further reveals Gallinari is much better from the right wing than the left one. In fact, of the dozens of players with at least 50 attempts in each of these zones, Gallinari is the best from the right wing (28-for-53, 53 percent), and the worst from the left (13-for-70, 19 percent).

The two most fundamental components of spatial analytics are distance and direction, but too often we neglect the import of direction in even our most “advanced” NBA metrics. The case of Gallinari reminds us why that is limiting. By lumping all of his 3-point attempts into one convenient distance-based bin obscures a key bit of information about his game.

Anyway, since we looked at the best shooters around the court space yesterday, it makes sense to look at the bad news today. And, while Gallinari does appear on this chart, he doesn’t deserve to be the focal point of a discussion about inefficient NBA shooting. Instead, I will devote that to the player who blends incredible talent and fan infuriation like no other; the guy who deservedly comes up every time we talk about players who are really active outside of their proper jurisdictions, that crazy sheriff down in Georgia — no, not this fella.

For the most part, NBA head coaches tend to like predictability. Given the complexity of their schemes, there’s a certain comfort in knowing where players are going, and when they’re going to be there. With coaches working hard to control every aspect of the game, it’s remarkable to see the success George Karl has had by giving up that control.

Over the years, Karl’s offenses have largely been defined by, well ... lacking definition. The past two seasons in Denver are no exception. Karl’s three-out-two-in, dribble-drive motion offense provides his team with a template to play an exciting brand of basketball that every NBA player would love to be a part of. There are only a few guiding principles — namely moving the ball, playing fast, and attacking the rim for layups or fouls — and that lack of structure creates a system that grants his players almost total autonomy.

At 4:53 p.m. PST yesterday, I joined everyone else in watching the battle for America’s soul. As I took my place in front of the TV, my mind wandered to what the night meant. This wasn’t about one man. It rarely is. This was about everything. This was about those in blue looking for a handout from a broken system, and those in red pulling themselves up no matter the circumstances. This was about what we, as a nation, want to believe. This was Magic-Bulls on Fox Sports Florida.

The idea came a few hours earlier. A few Grantland staffers were discussing the lack of Tuesday-night TV and wondered which, if any, sports would compete against the election. The answer was three NBA games (and one MAC football game): Bulls-Magic, Thunder-Raptors, Nuggets-Pistons. Because everyone in the office gets twisted enjoyment out of my feelings on this year’s Bulls, the challenge emerged as such: As everyone with a television considered our nation’s future, could I go to a sports bar and watch nothing but mediocre basketball? Challenge accepted.

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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.

That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

About 15 minutes after JaVale McGee’s thorough handling of Andrew Bynum was complete, members of the media began to file into the relatively small postgame press room in the bowels of the Staples Center. They were informed that first to the podium would be victorious Nuggets coach George Karl, whose team had just staved off elimination with 102-99 win over the Lakers. The player from Denver, it was announced, would be McGee. Even after the best game of his career — 21 points and 14 rebounds — in the biggest game of his career, there were laughs.