Do you guys remember the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs? They’re still in the playoffs, I swear! That Heat-Bucks series was actually this season. I know — it seems like it might have been Miami’s first-round series last season, but it really was just a week ago the Heat wrapped up the most predictable sweep of this season’s first round.

The biggest story out of Miami since then has been Shane Battier’s decision to grow something like a Fu Manchu mustache. They may have also scheduled some exhibitions against the Generals, just to stay fresh. The Spurs have presumably been on a wine-tasting tour with Gregg Popovich, and rumor has it franchise higher-ups forced Pop to undergo a media-training refresher after he was strangely polite to sideline reporters during the Spurs’ first-round whitewashing of the Los Angeles D-Fenders.

Tonight is a night for both rejoicing and sadness: Depending on the results of three crucial games, including two elimination games, this could be the last night featuring more than two games until next season opens. This is a bad thing for fans seeking a variety of entertainment options, especially on nights with one or two blowouts, but a good thing for the spouses and loved ones of us poor saps watching every single one of these first-round bad boys.

A lot is at stake in tonight’s tripleheader, obviously. A game-by-game look at some key questions on this busy Wednesday, in order of Most Intriguing to Least Intriguing:

Indiana-Atlanta

That’s right — I’m giving Most Intriguing status to this season’s NBA TV/Illegal Streaming/Ratings Basement special. (It’s a league rule, by the way, that the NBA TV Special first-round series must include either Indiana or Atlanta every season. Seriously — I think it’s in the new collective bargaining agreement. Plenty of good seats still available on the cheap for tonight in Indy, by the way. Catch the fever!) After three boring blowouts, these two finally gave us a competitive contest in Game 4, albeit one in which the Hawks were in control after a blistering second-quarter run. Some key questions:

• Can Indiana figure out the Hawks' “big” lineups?

The trade deadline, even a mild one, reshuffles rosters and hints at franchise priorities going forward. The changes and the signals combine to heighten the scrutiny and pressure placed on certain players. Here, we present a list of who — and what — is on notice after last week’s relatively uneventful deadline:

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

1. Reggie Rose

In the land of the boring trade deadline day, the brother of an injured superstar making loud noises in the shadows may not be king, but he's at least going to get our attention. At the end of a day where names like Fab Melo and Ish Smith became trending topics, Derrick Rose's brother Reggie came out and made some pretty provocative statements regarding the Chicago Bulls' front office and the club's personnel. The short version? Jimmy Butler ain't it, man. Here are some of the greatest hits from Reggie's chat with ESPN Chicago: "What have you pieced together? Have you made any moves? ... Joakim Noah is a great player. Luol Deng is a great player. But you need more than that. You have to put together pieces to your main piece. The players can only do so much ... Everyone is expecting Derrick to come back," Reggie Rose said. "If Derrick comes back, they're going to sell more tickets. Is the reason for Derrick to come back to win a championship or make money? Right now, I don't believe a championship. Everything in the NBA is financial."

Join your Shootaround crew for some fake trades, pipe dreams, and beautiful, dark, twisted, deadline day fantasies.

The Book of Revelation

Golden State Warriors get: Devin Harris (Hawks), Earl Clark (Lakers), DeMarcus Cousins (Kings), Aaron Brooks (Kings)
Los Angeles Lakers get: Josh Smith (Hawks), Andris Biedrins (Warriors)
Atlanta Hawks get: Pau Gasol (Lakers), Tyreke Evans (Kings)
Sacramento Kings get: David Lee (Warriors), Klay Thompson (Warriors)

The worst-case scenario is that this is the annihilation of many teams at once — but at least it will be entertaining! The Lakers reunite Dwight Howard with his old pal Smith, who gets reunited with his own Cliff Paul; Biedrins slides in at the end of the bench. The Hawks build around Al Horford, Gasol, and Evans, who gets a little more institutional structure — for him, this is one of those “change of scenery” reboots. The Kings lose two streaky young stars but acquire solid cornerstones for the future, whatever that concept means to them. The Warriors get a couple experienced guards who, on any given night, might offer a passable impression of a fourth-quarter triggerman. They also get the budding Clark and Cousins, a combustible talent who could really benefit from a God-fearing coach. Ivan Johnson gets thrown in just to give the Warriors an edge in weirdness. Consider it an homage to 2006-07, when the Warriors traded a third of their team away in January and went on one of the most thrilling playoff runs ever.
— Hua Hsu

Mays and I did this with the NFL, and I managed to spoil Cabin in the Woods and wrongly assert that Michael Vick would play all 16 games for the Eagles. We're blinding you with science over here. Same rules as before: I say something, Mays argues whether it's plausible or implausible. Let's get weird.

If the first half of the season belonged to Kyrie Irving, the second half will belong to John Wall.

Chris Ryan: Upon his return from a summer knee injury, John Wall was subject to speculation and scorn. People made fun of his weight and questioned whether he was a franchise player. While Kyrie Irving, another point guard and more recent no. 1 overall draft pick, has had a coronation of a season, picking up plaudits wherever he's played, Wall was been largely forgotten or dismissed.

Much like their Northwest Division rival Denver Nuggets, the Utah Jazz are a collection of talented youngsters and productive veterans void of a superstar. Without a clear central figure, the pressure has been on head coach Ty Corbin to identify the best rotation of players that are, almost to a man, multi-talented but somewhat limited in some facet of the game.

The lineup data shows that the Jazz boast some downright awful five-man units, but they also have a few very productive ones. Injuries have forced the team into some tough spots this year, but among its roster, Utah may have the right combinations to seriously compete with the West’s elite rather than settling for a one-and-done stay in the playoffs. The main problem with that option is that it’s boring as hell.

Utah has multiple picks in next year’s first round, and and a few of those productive veterans — most notably Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap — are on expiring contracts. This makes the Jazz an ideal candidate for a big deadline move. By dealing one of their surplus big men to upgrade a backcourt in dire need of help (and making a few other small tweaks), the Jazz could become Denver 2.0 — a team that no one takes seriously as a Finals contender but that everyone wants to avoid in the postseason. To figure out how they might get there, I visited the trade machine and descended further into madness to whip up yet another ridiculous multi-team deal:

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.

Not much has changed for the Spurs in the past year. After steamrolling through last year’s compressed scheduled on the backs of their aging stars, only to fall to Oklahoma City one round short of the Finals, the Spurs' brass opted not to make any significant changes to their roster. In some ways, that decision seems to be paying off.

Much like last season, San Antonio is cruising through the regular season, with a 29-11 record and the league’s third best scoring margin (+8.1). Just like it’s been for more than a decade, the Spurs rarely beat themselves. They’re 14-1 against sub-.500 teams, playing the same mistake-free game that led them to four championships between 1999-2007. The difference is that, back then, not beating themselves was enough. Now, the Chris Pauls and Kevin Durants of the world have changed things. With this roster, in this NBA, the Spurs just aren’t good enough.

The Atlanta Hawks should be one of those NBA teams whose present doesn’t really matter. There are a depressing number of such teams when you really start to think about it, and the Hawks fit the definition perfectly — a nice collection of players, almost all of whom are on expiring contracts, playing for a franchise with 1.5 of its two Hawk eyes on future cap space. This team could win 48 games, snag the no. 4 seed and win a playoff round. But would it really matter?

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.

It Jumped Up a Notch

A couple of notes about the Rondo vs. Humps Garden Party ...

Last Thursday was a big one for new Hawks GM Danny Ferry: His five kids and wife finally arrived in Atlanta, from San Antonio. Then the Orlando Magic traded Dwight Howard. Not to the Hawks, Howard’s hometown team, but to the Lakers. Ferry had gotten 31-year-old Joe Johnson’s albatross of a contract off the Hawks' books ($89 million remaining over four years) within two weeks of taking over in late June, so forgive the Hawks fans out there for thinking he could also lure Howard home. In his 19th-floor office in downtown Atlanta, Ferry spoke quietly, and measuredly, for most of an hour, about where the Hawks are going and where's he's been.

So. Dwight Howard to the Lakers.

It all happened yesterday. I was here, at the office. I heard the news from some sources around the league. It’s something we looked at, but they just would not ... I don’t know that we ever got close at the end, because they just didn’t want to trade him within the division. My first call, when I found out about the Lakers deal, was to [Hawks co-owner] Bruce [Levenson].

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.

Hero of the Night: Andre Iguodala

In the end what this Sixers team needed — after their regular-season hymn to the joys of team basketball — was a hero. In the absence of that, they turned to Andre Iguodala. And last night, that was just enough.

All season long, Iguodala seemed like the graduate still haunting his college campus bars, showing up at parties. Hell, audit some classes! Why not? Here's why not: This turf belongs to a new set of kids now. Namely, Holiday, Turner, Lou, and Thad. Iguodala was always a bridge from the Iverson-era Sixers to whatever was going to come next. This season, it felt like "next" had finally arrived.

So much amazing is happening here, 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.

Who Do We Blame for Derrick Rose?

Blame me for what happened to Derrick Rose.

About five minutes before the Bulls’ title hopes crumpled onto the United Center floor, I’d just said how I was glad Rose was still playing against Philly, how after missing nearly 30 games he could use all the game-speed minutes to be had. Then I screamed “Noooooo!” for a good 30 seconds while pressing the rewind button over and over.

What happened last night, what's happening tonight, who said what and what you should read. All here in your afternoon NBA Shootaround ...